Do you like commerical photography? If you do, this post is for you. I've collected 30 awesome Flash-based photography sites. Not only do they have stunning photos, but their Flash design is also amazing. Most of them are designed in full screen mode. So, get your coffee or tea ready and enjoy these beautiful high resolution photos.
Bergh
Timothy Hogan
Ciriljazbec
John Wright Photo
RW2 Studios
Werkstette
James Day Photo
Jeremy Cowart
Brook Pifer
David Lindsey Wade
Lyndon Wade
Manipulator
SasoKos
Filippa Smedhagen Sund
Miles Aldridge
Egofoto
Seo Hiroshi
Towndrow
FWA Photo
Steffen Jahn
Tom Nagy
Douglas Fisher
Shu Akashi
Joshua Stearns
Kurt Stallaert
Frieke
0-Style
Vilamajo
Javier Ferrer Vidal
Albrecht Gerlach
This is awsome.
Photographers seem to have noticed, that their photos need a clear background to be presented, without any distraction from fancy design elements or textures. But than they noticed, that this would make their websites look boring. So the solution they found was to impress people with their fancy navigations. Stupidly this also distracts from their photos, especially in combination with long loading times.
Most of these websites impress you for about 10 seconds (the loadingtimes not calculated), after that you are just annoyed because you just want to look at the photos, but can’t because you have to figure out how the navigation works or have to wait for the next image to load (because it is as a precaution saved with a enormous resolution much bigger than your screen). And never try to send someone a link to a certain image. You will have to go through this whole “user-experience” again and again if you want to see a certain photo for a second time.
I understand, that photographers want to present their photos in full-screen and flash is the only reasonable way to do so. But what if I don’t want to go fullscreen? Years ago webdesigners learned not to open windows in new tabs, looks like they now have to learn, not to open websites in fullscreen.
But what I really don’t understand what the advantage of flash-based navigation is supposed to be, especially if it breaks just with every navigation habit known to mankind, making it as complicated and cumbersome as possible to get to see the content. And that’s what every website is all about, seeing the content.
I think a static html page (maybe with some Javascript) has a lot of advantages over a flash page. And even the few advantages of a flash page are often wasted or not used improbably, making it quit hard to understand why the viewer has to be punished for wanting to see the photos.
I really beg to all the photographers out there for not to captive their photos in a flash site and at least present me a static alternative page.
Heh. ‘Flash-based photography’, I thought this was going to be about strobes.
Great selection of websites, these photographers are really awesome. What is the most imprise here? Websites or photographies?
Nooo it’s incredible this post!There’s my preferite works!! Fantastic! A big emotion see this sites! Thanks a lot for the sharing!
This post is wicked, especially like the Shu Akashi flash website, love the fact that flash based websites is pure rich content!!
In effect, very beautiful high resolution photos. Thank you!
Flash does make it tough to avoid pretty for pretty’s sake. A lot of recent studies are showing that in general, the photo-buying public (at least within the wedding and portrait realm) are turned off by Flash sites.
And I think the navigation is a big part of that. Flash makes it easy to display beautiful photos in a beautifully designed space. But the effort needs to be made to make the navigation easy, intuitive, and pleasant to use. People’s attention spans are short – mine included! If I can’t figure out how to see the next photo or open a specific gallery, I’ll leave, no matter how amazing the photography is.
great collection here, thanks for round it up. I’ve got an upcoming photographer portfolio site and you’ve saved me hours of research.
As for building photographer portfolios, Flash is absolutely the best way to go. No many other implementation can yield the same flexibility and security that Flash can.
As for long loading times, that isn’t the platform’s fault, its the fault of the dev who decided to put Mega Bit pics in the portfolio.
I certainly agree that the design shouldn’t outshine the content, but in the proper hands, Flash can augment the beauty of the work itself like nothing else.
I’m not really a huge fan of some of these websites, sure the photography is beautiful but the Flash in many ways detracts as much as it adds.
Stunning, stunning, stunning…
but when I enter a site and I see the “loading” caption, I move on to the next site.
That’s my problem with flash sites, the loading time, and of course the accessability.
Can the Google bot read flash sites?
Still a great source of layout inspiration.
I think Flash is an excellent tool for displaying photography. It provides you with preloading and bitmap scaling. Bitmap smoothing is essential if you want to larger images to display fullscreen across all browsers/resolutions.
But I do agree that I found it annoying to have to figure out the navigation on every site. For browsing photos, keyboard navigation is a must.
Neat stuff!
nice sites, found the fact that some of them didn’t work properly with firefox on my mac. some of the navigation items seemed clunky, but some good ideas.
A really great collection, flash is undoubtedly one of the best
ways of working with high resolution photographs, inspiring
collection…
This is awesome selection.
I should say AWESOM-O :-)
Photos are really cute, well balanced, just amazing.
But his flash is still to crazy, usability sucks.
I think css/html/javascript library are still the best choice for website technologies.
Damn, those are very cool photos on the list.
I’ll have to come back later. You may want to label this as “possibly not safe for work.” :D
I’m not too keen on Flash websites because they destroy SEO and aren’t guaranteed to be user-friendly. They’re also difficult for second- and third-party designers to edit, especially if the designer is only just familiar with Flash and ActionScript. I think photographers should consider a clean CSS/HMTL website using a Lightbox or something similar to display their galleries.
It’s a real shame, because you can design really beautiful sites in Flash. But I think Flash should be strictly a supplement to a website, not the skeleton of one.
I thought David Lindsey Wade’s site was really cool. You can use your hands via webcam to move to the next picture.
Nice photography. Personally I don’t like Flash sites, but it’s still good for inspiration. Thanks!