I’ve never been sure if i should have a website dedicated to showing off my photography, i use flickr and Viewbug to show some of my work but i don’t pay, by choice, for the privilege. In fact i object strenuously to having to pay for a website because i dont think i actually use them to their best advantage. I think my money is used in better ways, like for food, than hosting a website i forget to post on. I have had several attempts at building a website on different platforms, wordpress, wix but i never can make my mind up how they are supposed to look, which coloured background is the best, which font and dont get me started on Google Analytics! How do you use it?
My attempt on Wix was, i think, my best effort to date but i had to pay for the website and the domain name, the first year was cheep, the second year was not, i designed the thing and then forgot to post anything on it, so it went. WordPress is free but you need to pay for a domain name, I’ve made a couple of different websites but they got forgotten because of ‘life’. It makes me wonder, do i really need my own website, well actually i do and i need to get it seen by people and shared about. What’s the difference this time you may ask, well two things really, the first is that i have more time to myself now, my Mum passed away in December last year and having nursed her through cancer i now have so much time on my hands, the second is, I’ve found i have access to a FREE website builder, yes FREE and it’s the bees knees!
I use Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom and have a photography subscription which allows myself and my aspiring artist daughter use of lots of different Adobe programs for our art. In the package is Adobe Portfolio, its free and you can get a domain name through namecheap where i managed to get a .com domain name for something silly like £8 a year. Its a lovely website builder, easy to use but its quite limited which is actually a good thing for me, i dont get bogged down in trying to decide which looks best for my site. I am building it slowly, i have to decide which photos are good enough to be shown and that is hard! I also find it difficult with all of the metadata, keywords, long keywords etc its so time consuming but i am making myself do it this time.
This amazing FREE website is www.spikeymousephotography.com and i am really quite proud of my efforts so far. If you would be so kind as to go and look through it yourself and leave a comment and share i would be very grateful, thank you. My answer then is a resounding YES i need a website, just as long as its FREE!
Spikey Mouse Photography Blog 