starting a photography website

[Lycoming]

I am interested in making a website to post my photography pictures on, and for a little project too. For $10 for a domain name, why not, right?

Anyways, I'm not sure if what I want is a blog site, or a 'regular' website...I just want to post my photos and make a few galleries, and be able to show the website off to friends, etc. I have read up on blog but I don't know if they are capable of what I want. On the flip side I have Dreamweaver but I would have to teach myself how to write a website if I go that route; making the project have a much higher activation energy.

Do you have a website that you post pictures on? What method do you use? Would a Flickr account be my best option, in the end?
Thanks for any advice!

[cipher]

If you are simply looking for a place to share pictures, there are a number of options out there that cost less than web-hosting. Yes a domain is about $10, but then you have to buy web-hosting somewhere to actually upload your website to and make it available for people to find. Go Daddy offers hosting for about $7/month or so.

One route is the aforementioned web-hosting/domain pairing but as you pointed out, you will need to develop your website (or set up a wordpress site and tweak it to work as a 'regular' website).

A couple of other options:
If you just want to share pictures is Flickr (which you mentioned) which for about $25 can get you a pro account with unlimited upload. It has been the go-to site for photographers for some time and works well, though I personally find the format/look a little... yeah.

If you'd like something a little more refined, but without the option for galleries (at least at the free level, I have not bothered to pay for the 'awesome' level) is 500px. It does allow you to create a portfolio from all the photos you upload. The benefit of this is of the 30 pictures of a bee you uploaded, you can have only the best one in your portfolio that you share (with a slick url like jpatterson.500px.com). With the Awesome account I believe you can use your own domain.

My personal favourite for gallery display is Smugmug. It is $8/month (or $60/year) for the mid-level which gives me pretty much all I want since I am not looking to sell photos (at least through there yet). You can create galleries, slide shows, and customise things to your own look. With the galleries, you can also make some unlisted and/or protect them with passwords (so Aunt Rita will not be able to see the fabulous nude photoshoot you did with the girl down the street, but your buddies at work can.... for example). At this subscription level (there is no free after the trial) you can also point your own domain name to it.

Summary:
Registering a domain name is cheap and makes it easy to point people to pictures. I suggest something you wouldn't mind putting on a business card at some point in the future, just in case.

A personal website gives you pretty much complete control over the look and feel of the site, but you need to know how to set it up. A blog can be pretty quick and simple to set up (if you go with say a wordpress site) that can be hosted on your own website.

Flickr is free/cheap, allows for sets and galleries, but IMO does not really look all that great. As far as I know, you cannot point a registered domain to it.

500px is slick, even at free, but is limited in creating galleries. But does allow for a portfolio to be set up of your uploads. There is an upgrade which allows you to do more and you can point your registered domain to your portfolio

Smugmug is designed with the professional in mind and combines the above two--galleries, portfolio, can point a domain to it--and does it so much better.


My personal choice of the bunch (I have all four) if I were just looking to show off my photos and had the extra bit of money to do it in style: Smugmug. It is simple to use, looks pretty slick, offers options for customization and settings.

I actually started with the blog approach (a free one hosted by wordpress.com) where I put up photos, talked about where and how I took them, and then shared on Facebook and Google+ and anywhere else. From there I linked to my Flickr, then late my Smugmug galleries to show off more than just the few I put into the posts.

[jul]

Have you checked out Shutterfly? Not really a blog site but you can create what they call a "share site" and its great for showing off your pictures. And it's free! Check it out and see what you think.