PhotoDeck (and PhotoDeck founder’s) History

Offering a full-featured archive website makes clients’ life easier, it helps you look more professional, and it helps close deals. Not only that: it is a great way to turn clients into repeat clients.

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I was 13 when I spent my summer vacations working with my father, to finance my first SLR. That’s about at that time that my brother Cedric and I got involved with computers, too (he quickly became a programming buff). After graduating, I pursued a dual career, in the Photography and the Internet industries.

Portfolio, ca 1997

I created my first photo website year 1997, at the University. A simple portfolio, to satisfy a curiosity towards this new thing called “the Internet”, and, like many photographers still today, because having my best shots showcased on a website felt cool. Updating was a pain, and I created my first blog a year later. Actually the word “blog” didn’t exist yet – but it was an improvement over the plain portfolio, and the website generated more interest.

A few years later, “the Internet” had become mainstream and a platform for new, disrupting businesses. So I experimented with the idea of selling stock photography directly from my website – relying on search engines rather than traditional stock agencies.

2006 - the site that helped me reach over 6000 visitors a day

I put together www.maion.com in my spare time (my day job was helping grow new businesses at a Fortune Global 100 company). I used a photo-gallery script written by Cedric, and hacked some SEO, e-commerce and search features into it. Two years on, after much learning “the hard way”, the experiment was getting over 6000 visitors on any normal day . Others have done much better still.

I learned quite a few things in the process. First of all, SEO or not, getting this amount of traffic doesn’t happen overnight – it is hard work.

But even more interesting than the traffic itself was the clients’ reaction.

Clients found it great to be able to buy online, from a professional-looking website, and many became repeat clients, both for stock and commissions.

I learned that repeat clients are the holy grail of a photography business. Offering a full-featured archive website makes clients’ life easier, it helps look more professional, and it helps close deals. Not only that: it is a great way to turn clients into repeat clients.

2011 - Powered by PhotoDeck

Today, backed by world-class Software Engineering talent and new technologies, I am fully dedicated to bringing the same opportunity to other independent photographers. This is what PhotoDeck was created for: making your and your clients’ life easier via a fully featured website, for the benefit of everybody involved.

J-F Maion
PhotoDeck founder

About us and our values »