Making Your Photography Website

tipssquarespace

2 Mar

Having recently made my own photography website, I’ll share some tips on how to do it quickly, easily, and effectively. The main points I’ll cover are:

Seeking inspiration
Planning your content
Deciding on a domain name
Choosing a platform (spoiler: I recommend Squarespace)
Building your site
Setting it live

Let’s get into it.

Seeking Inspiration

Look at other photographers’ sites and ask yourself what you like or dislike about the look, feel, and user experience of their sites. At this stage, you probably already follow a bunch of different photographers on YouTube, Instagram, and so on. If they have websites – which they probably do – start there, and take notes. I’m a big fan of Roman Fox and James Popsys, for example, and I love their sites. You’ll notice that my site takes inspiration from both, especially in terms of layout and the clean, minimal style.

Planning Your Content

Aside from your photography, what will you say on your site? In other words, what will you say on your Home page (if anything at all), on your About Me page, or even on your Contact page? It’s worth thinking about these things before you start setting up a template, so that when you are ready to build the site, you can focus on the layout and how it looks without having to worry about writing copy at the same time. Quick copywriting tip: write more than you need. It’s easier to reduce your word count than it is to scale it up.

Deciding on a Domain Name

This is your URL, which is essentially your online brand or identity. Mine is just my name, because I plan to use this site as a copywriting portfolio as well as for photography (eventually) so I wanted something more generic. This is your opportunity to get creative and think of something memorable. Take your time on this, and consider asking friends and family for feedback on whatever you’ve chosen. You’ll also need to make sure that the domain is available, either by typing it into your browser’s address bar and seeing if a site exists under that URL, or by checking it on a domain vendor like GoDaddy – or Blacknight if you’re in Ireland. That said, I would recommend purchasing your domain directly from the platform you decide to build your site on. This will save you the hassle of trying to link the domain vendor to the site builder. Squarespace makes this particularly easy!

Choosing a Platform

Common examples of websites that build websites* include Wix, WordPress, and Squarespace. My site here is built on Squarespace, and I couldn’t recommend it more highly. As a result, this blog post will admittedly centre primarily around Squarespace.

* And yes, I’m quoting Squarespace’s 2023 Superbowl ad – see below

Building Your Site

Choose a template that works for your vision, and start dropping in your content. Once you have your copy, photos, and domain name ready to go, it’s time to build your site. Most of these site-building platforms will have a range of template options, and Squarespace even organises them according to purpose – so start with the Portfolio or Photography option. Remember that the template is just the starting point; you can customise colours, fonts, and layout later. Think of it like decorating a room: the walls may be white at first, but you can paint ‘em blue in no time.

This is why it’s important to have prepared your copy and content in advance – at this stage, you want to be able to focus on the aesthetics, without having to think about what to say. One thing at a time, folks. Keep your word count low, keep your photos high-res*, and remember that it can all be updated later. Done is better than perfect.

*But also a reasonably small file size so that they load quickly, that’s pretty important.

Setting it Live

When you’re ready to go, set it live. I’ll say this again: done is better than perfect – the most important thing is to get it online. Realistically, if you’re reading this, you probably don’t have a massive following yet, so the number of people visiting your site will be pretty low at first. That’s not necessarily a bad thing – it means you can tweak it over time without people actually really noticing. That said, small updates are fine, but you’ll want to settle on a design and layout sooner rather than later.

That’s it

Congratulations, you have your own photography website! That wasn’t too hard, was it? Now go forth and photograph, and best of luck with your new site.

Oh and please feel free to share this article if you found it useful!