If you are a photographer like me, you might want to display your photos in some kind of online portfolio. Here are my ideas..and results.
First I googled around for suitable services. I can tell you that the opinions on available leading services differ a lot. Photo hosting sites have various features, some features are liked by some people and disliked by others. Photo hosting sites tend to evolve and add new features, so reading a forum thread posted 6 months ago might not give a fair view of the service in question.
Background
I've had my photos posted at fotosidan.se for a while, but see a great limitation when it comes to allowed sizes, maximum uploads etc. fotosidan.se is strictly Swedish so it might not be an alternative for you anyhow.
What I was looking for
Basically, I wanted this:
- Great design and layout, and the option to customize
- Unlimited, or acceptable limit, when it comes to file size and storage
- Acceptable service fees (yes, I'm an amateur too..thight budget)
- SEO friendly website, because I do want people to find my site via Google
- The option to hook up my own domain name to the site
- Not a "must have", but built in features to sell photos and prints would be neat
The selection
I read about 10-20 forum threads, and visited some of the top ranked services and read about their features. Finally the list consisted of:
- SmugMug
- ExposureManager
- Zenfolio
Maybe you would have made a different choice but price, features, and customer satisfaction made my sign up for a free trial with Zenfolio. And after playing around for two days, I decided to go for their premium account. It's $100 a year, but then again they cover everything I put on my wanted list (see above)! Two weeks after trial sign up (14 day trial) I got the premium account and hooked up own domain to the site.
Please take a look at the result at lofvenphotos.com and let me know what you think. And if you want to check out Zenfolio by yourself ( I recommed the free trial) please go to Zenfolio.