Photographers' websites

[TonyHoward]

I wondered whether anyone could provide some advice regarding setting up a personal website. I would like to establish one essentially to use as an accessible portfolio.

[Photo Imaging]

Hello,
We are able to set up websites with galleries or portfolios,
give us a call if you want more info.

Joan

[Marian J]

That is something that I am hoping to do in the not too distant future too, and am relatively clueless about it. Might be in touch Joan :)

Marian

[Pearl]

I don't use them but a lot of photographers use http://www.clikpic.com/ I use a similar system - its cheap, easy to set up and you have full control of content without having to pay anyone to make changes

Pearl

[TonyHoward]

Thanks Pearl, that's really helpful. Sites look good and cost is very reasonable. Thanks too to Joan. Will be in touch.

Tony

[Chris Flat Ant]

Hi Tony,

You have many options as regards to setting up a personal web site. Below I have listed three:

1) A majority of people start with free options such as Flickr. Flickr Basic (free) allows you to upload upto 100mb of images a month - this can be a lot of photographs if you resize them appropriately before upload. If you wish to upload unlimited amount of photographs per month, there is a Pro option at around $24.95 (around £18 ?) per year. There is no limit on disk space on either the Basic or Pro.

Another very good web site is SmugMug. This is slightly more expensive per year but you can customise the 'look' of your site a bit more http://www.smugmug.com/. The only downside to both these sites is you cannot have your own domain name. You would access 'your' site via a url such as www.flickr.com/tonyhoward/

2) Use a service such as ClikPic which was mentioned above. The service is very similar to what you would get from Flickr/SmugMug, but the web site is accessible at your own domain ie. www.tonyhoward.co.uk . This looks much more professional. The design of the site can be customised to some degree, although all ClicPic sites look similar. The up and down side of this service is cost. On the up side its very cheap to get up and running. The down side is the more photos you wish to upload, the more it will cost you. You never 'own' the web site either so you will have to pay the monthly fees as long as you wish to show your photos.

I will be working with Welshot Imaging over the next few months to develop a similar more cost effective option to ClicPic for Academy Members.

3) Bespoke. Initially the most expensive option to setup, however cost will depend on features required. Your site would be customised to your liking with an unique design to you. You would own the web site, and the only 'on going' fees would be your yearly domain name renewal (around £10) and web site hosting (around £50 a year would give you the ability to upload 20,000 images).

Another bespoke option would be to combine a custom design with Flickr. Using Flickr's service to upload and store photos you would only need a design created, and you could use Flickr to manage your web site. This would make a bespoke web site cheaper to setup, and cheaper to keep up and running. Domain name (£10) + Flickr Pro service (£18) + cheap hosting (£12) per year.

Hope that helps a little :)

[TonyHoward]

Really helpful, thanks Chris

[JohnTudor]

This is something that's free and easy to use http://www.aminus3.com it's really a blog, but I use it on my website www.johntudor.net (bottom right)