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Using Squarespace to Display Your Work

Lesson 31 from: The Ultimate Photo Storytelling Workshop

Finn Beales

Using Squarespace to Display Your Work

Lesson 31 from: The Ultimate Photo Storytelling Workshop

Finn Beales

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Lesson Info

31. Using Squarespace to Display Your Work

Using Squarespace to Display Your Work Finn shows you how he builds his photo stories using Squarespace and also the settings he uses when exporting from Lightroom.
Next Lesson: Q&A: Q&A: Editing

Lesson Info

Using Squarespace to Display Your Work

Okay, let's open up a blank page within Squarespace and show you how I start this process. It's pretty straightforward. Just have a little side note on websites here. It's deliberately sparse. I want my images to do the talking as opposed to the website designer. I often see websites that are really jazzy and cool and graphically heavy and you know heavy on fonts and stuff. But I often think that's advertising web design skills as opposed to photography. It's something to bear in mind. Don't get too hung up on some snazzy template as a photographer. Let your pictures do the talking. That's what your clients are interested in. They're not interested in hiring your web designer. They're interested in hiring you as a photographer. So put your pictures front and center. I literally have like a logo and then menu line and then bang into my images. So, that's my template. Let's jump back into Lightroom. We know we're gonna start in the boardroom day one, so here are all my images shot on day...

one rated one star or above. Remember, I need to orientate my audience tell them where we are from the outset. Not reveal too much, but give them some clues to what the story is about and where we're gonna go with it. So, for that type of message I need a long shot or extreme long. And that'll give us more visual clues than leading for something like this, which is like what is he a, a plasterer or a, I know grinder. So you wanna start with that. So let's filter our catalog, using our color filtering, all the extreme or long shots. Quickly, assessing what I have and go, right. I could try that one, but yeah, there's not enough. Not enough story, not enough message here. I don't know what these are. They are actually surfboards but they don't really look like surfboards. Look at this one. And as you know, from previous episode that's my starting shot. So I like all these clues. I like all these details in the background. This scene doesn't reveal everything, but I can build on it. I can start to hone in on some of these details and reinforce what's going on. So what I do, I've chosen that. Export. File naming. On import I always rename all of my files using the same convention I use for the parent folder. Which is: date 20 18 September, that's the date of the shoot, followed by client, Collin Vintage, followed by assignment workshop, and then just a sequential numbering sequence. So I don't really touch that. Don't need to touch that. File settings, JPEG. This is gonna go on my website. So you need a JPEG. Color space, very important. SRGB. Use SRGB for online and Adobe RGB for print. So we leave that SRGB and quality I set to 80. I resize to fit long edge 2,500 pixels. Remember that folder structure, 2,500 pixel folder is where it's going to end up. Output sharpening. This is personal preference, because I'm going to reduce this image from 6,720 across to 2,500. I'm gonna lose some sharpness. So I need to sharpen it on output. So that's all there. Export. So lets go one, a couple folders up. This is my parent folder. So I'm gonna drop it into the 2,500 pixel folder and I'm gonna split the shoot according to shoot days. You see the shoot days here, day one, day two, day three. So this is the board room. So it goes into day one. That's taking a while. There we go. Okay. Back to Squarespace. (mouse clicking) Image. Add. (mouse clicking) Open. Okay, so next, where am I gonna go from here? I want to dig deeper into his process. So that's gonna be what? Medium shot? Closeup shot? I don't need a long shot to follow this. We've already established the scene. So let's filter our catalog according to mediums and closeups. This is nice. Could go with lots of these here. I like this one. It's got, he's using his pencil, which connects to this scene where he's using a pencil. And this is an even closer image. So let's go with those two. Again, export. (mouse clicking) And export that one. (mouse clicking) Build them into there. I like to lay my stories out with one large image, followed by two, followed by one, followed by two. It's just a, it's just my way. You can lay them out as however you want. Okay. So then to get them to line up next to each other you literally just click, drag, then position the image. Place this over the top of the other one and let go and it'll just drop it into place. Okay. So then I'm thinking maybe I need to like draw out give a bit more detail of the room, shoot it from another angle. Looks good. Let's take that one and go follow with these two. Let's have a look at these two, in more detail. Just plug them into this collection. So original images are like this. I know I want them to sit together in a sequence like this. When we look at the original images, do I know they're gonna work together? Here's my trick. Select both and press the C button. That will pop them up side by side. So you can get an idea of whether they're gonna work together. They're definitely gonna work. He's cutting off his side of the board and then he breaks it over his knee. But I don't like the way his head is higher in this image than here. So there's a really quick way, before you upload to Squarespace and discover that fact, use this little compare tool to uh decide whether they're gonna work together. So I can crop the image. Oh, let's crop it. (mouse clicking) Four by five. Pull it down. Compare it again. Yeah. Looks better. So I can export these two and add them in as before. That's it. That's how I work. It's a trial and error process. This edit probably took me, two days to build to put together. Many different iterations and it'll probably change again by the time this workshop gets released. Finally. So yeah, I hope that helps. Next, we go back to Portugal where I have a Q&A with Alex as to this process. Jumping around the world in this workshop. Thanks for watching. (piano music)

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Ratings and Reviews

Brent Morris
 

Fantastic My thoughts on the storytelling workshop. The short is; it’s fantastic. The long is I loved all the details covered, from shot types and the ideas behind them to the call sheets and shot lists, and the whole process. I felt like I had a better understanding of how to schedule a professional shoot and I really felt like I had a much better grasp on many ideas and concepts, and I believe I’ve been able to improve my photography with them, so thank you and Finn. It really is fantastic.

Oswaldo Martinez
 

A path to better stories Very happy I got this workshop. Finn and Alex do a great job at teaching highly useful methods and specific advice to help you improve your own work, and more importantly, tell better stories that are meaningful to you.

Tommaso Selleri
 

Simply the best This is simply the best workshop out there on photography and storytelling. Finn is awe inspiring and so real and authentic. A pleasure to watch, a joy to learn from such master. I really hope a volume 2 is coming soon! Thank you for this one!

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