Editor's note: The 2026 class of my Lightroom Classic Secrets course is open for enrollment now. Learn the tips, techniques and secrets used by the Lightroom masters. Click here for the details. Thanks for reading, Andrew.
Services like Adobe Portfolio, Format and Squarespace make it so easy to set up your own photography website that there’s no excuse not to do it. Making your own photography website also has creative benefits. It teaches you to edit your photos (as in select the best ones) and work in projects. It also helps you understand your evolution as a photographer by giving you a place to compare your earlier photo projects with your most recent ones.
A photography website gives you a space outside of social media
An added benefit of having your own photography website is that it gives your photos a home outside social media. Photo sharing websites like 1x.com and social media are potentially a good way for other photographers to discover your work. The problem is that they’re out of your control. You don’t get a say in how your photos are presented, the photos other people see alongside them, and their place in the algorithms that dominate apps like Instagram.
A photography website lets you step back from that. You get to decide everything, from the layout to which photos to include. You can write some of your thoughts behind your photography, and add an About page so people get to know you better. If you have commercial ambitions you could sell prints, zines, cards or books. You could even run and advertise photography workshops.
A good photography website also helps you get discovered through internet searches. At the very least it gives you your own place to upload your photos. You can then send links to people that matter, like friends and relatives, instead of relying on them seeing your photos in social media feeds. If privacy is a concern, as it might be with photos of children for example, you can set up password protected galleries.
A great example of a commercial photography website is that of garden photographer Éva Németh. Spend some time on the website and you’ll soon learn a lot about the photographer and the photos she makes. A website like this is easy to set up using Squarespace (the service she uses). The result is clean and professional.
How photography websites help creativity
Now, let’s take a close look at how setting up a photography website helps you creatively. Let’s start by considering what happens when you make a large number of photos, as I do when I visit a new garden. Let me give you some stats from my visits to one of my favorite gardens, Forde Abbey Gardens, last year.
Number of visits: 4
Total number of photos made: 2597
Total number of photos developed: 261
Number of photos in personal photography website gallery: 192
Number of photos in public photography website galley: 20
You can see a funnel effect in action here. I started by making over 2500 photos across four visits. Then I narrowed those down by developing 261 of them (approximately 1 in 10). This was the first editing step (remember that editing here means selecting the best photos).
Then I added 192 of those developed photos to my personal photography website. This is a garden and flower photography website I’ve created using Adobe Portfolio that is for my eyes only. It lets me see all my shoots, organized by year, so I can see how my photography has changed and progressed over time. It gives me an easy way of looking at these photos anywhere, including on a phone or tablet. That means I don’t have to open Lightroom Classic to see them, which is a great benefit. Here’s a screenshot from my personal photography website of the photos from one of my visits to Forde Abbey Gardens.
And here’s a screenshot of the photo gallery on my public photography website (you can click the link to visit it). I took the 20 best photos from the 192 displayed in four galleries on my personal website and created a new gallery.
The idea was to select a varied set of photos that go together and tell the story of the gardens over a year. It’s not perfect, but it was a great exercise at editing my photos. I had to think about the sequencing (the order in which the photos are presented) and make sure the selection had variety. These are transferable skills – you will use them when selecting photos to go in a photo book or zine of your work, or for selecting photos to send to a website or magazine for publication. The exercise is beneficial in many ways.
Photography websites and projects
Another benefit of having your own photography website is that it encourages you to think in projects. Good photographers organize their photo galleries by project or theme (take a look at Éva Németh’s website again to see how it works). So instead of using photo galleries named generically (like “Landscapes”, “Gardens” or “Flowers”) you get specific with names “Acadia National Park”, “Forde Abbey Gardens” or “Tulips”.
You can then look at those projects over time to see how your photography has developed. This applies to both a personal photography website and a public one. The difference is that your personal photography website has more photos and projects on it. It’s there for you (and anybody you care to share the link with), not the public. A public photography website has fewer photo galleries and photos. It’s for your best photos only, or at least the ones you want the public to see.
You can see this idea in action on my public photography website. It currently has ten photo galleries spanning a period of 20 years, covering travel photography, portrait photography, documentary photography, landscape photography, close-up photography and garden photography. My personal photography websites (I have more than one, because Adobe Portfolio lets you make up to five photography websites) have even more galleries.
You can learn more about the ideas touched on in this article using the links below. Next week I’m going deeper with this theme to explore the idea of using projects to develop your creative voice, so keep an eye out for that.
Further reading
Finding Your Creative Voice 2026 course
Finding Your Creative Voice | $25
The 2026 class of the Finding Your Creative Voice course is open for enrollment now.
This course has ten lessons, ten creative exercises and one course project, all designed to help you find your authentic style and voice.
Click here to learn more about or enroll in the Finding Your Creative Voice course today
