If you have started reading this it is because perhaps you were looking for information on how to create website for photographers, or at least you were curious about the subject. If this is your case, you have landed in the right place.
In this article I am going to help you create your own online photography portfolio. Even if computing is not your thing, don’t worry, in this article I have prepared a video in which you will see me creating a page as a photographer, step by step. I will do it in such a way that you can pause the video and replicate each step on your own calmly.
In this tutorial I’ll try to cover everything in as much detail as possible, so this is going to be a pretty extensive guide. If you are in a hurry, I recommend that, first of all, you save this guide right now, either by adding it to your favorites, or by sending it to yourself by email, or however you want. That way you can pick up the reading later when you have a little time.
On the other hand, I have tried to structure the information in this guide so that, if you need it, you can skip the parts that do not interest you and go directly to the section that interests you.
Clarified these points, let’s get to the point.
Why do you need your own website for photographers?
In the time that I have been dedicating myself to photography, I have seen very bad professional photographers, with an unfortunate photographic level that makes you wonder if there are really people out there capable of paying for that kind of photos, but I have also seen supposedly amateur photographers who have cost me understand why they didn’t end up launching themselves into the adventure of dedicating themselves to photography professionally, I mean, getting paid for it. If not full time, at least part time.
One day we will talk about this matter of taking the step from the “amateur” world to the “professional”, but for now I want you to know that creating your own website as a photographer is one of the first steps you can take to begin to see yourself as a professional photographer, to begin to believe it first, let’s say, and then that others can also perceive you as such.
As a professional photographer (or on your way to becoming one), you need to have your own online photography portfolio. Your website is your cover letter. It is your brand, your territory, your operations center, the place where people can discover you, get to know your photographic work up close and, above all, notice and feel your “philosophy” as a photographer.
And no, Instagram does not serve you for this purpose, I will tell you why in the section that follows, below.
There is another very interesting element in this whole story: if you are having a hard time taking the step of becoming a professional photographer, launching your own website or online portfolio is a perfect way to start little by little and in a very discreet way: many people The idea of starting to look for reports to cover as photographers, getting into all the noise, entering the game of starting to look for clients or chasing people offering their photographic services gives a lot of respect. Creating your own photography website is a discreet and subtle way to enter the world and let the market itself decide for you.
Imagine: you launch your website as a photographer, and a week later you receive a first assignment. OMG! What is this? Nothing, people have begun to discover your website, many have loved the photos you exhibited in your portfolio, and some are already looking forward to you doing a portrait session for their baby, covering a social report, and the owner of a business is asking you if they could hire you for a couple of days to cover a paid product photography session.
As you can see, even if you have doubts about your worth as a photographer (you shouldn’t have them, by the way), having your own website is a very safe way to start, to test the ground and to let others, your potential first clients, value your work, your photographic quality, and decide if they want you to be their professional photographer 🙂
In the hypothetical case that you, who are reading me, were already a consolidated professional photographer, in your case there is no longer even a doubt. A website to expose your portfolio to the world is an essential topic in these times.
You need to create a website for photographers: options
If we talk about “presence” on the internet, there are many alternatives. I am going to give you my personal opinion on each of them, and I am going to explain which of these alternatives is the most recommended, from my humble point of view.
Instagram and other social networks: Social networks are an interesting platform because they allow us to interact, connect with other people either on a personal or professional level, but they are, after all, “generic” platforms. As a photographer, you should have a good profile on Instagram or Facebook, but being a generic social network, your profile is surrounded by a lot of noise. “Attention” is a commodity that is very scarce in social networks. Someone can go through your gallery on Instagram and after 10 seconds they are already looking at a Story of… “Las Recetas de Charo” to give an example.
In addition, generic social networks carry many limitations. You can upload your photos, maybe some Story, but everything else is limitations.
Flickr, 500px and other social networks for photographers: With the exception that these social networks are designed for photographers, the same thing happens here as in the previous point: there is a lot of noise again, you don’t have control over the structure of the web, you can’t add or remove sections as you like , and normally 90% of the users of these social networks are simply other photographers like you, fellow professionals or hobbyists. So yes, we are interested in connecting with other photographers like us, people who have the same interest in photography as we do, but for the purpose we mentioned at the beginning of this article, Flickr and company are useless.
Website hosted on a free page: then, how about your own website hosted on one of these services that exist, online, that allow you to set up your photo gallery for free? All right, the only interesting word here is “free”. The rest, all regular. These services (Wix, Blogspot, etc.) are free only in theory. In practice, they entail a cost that can often be very high:
- Many of these services, in their free version, take up space on your website (your supposed website, since they give it to you for free, is not really “yours” at heart) with advertisements whose intention is to get more clients for them. Obvious.
- The web page you get looks far from professional. The same URL (address of your web page) has a very amateur look, it is usually an address of the type https://www.wix.com/usuario/fotosdemiguel9817-1 or something like that.
- The service that they offer you, being free, lacks most of the basic and essential functions to set up a website or photography portfolio.
This option is ideal for creating an ultra-basic website, perhaps for a community of neighbors, a group of friends, a very small non-profit association, but not for serious photographers. If you follow this option you will give a very bad image, I think.
Web hosted on payment server: here you can already have a website, and this time with your own domain name (for example www.miguelgutierrez.com), and you can structure it yourself, add and remove things, expose your photographic portfolio, perhaps show your prices , allow any interested person to contact you, and things like that. We are already entering a decent professional level. Here you have many advantages, however, most services of this type have some drawbacks. I tell you this because I have personally spent half my life creating websites and I have been able to try many of these services:
- A lot of headaches at the technical level. They give you access to a server to host your website, but you have to find a life to mess with the technical issues, from designing the website (or spending money to buy a ready-made design), to connecting all the technical elements that come into game (domain name, DNS, SSL certificate, installation of content manager and plugins, etc.). If you are the typical computer-loving user or experienced programmer, this would be heaven for you, but for someone who has no experience in designing and managing web pages, managing all this can be crazy.
- Most of these services (GoDaddy, Bluehost, which I came to recommend on occasion, among others) are designed for the Anglo-Saxon market. They offer a translated version of their services that many times, for us Spanish-speaking users, work regularly or show “badly translated” things.
- Almost all services of this type are “generic”. They are designed for anyone, in general, who wants to have a web page: you are a painter, a lawyer, or the owner of a butcher shop. The problem with this is that specialization is lost. A photographer’s website has some particularities and technical needs that are different from those of a lawyer’s or plumber’s website. If to create my website as a photographer I have to choose between a generic platform, designed to host any kind of website, and another specialized one, conceived, assembled and “polished” especially to host and serve photographer websites, I am sure that I would go to the platform for photographers.
Websites for photographers: This is my favorite option! Here we talk about services or platforms that allow you to create your own photographer website. Like everything in life, this option will also have imperfections, but compared to the previous alternatives, this option is undoubtedly the most successful from my point of view, due to the following:
- You have your photographer website with your own domain name.
- You have complete control over the structure and content of the website.
- You forget about having to deal with technical bullshit. The service provider itself is responsible for you, behind the scenes, of managing all the technical mess.
- The platform itself is made exclusively for photographers. This takes away one enorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr amount of work. Everything on your website, by default, will be designed for the photographic industry. To give you a very graphic example, not all platforms offer it but some (very few) even allow you to make the photos you upload to your gallery or portfolio on your website available for sale. Yes!!! That anyone who comes across your website and is interested in a photograph in your portfolio can hit a button and pay to obtain a digital copy of your photograph. And you would have this on your “default” website, without having to worry about the technical complications that would normally be associated with offering something like this.
So… what is the best platform to create a website for photographers? (My opinion)
Within this last category of platforms that…