Having a portfolio as a photographer to hand out to clients or as a digital form boosts your chances of generating work. If potential clients can view your examples they can get inspired as to what they require, and they can also use this to judge your capability to produce good quality images for them. Having a portfolio online is also useful as this day in age everything is almost digital, being able to quickly look up someones work can be important. They will be able to view and make a decision on whether they want to use you. Being selective on the images you choose to display is also very important. Having a good body of images rather than a hundred of "ok" sort of images will work better clients don't want to be looking through so many "ok" images. This can put a viewer off having a selected few that are excellent will increase your chance of getting the work.
What portfolio do I want to create & how can I promote myself?
The portfolio I want to create is a portraiture one, this is where my strengths lie and also what I want to make a career out of. My passion is creating portraits of children I like the innocence they bring to the image they are so raw and natural and that's what I love capturing. Making a career in photography can be challenging as there is so much competition out there, having your own style and being unique does again boost your talent to be noticed. As a photographer promoting yourself is very important too, you want people to know about you, know what you do and know your business. The easiest way to do this is social media, nearly everybody is on social media one form or more so targeting this audience is perfect. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Flickr are all good networks to promote yourself on, try to be current with the posting of recent shoots or discounts you may be offering or just a reminder of the actual business. This will help keep your name in the media and potentially generate more custom. Having business cards to hand or leaflets to leave in community centers, doctors, or playgroups is another way to advertise your business services. Thinking of the audience you are targeting and then thinking where these people go will help you think of the places you can promote. On each social media site having links to my other sites can help too someone might not have Facebook but has Instagram so their friend could share the link on Instagram and vice verse having the link to my website is important this is where clients can view your digital portfolio and get to know what you as a photographer are about.
Website building sites to look at.
Looking at the building your own website means researching the ones available to see if the one chose is right for you. Things to look for are is the builder easy to use? Do you get a free domain name or does a fee apply? If so how much? Do they provide templates for you to use or do you build it from scratch?
5 Best Website Builders of 2016
A guide to website building software and a list of the top website builders that are easy to learn & use for beginners.
There are many different website builders you can use to make your own website. The most professional choice is WordPress. It is our recommended platform as WordPress gives you complete control & powerful functionality. However, WordPress is far more difficult to learn & may not be the best choice for beginners. In our how to make a website guide, we recommend using Wix. However, there are many commercial website builders out there which can also make site building a little easier and faster. If you are planning to build your own website, you will need to decide on which website builder best fits your requirements.
The Best Site Builders at a Glance
SiteBuilder.com
Best for Easily Creating & Managing Your Own Website
www.sitebuilder.com is one of the simplest, most intuitive site builders on the market. They make it easy for anyone to build and publish their own website without having to be a computer whiz. Their powerful site builder offers all the tools you need to get your small business website up and running, including a basic eCommerce store as well. They also offer one of the largest selections of pre-made templates so you can always find that perfect design. They do offer a free plan without a custom domain name, although we would highly recommend choosing a paid plan to unlock all their professional features.
Recommended for:
- Beginners
- Simple websites
- Small business sites
- Personal sites
- Startups
Wix.com
Best for Small Business Websites & Full Customization
www.wix.com offers one of the best website builders on the market. Wix is a bit more complex than SiteBuilder, but offers more advanced features and includes a better eCommerce platform for selling online. They also have numerous templates with over 70 different categories to choose from. Their user-friendly drag and drop site builder is intuitive and lets you fully customize your website. Wix is great for beginners who want a managed, easy solution to make their own website. Wix is also one of the largest website builders with over 63 million users world wide. You can start Wix for free, but will most likely need to upgrade to their paid plans.
Recommended for:
- Beginners
- Small business sites
- eCommerce
- Personal sites
- Fully customizable sites
Weebly.com
Best for Professional Websites with eCommerce
www.weebly.com is a popular choice for making your own eCommerce website. Their website builder feels a bit more challenging and less intuitive than SiteBuilder or Wix, but does offer great eCommerce plans for businesses. They are a popular choice for those who are looking to sell their products/services online. Their business plan is pricey at, but does offer everything you need to setup a professional online store. Weebly is easy to sign up with and has a relatively straight forward process once you get the knack of it. Unfortunately, they only have a very limited number of themes to choose from – approximately 30 at the time of this writing.
Recommended for:
- eCommerce
- Small business sites
- Personal sites
SquareSpace.com
Best for Creative Businesses & Portfolio Type Websites
www.squarespace.com is a website builder geared towards anyone in a creative profession. Squarespace has a lot of great website templates for photographers, artists, restaurants, musicians, weddings, and bloggers. Their designs are typically simple, yet elegant and very visual with large images. Like Weebly, their templates are less customizable, but do include clean URLs and truly responsive designed templates. You can start a 2 weeks free trial with no credit card required, but will need to upgrade to a paid plan at the end. Squarespace also has a great community knowledge base where you can ask questions and get help on how to use their website builder.
Recommended for:
- Personal sites
- Small business sites
- Creative professions
- Large, visual designs
WordPress.org
The Best Website Builder
Last, but not least, is WordPress. While technically a CMS, WordPress is still our top choice for building a website. It’s used not only by beginners, but by professionals as well. WordPress is such a powerful platform & has so many features, that most web designers & developers love to use it. In fact, 1/4 of all websites on the internet are now built with WordPress. It’s the industry standard for a website building platform. Unfortunately, it is more complex and has a much steeper learning curve than the others. WordPress is free, although you will need to pay for a domain and web hosting (which can come close to the same price as the others above). If you’re tech savvy, WordPress is a great choice.
Recommended for:
- All types of sites
- Small business sites
- eCommerce
- Personal sites
- Tech savvy users
I have chosen Wix to build my website its quite straight forward to use I can either create my own page from scratch or opt to use a live website and change the fonts, images, colours etc to give your own personalised touch. The next step I need to take is to go through all my images I have to edit them down to pick the ones I want to add to my website. The wix plan which enables you to have your own domain name have the website without wix adverts will cost £130 for 2 years. I will choose to have the free domain name and look into paying for the paid plan once the business picks up and I'm generating some income.
Looking at other portrait photographers websites to see how the lay out their website, and they include.
Ruth Joy - http://ruthjoyphotography.com/
Ruths website is quite simple in the lay out she has her logo at the top of the page with her business name underneath, her logo is then repeated in the background as a nuetral colour. Her images are played on a slidshow in the middle of the site, bright bold images of the wedding services she has photographed. These catch your eye and you are drawn to look at her other work. She has chose 6 headlines for the viewer to click on which are;
About - Gives you a short description about her and what she does and why. This is good to have on your own website as it gives the clients a little background about yourself, also gives you a little connection so they feel comfortable with you before they meet you.
Galleries - She has her recent works available to view so you get a feel and inspiration for the sort of images you want yourself. She has chosen some beautiful images which make you fall in love with her work and capability. She definitely sells her business services to you from her galleries.
Prices & products - Gives you the package prices she offers and what is included, she also has prices of her photobox services she offers too. Giving you separate packages and different prices enables the clients to choose which best suits there budgets.
Blog - Ruth has decided to include the blog in her headline menu, this gives you a look at her more recent works and description of how the shoots went, where they taken, what she used etc. This gives the clients an insight of her more recent works and what she is producing, again it gives more confidence as a potential client into trusting her to capture your special moment.
Contact us - Gives the contact details to book your sessions or to ask any questions. Important to include for your customers and vital for future work. She gives you the chance to provide a short description about yourself and what you question is. Then she will get back to you.
Clients - This is an online album available for her clients which they sign into to view there images in the gallery for only them. Here they can choose there images they require from Ruth and also have the album to hand to show friends and family.
Her website is very easy to use and quite visual, easy to navigate and includes the the information you need as the potential customer. The colours she has chosen for the website is light pastel colours with her images bright and bold which catch the eye. She has a business facebook page which gives the link to it on the website.
White Cloud Days - http://www.whiteclouddays.co.uk/
White cloud days photography page isn't what I would call quite successful into selling themselves to the potential client. The website is quite basic and not thought about with the layout and design. They have one main image in the centre of the page with the setup of the studio space. At the top of the page he has:
"White Cloud Days - Nottingham based photographers - 01159 078622 "
The font is quite small and in a light grey Its not very prominent and doesn't stand out. The website has 5 menu tabs which are:
Home - This is the home page of the website the layout isn't very good and looking at the website with this as the first page I am more inclined to close the page and look elsewhere. They also include messages from previous customers with there feedback.
About - In the about dropdown they go into about where they are based their studio facilities which has brilliant huge windows to take advantage of the natural light. They describe the transport roots in which you can get there, also to tell you that they are photographers not sales people. Further down the page there is an image of the photography with a brief paragraph about himself.
Gallery - In the gallery there is only 9 images and not what I would display being there is only the 9 images, selecting 9 that are going to sell your services would of been better. Me myself looking for a family photographer I wouldn't have much faith in selecting these that I would get the best images. The images are pieced together in a large rectangle with images in different sizes within the rectangle. They don't give you many images to look at all which disappoints you.
Pricing - On their pricing page they give you breakdowns of the prices they offer for canvases, prints, posters and acrylic. They also offer gift packages which gives you the description of what you will receive for the price. His pricing is very expensive and way above what I would say is average, also the other family photographers don't charge as much as them. Which leads me to believe he over prices the costings. One image on a disc costs £50 and one 6x4 image costs £20! The quality of images he shows on the website does not reflect the prices they as a company charge.
Contact - The contact page allows you to send a message of enquiry to them, they also give you their email address, work address and phone number. They also include a map for you to look at the roots to take when traveling to them which is a plus on the website.
The website gives the social media links at the foot of the page, clicking on the links I seen that his facebook page is a lot more updated than the website. He has more recent images which show them as more competent photographers. The facebook page is far more better than his website with the quality of images, competitions he promotes on there and also information about them as a company. His website is easy to use and straightforward, with simple layouts. Having a simple layout and straightforward easy to use website doesn't mean its best. In this instance it was the wrong choice, you as the potential client are not drawn into his website or his images.
Nottingham Family Portraits - http://www.nottinghamfamilyportraits.com/
Nottingham family portraits base promote their website with family, the last site was a bit structured into the studio side of things this reflected by their choice of images displayed on the main page. But this website is nicely presented, they have a large image on the main page which they have animated to change to the next image by a mosaic design. There menu selections are based at the top of the page on the right hand side, their logo and name is displayed on the left hand side. As you move down their page the have also included a link for their blog, and comments from recent customers. On the foot of their page they have included the social media links, a good thing to include as most people are very digital and modern in the way they work and operate so a majority of customers will be on social media. They have 5 menu tabs with multiple sub title tabs which you can select.
Home - This brings you to the main page which you navigate to your desired page.
Portfolio - The portfolio page has a number subtitles for baby, Family, pets, events, pregnancy and wedding. Their images they have selected are good choices a few on there look a little like family snapshots but their page looks professional. If you click on the image for the specified category they give you a brief description of what that category is about where the shoots are taken and ideas so for example if you click on the wedding the ideas they give you are:
reportage
natural
informal
story telling
This is a clever idea to get you thinking about the sort of images you want for yourself, also shows what they are capable of doing.
Info - This gives you sub headings to choose from, information on the photographer, their services, portrait pricing and also your questions answered.
Blog - They have their blog on the page which you can ask any question on there for them to get back to you. And there is also feedback from customers on their blog.
Contact - Contact information gives you the map to see their location, address, phone numbers, email address and where in the uk they travel to go do the shoots.
The website is thought through and has all the information you might require, They show a range of photography to show you what they provide and do. There pricing is a little steep but it depends on what they think is acceptable for their time and effort. As I am new to setting up my business and want to be affordable and professional my prices wont be starting as high as the other websites and photographers I have been looking at. I think this might also help me to generate more business being cheaper than your average professional family photographer.
Claire Stubbs Photography - https://clairestubbsphotography.co.uk/
Claire is a local portrait photographer about 15 mins away from myself. Her website has her logo and name in the centre of the page with an image of a baby underneath. Further down the page is her facebook business page link with recent comments along with it. On the front page is also her contact details and address. Her prices are averagely priced for the work she produces, she also offers cheaper prices for weekday shoots and prices go up slightly on the weekends. Pricing is added in for prints and canvas. Her website is straightforward to use, noting too elaborate and with a variety of images for you to view.
She has links for google plus, facebook and twitter.
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