Agreeing with the "get a domain name" crowd (of one).
Think of high-street shops. Have you seen those dodgy shops that have a hastily printed banner hanging over the shop sign with a load of either imitation or other goods of dubious quality being sold? That's what having a website with google pages/geocities/etc reminds me of. Yes, it's a valid way of selling yourself, but it's not as flexible and you send across the message as being somewhat of an amateur.
Whereas if you take the time to design your own website (I realise that this is the more difficult option) and register your own domain name you get not only the peace of mind that it's entirely yours and you have full control over it, but also it adds credibility to your brand. If I were a customer and I came across a photographer who had hosted their portfolio with google, I wouldn't necessarily dismiss him out of hand, but I'd have a niggling doubt at the back of my mind that this person was too lazy to set up a proper website and went with a pre-built template and stuff.
oneandone.co.uk also do reasonable website deals and hosting. Though I have not used them for a while so things may have changed.
If you want help designing your website from a technical/standards point of view, I can give you some pointers:
- Avoid the use of excessive ********** and Flash. It will annoy people with flash blockers and those who have disabled JS globally and enable it on a case-by-case basis. You do NOT want your site to be dependant on a technology that people have to enable to see it.
- Use standards-based design. Check out http://alistapart.com/ for some very useful articles on good design practices. CSS, DIVs and lightweight separation of content from style are the in thing these days. I suggest you use it.
- Make your site clear to navigate but without cluttering the navigation interface. Instead of presenting all your categories on the front page, create several subcategories.
- I'd even say get rid of the navbar and make, say a 4x3 or something grid of sample photos for each category and put the category name beneath them. This is much more user-friendly and easier on the eye. The human brain works with images FAR better than text.
- In the gallery pages themselves, it's ok to include text links back to the homepage and other galleries. Using images there can distract the user or confuse them.
I hope this helped a little - if you have any questions, feel free to PM me. If anyone has anything to add or if you want to shout at me for being a colossal retard, feel free to do so also!