Have an Actual Website!

To have a passion like photography is a wonderful thing. It is an outlet for creativity, challenge and a source of pride with your work pays off. But we as humans are social beings. This has maybe never been as obvious as it is today with the advent of social media and social networking websites. Being on Twitter and Facebook becomes more and more important everyday. So does this mean you can disregard having a website or blog? No!


Have a Home Base
It is a necessity to have a home base where someone can find information about you. I regularly browse the internet looking for amazing photos for inspiration and enjoyment. Nothing is more frustrating than when I try to locate the photographer and I have to spend time looking for the Twitter page, Facebook page and photo gallery. They should all be in located in one place or people will simply give up and move on.

It's about the Person
Once I find a beautiful image I want to know more. Art is wonderful, but it's really about the people behind the art, it's always been that way. For as long as art as been around people have wanted to know the story behind it, the person behind it. Once we learn about that story and that person the art becomes more personal. Make sure your website has personal information that people can relate to. Include information about the photograph and tell the story. If it is only the photos, people will see them, be inspired and move on. If you give them the context of the photo, they will come back for more.


Blog, keep it current
The last thing that I look for is recent activity. If someone just has a photo gallery it's sometimes hard to tell if the photographs are from last week or last year. A lot of the time I'm looking for photographers where I can follow their work. But there is no point in following their work if there is nothing to follow. A blog can simply be the story of the person and the photography. But it keeps the followers coming back and gives context to the images.


Conclusion
Don't be intimidated by the thought of building your own website. It's not like it used to be... You can create a free blog with up to 10 additional pages for free on Blogger.com.  If you want more, my next recommendation is SquareSpace.com. Then finally if you want a lot of customization you can check out WordPress.org. The first two are very simply and can be set up in minutes. Then you can customize over time. The big thing to remember here is we want to be able to find all of your information in one place. Tell us about yourself and your photography. Show us where your Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and photo gallery is. Just make it easy to follow your work!