# What site do you use to display photos?



## NAKA (Jan 2, 2014)

What do you find is the best place to display your most current work? I currently have a website and use a wordpress blog for my more frequent posts. I think I'm looking for an alternative as wordpress seems to have a limited audience.


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## SnappingShark (Jan 2, 2014)

Flickr and sometimes on my blog, but that's mostly writing


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## Overread (Jan 2, 2014)

Depends somewhat:

Flickr - for my "serious" photos or at least ones I'm not ashamed of tanking. I also make use of the social networking aspects there to watch other interesting photographers and from time to time take part of ask questions in groups.
I totally ignore the whole competition side of things and the competition/voting/awards groups (there are a couple worth taking part in but the vast majority are just about plastering your photo comments with big glittery prizes ) 

Photobucket - for everything else including screenshots and the like. Basically photos that are not serious or which are not mine (eg uploading edits of anothers work to show them) or things which are not even photos.


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## NAKA (Jan 2, 2014)

Thanks for the responses guys. I find in my circles that Facebook is being used more and more (great for interacting with clients, both old and new) but I'm not sure I want to make the leap quite yet. Flickr seems promising.


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## KmH (Jan 2, 2014)

For a retail photography business, a commercial photography business, a fine art photography business, or an editorial photography business?

For a retail photography business the best place to display your best work is in the same room you use to show your clients proofs of the photographs you want to sell them.

Having your best photographs matted and framed, on matte, glossy, metallic papers, as standouts, as Gallery wrapped canvas, on acrylic, on metal, in lay=flat albums, etc allows you to up sell.

Online, nothing beats a dedicated professionally made web site, however today social media has to be a part of your marketing.
To that end I highly recommend these 2 books :
Photography Business Secrets: The Savvy Photographer's Guide to Sales, Marketing, and More
Going Pro: How to Make the Leap from Aspiring to Professional Photographer


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## Overread (Jan 2, 2014)

Ah I completely missed that this was in shop talk! 

I'd say you certainly want your own website - somewhere simple to remember that people can easily find on google which can showcase your best photographs. You might maintain a professional flickr or other supporting blog* to display your work in general both professional and your own shooting.

You may also find it beneficial to have a separate account for your family/persona/casual snaps and the like. Just so you can be a bad photographer without your clients getting worried. 

Photobucket is important these days as well; however how you use it is up to you. You can simply use it as a point of contact and to allow you to professionally keep in contact with previous clients or you can make it a key part of your marketing and online exposure setup. Whatever happens its oft best to keep things professional - don't start friending all your clients. 

* blogs can be great, but don't start one unless you're going to update it regularly with good content. A dead blog is just a waste and nothing is worse than a professional site with openly displayed "dead" features (makes people think the company is in troubled waters).


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## GlennT (Jan 2, 2014)

My photography is very hobby/family oriented.  For years, I had a website running either WordPress or Joomla, with Menalto Gallery2 for the photos.  

This summer I switched to SmugMug and couldn't be happier.  The Lightroom plugin is the best I've seen.  Most of my galleries are within a password protected gallery, but I have smart galleries that pull my favorites out by keyword, allowing me to have those visible without a password.  You can find all cub scout photos with a search, or all pics of a child by name, etc... I sometimes create a unlisted gallery in much the same way, for simplified sharing.  If a parent wants to see pics of their kid, I can create a gallery for that with a separate password.

Also, when I change exif data, such as keywords, comments, or copyright, I can sync those changes without re-loading the entire image; perhaps my favorite feature.

You can do some blog like pages, either on the main page o,r separately.  You can insert text blocks, images displayed at various sizes and positions.  I haven't done much with it, but would have zero issues throwing up a page narrating our last camping trip right now.

Their system does an excellent job resizing images to fit the user's display, particularly for mobile devices.  If you rotate the device, the size changes.  This optimization not only maximizes the images quality and fit on the screen, I feel it improves the overall experience.

They also give you a few options for how images are displayed.  I've come to like the journal style that allows guests to scroll through vs. Clicking through.  You can also opt for square thumbnails.

The SEO is touted as being very good.  That wasn't a huge concern for me, but if properly leveraged, it can help get your images into search engines and ranked higher. Their commerce features looked decent as well, but my plan does not have that.  The Pro plan is cheaper than my old hosting plan.  I kept the custom URL, which was a requirement of mine.

I don't like that the SmugMug branding shows up in various places.  I don't know if that is addressed in the higher plans or not.  I'm OK with it, but might be less OK if my site was a pro portfolio.

When I first started out and was dumping GB after GB of photos on there, it started to take longer for the resizes to build, but it wasn't bad.  I wasn't surprised to encounter what I perceived as CPU throttling from my abnormally high usage.  We're talking about hours upon hours of uploading.

I love that I don't have to deal with site maintenance or customizations anymore, yet I have a fair amount or power and flexibility.  

Page setup and customizations are pretty straightforward.  No real complaints there, but it of course took some trial and error.

They offer a free 30 day trial, and I don't believe it required a credit card or any sort of commitment.

This site is on the $60 per year Power user plan.
www.tjapkes.com

FWIW, I also post on Flickr and Facebook for the social aspect.  Facebook's evolving terms scare me some, so I don't post high res shots there anymore.


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## LarryLomona (Jan 2, 2014)

Flickr for me.


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## NAKA (Jan 2, 2014)

Flickr seems the place to go


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## AceCo55 (Jan 3, 2014)

NAKA said:


> Flickr seems the place to go



Well based on a pretty limited survey that left out quite a few photography hosting websites ... :er:
But if you are happy with Flickr, go for it. You'll never know if is the *best *one though!!!!  

Some other places for you to research ... just in case you are not 100% certain:
List of photo-sharing websites - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Top 15 Most Popular Image Hosting Websites
Online Image Hosting Review 2014 | Best Online Photo Hosting | Picture Hosting - TopTenREVIEWS


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## shipshooter (Jan 3, 2014)

Hello again forum members . 2nd post on site.
I was using The. 500px website before I realized the "buddy system" of  you scratch my back, i scratch your back was being used.  
Just my 2 cents.  Flickr now.   Thanks


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## NAKA (Jan 3, 2014)

shipshooter said:


> Hello again forum members . 2nd post on site.
> I was using The. 500px website before I realized the "buddy system" of  you scratch my back, i scratch your back was being used.
> Just my 2 cents.  Flickr now.   Thanks



What's this buddy system? Members are forming 'alliances' to get their photo's ranked higher?


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## The_Traveler (Jan 3, 2014)

I use Photobucket or Imageshack for pictures that aren't loaded on my own Zenfolio site


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## D-B-J (Jan 3, 2014)

Overread said:


> Depends somewhat:
> 
> Flickr - for my "serious" photos or at least ones I'm not ashamed of tanking. I also make use of the social networking aspects there to watch other interesting photographers and from time to time take part of ask questions in groups.
> I totally ignore the whole competition side of things and the competition/voting/awards groups (there are a couple worth taking part in but the vast majority are just about plastering your photo comments with big glittery prizes )
> ...



This is what I do as well.

Jake


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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