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ForegroundWeb Newsletter
YOUR WEEKLY DOSE OF PHOTO WEBSITE ADVICE & INSPIRATION.
IN TODAY'S EMAIL:
⚡️ 3 Quick tips: the about page photo you already have, a contact form built for the wrong client, who's propping up your open rate
🧠 Main Topic: What photographers really worry about when they write to me about their websites
📷 Website Spotlight: Sumfinity (photos first, proof right under them)
🔍 SEO: One sentence split across 3 heading tags
🌐 From the Trenches: Google's 4-day rule for profile edits, AI and wedding photography, PhotoBizX with Andrew Ferdinands
QUICK TIPS
1. 🥾 The about page photo is the one of you working
A photographer was about to pay a studio to photograph him.
His about page had no picture of him, he knew it needed one, and the plan was a local studio, something that didn't look too ugly (his words).
Meanwhile I knew there were shots of him in a landscape, tripod up, working, sitting in his own archive.
Photographers in front of the lens often don't have good shots of themselves.
Check your own about page. Either there's no photo of you, or there's a headshot that could belong to an accountant.
A studio portrait mostly proves you own a decent shirt, while a photo of you on location, gear out, in whatever the weather was doing, shows a client the conditions they're buying. It also gets you off the hook, because you're not posing, just working while someone takes a frame.
Paul Nicklen's about page is the one I keep pointing at, no portrait, just him in the water with the wildlife.
So before you book anything, go through your archive. A second shooter, an assistant, a client with a phone, your partner on a trip, someone has already photographed you working.
And if there's genuinely nothing, put it on the next job: ask whoever's with you for 5 frames.
Who took the last decent photo of you actually working?
2. 🎚️ Hide the wedding fields from a headshot client
Somebody wants corporate headshots. Your form asks for their partner's first name.
Open your own contact page and fill it in as your SECOND most common enquiry, not your main one. Count the fields that don't apply.
Most photography forms I open were built around the biggest earner, usually weddings, and everything sold since has just inherited it. So the headshot enquiry lands on a form asking about a venue.
And a field that doesn't apply isn't neutral. Someone reading it decides whether you're the right photographer for them, and a form that plainly wasn't written for them is a decent argument that you're not.
Then there's the visitor who isn't buying anything. Some of the best referral partnerships I've seen photographers build started with a casual "Hey, love your work" message, and nobody sends that through a form asking for their event date and guest count.
So: one dropdown at the top ("What can I help with?"), conditions on the fields that belong to only one answer, and a "Something else" option that leaves name, email and a message box. In Elementor it's per field, in the Conditions tab: switch on Enable Conditions and set the field to hide unless they picked weddings.
Which of your services is currently filling in a form built for a different one?
