Photographers Website Host

Free Photographers Website Host

Of course, the best things on the Internet are free, and it's entirely possible for a photographer to have a very professional-looking website at little or no cost. The one drawback to these sites is that they are almost all ad-supported, but especially at the beginning of a photographer's career this may be a sacrifice worth making.

Picasa Web Albums

Although it started as a little independent company, Picasa was soon gobbled up by Google and for a while was the premiere photographers website host on the web. It pioneered the techniques of easy uploading for users, and also made it very easy to organize the photos using the familiar "album" metaphor. As of 2006 Picasa also joined the Web 2.0 convention of meta-tagging, allowing that feature along with video uploads and the ability to order prints.

This last feature, however, is fairly limited, and as a result Picasa is not the best choice for a photographers website host.

Flickr: Social Media Meets Pro Photography

Flickr took all of the advantages of Picasa's user interface and combined it with the social media features of sites such as MySpace and Facebook. Communities such as the "365" group, photographers who upload a self-portrait every day, share and review each others' work. Flickr also has many different ways to order prints from the site, ranging from simply 4x6's to large poster-size prints. Most of all, this site is not run with very many ads – and most of the ones that are there are relevant to photographic needs.

One of the limitations of Flickr, however, is that there are only 200 pictures allowed before a person has to buy a professional account. Also, while the social aspects are very useful, the site is not aimed towards professional photographers actually selling their prints, and as a result the majority of the people there are actually amateur photographers.

Model Networking Sites

Photographers who specialize in the human form may want to register and use sites such as Model Mayhem and One Model Place as their photographers website host. Like Flickr, there are only a small number of photos allowed before the site requires that a photographer purchase a professional account. However, the advantage of these sites are that they are not only for photographers – agencies and models also have profiles, and the networking possibilities are immense. While uploading is very simple, there are not many options for categorizing photos without a large amount of HTML and customizing work.

Roll Your Own: Hosting Photos on a Server

At some point, any photographer is going to run into the limits of any commercial hosting solution designed to please a large group of people. While it takes more labor in terms of setting up the files and configurations, a good solution may be to simply rent space on a server and install one of many different photo gallery packages. Many of these have plug-ins that will enable precise control over who can see what, how to order prints, leave comments, send out notifications, etc.

Gallery 2

Probably the most popular solution, Gallery was an open-source project that is now in its second incarnation (Gallery 2). The resulting package is amazingly versatile: automatic thumbnails, image resizing, rotation, print ordering, captioning, searching, tagging, and complete control over albums. Permissions can be set on an individual basis, and users can be given the power to create and upload their own images and create their own galleries. Essentially, this package has all the features necessary to run your own private Flickr site.

Coppermine

Another popular free image program is Coppermine. While not quite as feature rich as Gallery2, it is also much easier to configure and set up. Most of the necessary options are included, however, and the simplicity of it makes it a very strong competitor with Gallery2, if two freeware programs can be said to compete.

In the end, each photographer's needs are as individual as their vision, and the perfect host for their work is sure to be available in the vast number of choices available on the web.