Web Design for Photographers

Portfolios that load quickly on a phone

A photographer's site is mostly images, and that is the problem. A single full-size export can be 10MB or more. Put 40 of those in a gallery and a visitor on mobile data gives up before the third row loads. We solve it in the build: each image is resized into several widths, served as WebP or AVIF to browsers that support them, and lazy loaded as the visitor scrolls. The phone gets a sharp image sized for its screen; the desktop gets a larger one.

We keep layout steady while images load by reserving space for each photo, which matters for Cumulative Layout Shift, one of Google's Core Web Vitals, where 0.1 or less counts as good. A gallery that jumps around as it loads feels broken, however good the photographs are.

We also cut galleries down. Twenty strong images per genre, sequenced to tell a story, convert better than two hundred. The rest can live in full shoot pages.

How clients search for a photographer

People search by type of shoot and place: "wedding photographer Nottinghamshire", "newborn photographer near me", "corporate headshots Leicester", "product photography for Amazon", "photographer for" followed by a venue name. A single portfolio page cannot rank for all of those. Separate pages for each genre, with written content about your style, what a shoot involves and price guidance, can.

Venue and location pages work especially well for wedding photographers. A post on a wedding at a named venue, with the couple's permission, a short write-up and alt text describing each image, is exactly what couples search for when they have booked that venue. For commercial work, short case write-ups that explain the brief and the result help buyers and give AI assistants a clear sentence to quote about what you do.

We add LocalBusiness schema.org markup with your service area, and set up your Google Business Profile with your best work and genres listed as services. See portfolio website design for how we structure galleries for other creative businesses too.

Copyright, licence metadata and permissions

Under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 you are normally the first owner of copyright in your photographs unless you took them as an employee. Your website should make that clear and make it easy for people to license your work properly rather than lift it.

Google supports this. Its image metadata documentation says you can add the Schema.org license and acquireLicensePage properties, or the IPTC Web Statement of Rights and Licensor URL fields, and Google may then show a Licensable badge in Google Images. IPTC data is embedded in the file, so it travels with the image, but many image tools strip it when they resize. We configure the build so creator, copyright and licence fields survive into the images actually served.

Permissions matter too. Photos of identifiable people are personal data under UK GDPR, so we add a privacy notice that covers how you use client images, and we build portfolio pages around shoots where you have the client's consent to publish. Claims need care as well: the ASA upheld a complaint against a photographer whose site implied membership of a professional body he could not prove.

Enquiries, client galleries and bookings

Most photographers lose hours replying to enquiries that were never going to book. A better form fixes that: date, location or venue, type of shoot, number of people or products, and a budget range. Required fields stay few, but they give you what you need to reply with a proper quote.

For client proofing, downloads and print sales, specialist gallery platforms do the job well. We link or embed your chosen provider so clients move from your site to their gallery without confusion. If you sell prints or presets directly, that is an ecommerce build, from £750 + VAT.

Photographer website prices

A focused portfolio with up to five pages, an enquiry form and Google Business Profile is our Starter package, from £250 + VAT. If you shoot several genres or want venue and location pages written to rank, the Business package is from £500 + VAT for up to 15 pages with copywriting, schema and speed optimisation. Gallery platform subscriptions and hosting are separate. See our prices.

What you get

• Portfolio galleries per genre with a fast lightbox and keyboard navigation
• Genre pages with written content about your approach, process and pricing guide
• Featured shoot or wedding story pages, each written to rank
• Enquiry form with date, location and package fields, linked to your CRM or studio software
• Image metadata settings that keep copyright, creator and licence fields
• Link to your client gallery provider for proofing and print sales

Prices and how it works

Websites from £250 + VAT, business websites from £500 + VAT and ecommerce from £750 + VAT. Small changes are £45 an hour + VAT. You get a fixed quote before we start.

1. Free chat

   Tell us about your business, who your customers are and what the website needs to do. No charge, no obligation.

2. Fixed quote

   You get a fixed price and a clear list of what is included, in writing, before anything starts.

3. Design

   We plan the pages and design the site around your customers, then share it for your comments.

4. Build and test

   We build it mobile-first, write or polish the copy, set up SEO foundations and test it on real phones.

5. Launch and hand over

   We launch, connect analytics and Search Console, and show you how to update it. You own it all.

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