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There are times when one encounters an idea so simple but elegant that you have to marvel at the person who envisioned it and saw it to completion. I’ve had such an encounter today with a site called Live-Books (thank you Sunny) that allows Photographers to make their own online portfolios in a sleek, feature rich website.

The site is simple - yet it captures what would be important to most photographers. It allows for very high quality image uploads, displays the images beautifully using flash, and according to the demo - has a very easy to use interface for managing portfolios.

It also appears to have password protected sections - an invaluable component for those photographers that want privacy on certain shoots. I couldn’t find this feature listed in their PDF, but I did see it in one of the featured sites. This is a great feature for photographers.

The price is a little steep - $4000 can get a very nice, custom website for most photographers. What it cannot get them is the back-end functionality that allows for such easy manipulation - this is where Live-Books really shines. The downside is that their sites look very similar, so don’t expect anything innovative (over the other Live Books).

All in all, I think this is a great service and it lends more truth to my theory that Flash will provide the next generation of web applications