Greetings...
I have a collection of work (all birds) that needs public exposure. It occurs to me that a good place to do it just might be here in the Portfolio section. I want the work to be secure and easily accessible to people for viewing, and maybe even promote income. Does anyone have any pros or cons of this location or other suggestions?
Thanks in advance, SM

Strange...171 views and not one response. Could there be some dirty little secret about NatureScapes no one wants to speak of?
Has anyone actually sold any work via this site?
It seems most people have their own web site.
I remain unsure.

The more exposure, the better!

You'd probably be surprised how many of those viewers aren't paid viewers... i.e. don't have the option of a portfolio here. They might be hoping to see the answer also.

I think if you would like to sell you images you should always present yourself in a professional way. Linking to a gallery in a forum isn't what I would consider professional. The galleries here are a nice way to allow somebody who likes one of your images posted to see quickly what else you've done in the past. I don't think they are a substitute for a personal website.

The NSN portfolios are a great way to show off your work if you don't have your own website. A number of photographers have sold work through their portfolios and I have received inquires from images I have posted in my own portfolio (although I haven't updated my portfolio in well over a year). The NSN portfolios also use PHP to generate code, and since you can add keywords when you upload an image, it makes the gallery searchable.

I think having your own customized website that is well coded and easy for viewers to use is the best, but a lot of cheap websites are poorly coded and search engine optimized and good websites aren't cheap. I guess it depends on what your needs are and what volume of work you are looking to show.

Of course, as Carolyn said, the more exposure, the better, and the NSN portfolios are a great way to give your work added exposure.

I've also been thinking of dropping my website completely, and just going with the Naturescapes Portfolio as my 'website'.

I'm basically a hobbyist, who grudgingly sells prints if asked - so the need for a formal website is really not there at all. It costs me over a $100 per year to just maintain the website domain and hosting, which seems like a waste of money when I track the visits my site generates. I've sold very few prints from the website ... and those prints that I did sell (through the website) came via traffic generated through Canadian Geographic Magazine (where I've placed a few winning images in their wildlife photo contest over the past six years).

Anyway, I'd say go ahead and make your website through the Naturescapes Portfolio. The only problem I can see is promoting the name of your personal portfolio page. Mine would have to be shown on a business card as: http://www.naturescapes.net/portfolios/portfolio.php?cat=13092 ... this is what someone would have to type to get straight to my portfolio - which looks horrible!

Any Naturescapes moderators know how I can make it look better for a business card?!?
(ie. www.naturescapes.net/peterzwiers)
If people could just type that address to get straight to my portfolio, then I would drop my website right away!

Pete, try petezwiers.naturescapes.net.

Hey Royce,
That's not too bad at all! At least the first choice shown on Google is the correct one. Didn't think about that approach at all.

I'll maybe give that a go when I'm ready to zap my website in a few months. Thanks!

Steve, there are a lot of options with online portfolios. You don't say how many pictures you have to post, but an NSN portfolio is limited to 100 images (200 for a lifetime membership). You can purchase space for another 100 images for $40. Depending on how many images you have or may have in the future, this could be limiting.

For sheer exposure, it's tough to beat Flickr. A pro account is only $25/year and has unlimited storage and bandwidth. There are also site stats and some other features. Free accounts are available too, but the features are much more limited. If you post your work on Flickr, be sure to join lots of groups that cater to specific types of photographs (landscapes, birds, HDR, etc) and post your images on those groups. That will increase your exposure significantly to members of those groups. You can also build a list of contacts and keep track of others' whose photography you would like to follow. It's social networking for photographers. Do note that Flickr has been criticized for being rather stale as there have been little changes to the site in the past couple of years, but they still have a huge user base.

A Facebook fan page is another option. You can create a page for your photo business, and post your images in the photos section of your page. You can set your photos section to load when people visit your page so that's what visitor will see first. While Facebook has more users than Flickr it's not photographer centric so it doesn't have near as many features that cater to photographers. You are not required to be a Facebook user to view images on a fan page.

Smugmug is another good option but it lacks the social networking features of Facebook and Flickr. It does offer the biggest feature set of any of the online galleries that I mention. You can customize the site almost without limits and you can even sell prints through your site. They have a great help forum (dgrin.com) so you need any help or assistance you can certainly find it there.

A final suggestion is to check out 500px who is a newcomer on the scene of photo portfolios. They have the nicest interface, but don't have near the user base of Facebook or Flickr. They also don't have an API developed yet which means you can't upload to their service directly from a program like Lightroom or Aperture (all other services that I mentioned allow this). You would have to export to your hard drive and upload manually.

Any or all of these options may be worth your consideration. In my signature you can visit my pages and see how Smugmug (my website), Facebook, and Flickr can be set up. I don't have a 500px account (yet). As Carolyn said, the more exposure the better. Good luck!

Good points, Greg. Different portfolio sites will have different costs & features, and cater to different sorts of exposure or audiences. For myself I've got images showing up one way or another at all of the following: NSN, Flickr, 500px, Whytake, Google+, Facebook, Fine Art America, PhotoShelter, Jux, WordPress, my own main web site (which also uses PhotoShelter as the back-end gallery system), and several other minor ones besides. If anybody googles me or just peruses my main web site or blog, you can relatively readily follow my web footprint out there and judge how well some places I have images look, feel and function.

I don't necessarily keep them all going with the same level of effort & updates, since some are better for what I want to do than others. Some I do cut off after awhile, too, if there's just no traction with them. And some I'm starting to focus down only to certain content, or to update only by cross-posting links (or RSS feeds) to images hosted at one of the others, instead of manually uploading duplicate copies everywhere. (E.g. at Facebook, I've rarely directly posted any images.) But each of the ones I keep relatively well updated serves a different purpose that wouldn't be readily replicated by the others.

So for anybody looking to start getting a significant portfolio online, I'd say think about the following questions.

• What do you want to do -- just show some small images, make a slick "pro" looking portfolio, have a searchable stock gallery, integrate with social media for shares/ "likes" / +1's / retweets, ...?
• What audience(s) are you trying to reach -- fellow genre photographers, friends & family, potential publication or digital licensing clients, print buyers, ...?
• What image management functionality would you like -- just something simple, or something with a lot of advanced features and ease of use suitable for a bigger body of work with lots of keyword, searching, organization, access permissions and tracking options?
• How much do you want to pay -- $0, low $X per year, moderate $Y per month, ...?
• Do you want just simple gallery browsing & searching, commercial high-res fulfillment functionality, license terms & e-commerce transactions, outbound sales & marketing tie-ins, ...?

There are options out there for a variety of budgets covering all of these kinds of things, but not necessarily any one single solution that will do everything. That's why I have several. I use Flickr for the exposure & google search footprint, FAA for mounted & framed "open edition" print sales & fulfillment, PhotoShelter for master galleries & digital licensing plus the back-end gallery system for my own main web site, Google+ for social network related to photo stuff (likely will replace Facebook for me at some point if G+ doesn't screw it up), Jux for really slick & splashy looking media posts, NSN & Whytake for nature photographer community galleries, etc.

Well this is timely. The 500px lightroom plugin was just announced today. http://500px.com/lightroom