What I need for a Photographer Website

June 1, 2010

I’m at an in between place as a photographer. I do agree I’ve been a photographer most of my adult life and have only cared more about what I shoot and how I shoot it in the last 1 1/2 years. Also, I was never paid for my work before last December, but now I am picking up more and more gigs. Which brings me to an impasse.

Flickr was originally, for me, a place to share pics of my kids with the family in other parts of the country. Then it became a place where I posted my 365 as I began a yearlong challenge of taking daily self-portraits. As I did this Flickr became so much more social for me. Then I started doing “photoshoots”, which for me has been either 1) concerts or 2) portrait shoots (family, holidays, senior shoots, etc…).

Around that time I was looking for cloud storage. I talked to another photographer, Adam Nollmeyer, who asked “well, don’t you use Flickr”. I said I did. He reminded me that I am already archiving everything I shoot. I realized I was and he was right. He also showed me apps that would batch download straight from my Flickr. I post pretty much everything I shoot (that I edit and keep) to Flickr, but frankly, I need a portfolio site, but I have a few needs.

1) No Flash. We’re really going the way of HTML5 and I want iPad users to see my stuff, so none of these froo froo flash sites for me.

2) I want to be able to sell directly from the site. I also hate ordering prints and shipping so I’d prefer a site from a company that takes a small percentage and prints & s&h for me.

So this is where I am now. I’m ready to move forward with that, but not sure where to begin.

Posted in photography