- Jonathan Sitbon
- Dec 29, 2025
- 12 min read
Despite their popularity, social media platforms are far from the best way to showcase your work online. Creating a photography portfolio website will enable you to display your pictures exactly the way you want, with no limits when it comes to size, quality or design. Plus, it will help you reach a wider audience and draw the attention of new clients.
With your photographer’s eye for composition and aesthetics, you can build a beautiful online portfolio of your own using a professional website builder. From the inspirational stages to developing and publishing your photography website, this guide will take you through the entire process step-by-step.
Building a website for your business, passion project or side hustle should be easy and exciting. With Wix, you can design, customize and launch a professional website in minutes. Everything about Wix is built to simplify the process so you can focus on what really matters: bringing your ideas to life. Ready to make it happen? Start creating the website you’ve always envisioned today.
TL;DR: How to make a photography website
Creating a photography website begins with defining your goals and choosing the right platform to showcase your work. Highlight your strongest work, pick a clean, image-first layout, add essential pages like a homepage, gallery, About and contact and connect your social channels. Optimize for SEO and mobile, get feedback before you launch, and keep your site updated so it stays professional, relevant, and trustworthy.
Feature | Why it matters |
Strong visual focus | Keeps attention on your photography and creates a professional first impression |
Curated galleries | Shows range without overwhelming visitors and highlights your strongest work |
Clear branding and identity | Helps visitors instantly understand who you are and what type of photography you offer |
Easy navigation | Makes it effortless for visitors to explore and find what they need |
Mobile-friendly design | Ensures your work looks great on any device and keeps users engaged |
How to create a photography website in 10 steps
Here are the steps you need to create a photography website that represents your own unique style and impresses your visitors:
01. Set clear goals
Like any good photographer, make sure to set your focus on clear goals before creating this online masterpiece. When opening your website builder, ask yourself what you want to achieve by creating a photography website. Are you aiming to attract more clients? Display your latest photography projects? A bit of both? Have this in mind before you start, since it’ll help you choose the right images and organize them better for your site.
Typically, photographers will use the same website to display the different types of photography they work with. That’s perfectly fine, and even encouraged, as long as you draw a clear distinction between the different themes. Be sure to create multiple galleries, one for each category displayed: weddings, portrait photography, street captures, etc.
In addition to defining your goals, clarify your photography niche early on. Deciding whether you focus on weddings, portraits, commercial work or multiple specialties will help you structure your galleries, write clearer content and attract the right type of clients.
02. Choose a website builder and domain name
To build a professional photography website, start by choosing a website builder that makes it easy to design, manage and update your site, no coding or design experience required. The best platforms offer intuitive drag-and-drop tools and photography-specific templates, so you can showcase your portfolio beautifully and keep your content current as your work evolves.
For photographers, a website builder like Wix is a strong option. It offers customizable gallery layouts, built-in marketing tools and an all-in-one platform to present your photos, connect with clients and grow your brand in one place.
A website builder also takes care of the essentials, including secure hosting, site reliability and fast loading speeds, which is all especially important for image-heavy photography websites. With flexible, cost-effective plans, you can maintain a polished website without stretching your budget.
Once you’ve chosen your builder, register a professional custom domain name—ideally yourname.com—to strengthen your brand and make it easier for clients to find and remember you online. Try a domain name generator and domain name search tool to gain inspiration and ideas.
03. Include your best photographs
Hit us with your best shots. Now that you’ve decided which collections of works you want to display in your photography website, it’s time to choose the images.
It’s important to keep in mind that your website doesn’t have the same function as your Instagram account. You don’t want to publish every single picture that you take in order to raise engagement. On the contrary: your professional photographer website is meant to display only your best, most representative pieces from each category.
In a nutshell, always pick quality over quantity. Our recommendation: go for a maximum of 20 to 30 pictures per gallery. It’s preferable to leave your visitors curious to see more, rather than “overfeeding” them.
04. Create your photography website layout
The layout is the visual structure of your site. With your photography website, you’ll want your best images to beat the center so that they get the attention they deserve.
The first way to do this is by going for a refined color scheme, with a minimal amount of hues. Use a black (“dark”, in web design jargon) or white (“clean”) background, since they make your photos stand out.
Second, consider the type of display you want to use. It should fit the dominant format of your pictures: long scrolling if you take a lot of vertical photos (like portraits), and grids for horizontal ones.
05. Choose the perfect photography template
Professionally-designed photography website templates give you the chance to have a beautiful portfolio ready in no time. Since they’re created with the specific needs of each photography genre in mind, you’ll find that they already include most of the sections and tools you need. These website templates are free and are entirely customizable – from the header to the footer – so that your website will tell your story from your own unique perspective.
Even if you plan to create a photography website from scratch, browsing through templates for inspiration is a good idea. Looking at the online presentation other photographers use is a great way to find new ideas for displaying your work.
Learn more: Should I use a template to make a website?
Expert tip from Dafna Rabin, templates design team lead at Wix:
"If you have a brand, make sure your website aligns with it. This includes matching your brand colors, properly positioning your logo and making sure your business name is clear and easy to understand. People should immediately recognize your brand and know where they’ve landed when visiting your site."
06. Add the right pages
It’s time to create the architecture of your photography website - that is, the pages you want to include and where they will be placed. Of course, you can adjust your plan at any moment with the Wix Editor, but try to be as detailed as possible from the start to give your website a strong foundation.
As a photographer, you don’t need too many pages. Instead, focus on these must-haves:
Homepage
This is where you present yourself and what you do. The most common mistake photographers make here is to not include written content. Your visuals are the main feature, but it’s also important to provide your visitors with a narrative. For example, if you display a beautiful landscape image on your homepage, use words to make it clear that this is a website for a photography, and not that of a travel agency or blogger.
Be inspired by these photography website examples.
Therefore, make sure that your photography logo, name and expertise are large and legible on your homepage so visitors know exactly who you are, what you do and where you’re located. If you haven't come up with a unique brand for your work, use a photography name generator to come up with creative ideas.
In addition, you’ll want to include a navigation menu on your website so visitors can easily transition from one page to the next and find the content they want. Depending on your website’s style, you might choose to put a navigation bar at the header of your site, or use a collapsed hamburger menu to allow more room for visual content.
Gallery
This is the core of your website, where visitors will discover your images. Since it’s the place where the magic happens, you need to carefully choose which online tool to build it with. We recommend the Wix Pro Gallery because it gives you full control over your pictures and the way you want to showcase them..
Basically, you’re able to set the quality and sharpness for every image so that your visitors will see them exactly as you planned. Plus, you can choose from a collection of stunning layouts (Instagram-like grid, panorama, etc.), which are fully customizable.
In addition, the Pro Gallery comes with several options to enhance and promote your photos. You can protect them from being downloaded (right-click protection) or add a sharing button to spread your talent across social channels. The Gallery also gives you the possibility to upload videos and text, adding greater variety to your final result.
About Me Page
The About Me page is where people discover who you are. Granted, it doesn’t mean that you need to write about the day your great-uncle from Alabama offered you your first disposable camera. Your visitors will be much more interested in your philosophy of art and life, your technique, and where you draw inspiration from.
Favor the first-person over the third – it makes things more intimate, and readers will be more inclined to contact you. Of course, don’t forget to include a picture of yourself and a CV if relevant. Showing who you are and amplifying your personal brand is an absolute must when you create a photography website.
For more information, browse these 10 tips for writing a photographer “About Me” page.
Client showcase
Like most photographers, you probably do a lot of commission work. People tend to feel more confident when they see the work you’ve done for previous clients. So, don’t forget to add and display these projects on your photography website (with your clients’ authorization, of course).
Wix Pro Gallery is the best and easiest tool for that. This free app enables you to create stand-alone album sites for each of your customers. There, they’ll find the photos you captured displayed in a stunning layout and branded with your information.
Contact information
Make sure potential clients can get in touch with you by providing your basic contact information. Details like your name, email address, and phone number can (and should) be added to the footer of your website – but you can also create a dedicated contact page so that visitors can’t miss this important info. A contact form is a great addition that you might consider, since it will allow visitors to send you a message directly through your website.
Another brilliant idea is to add Wix Bookings. This helpful app has already made the life of thousands of small business owners much easier. It enables you to display your updated calendar, so that your potential clients know when you’re available for a shooting. As a bonus, you can also let them book and pay online. No more phone calls or emails to answer – your hands are free to do what you do best: take beautiful pictures.
Services and pricing
A dedicated services and pricing page helps pre-qualify potential clients and reduces back-and-forth inquiries. Outline what you offer, such as session types or packages, and include starting prices when possible. Being transparent builds trust and attracts visitors who are ready to book.
Extras (but highly recommended)
Although optional, these pages can serve your photography website well:
Blog: Tell visitors more about your projects, techniques and news by starting a blog. It’ll help you build a loyal community and give a nice boost to your site’s SEO. You don’t need to be Saul Bellow to write a photography blog. Instead, put an image at the center and write a few lines about what we’re looking at. What gear did you use? How were you feeling when you took the shot? Where was the picture taken?
Online store: Go a step further and make money from your photographs with an online store. Sell photos online straight from your own photography website with the Wix Stores, which allows you to manage your orders in one place.
Testimonials: Display the positive comments left by your happy clients. Let testimonials do the talking for you.
07. Connect to your social channels
Show visitors to your site just how social you can be by enabling them to share your content on Instagram and other social media channels.. With more than 500 million daily users on Instagram alone, social media is the easiest and cheapest way to get your name out there and to attract new clients.
First, make sure a social bar is clearly visible on your site, with a link to all of your profiles. It shouldn’t take more than a couple seconds for your visitors to locate it on any page. We recommend displaying the bar either in your website’s header, menu, footer or as an anchor on the side.
Next, enable the sharing option in the Pro Gallery. There is nothing like a powerful image shared and enjoyed on social networks to build up one’s reputation. Last but not least, don’t forget to put your website’s domain name at the top of each of your social profiles to bring your social fans back to your professional site.
08. Improve your photography website's SEO
It’s a fact: photographers are much more visual than textual. That’s great when it comes to seizing the moment for a photo, but can be a challenge when you have to work on your photography website’s SEO (search engine optimization). Whether we like it or not, search engines cannot “see” images; they can only read words. So if you want your website to be visible on the internet and ultimately bring more traffic, you’ll have to make use of your keyboard.
Begin your SEO strategy by describing each image in the Title and the Description fields of your Wix Pro Gallery. Known as alt text, this describes what’s shown in the picture with basic wording. Be as sincere as you can, and avoid artificial information and keywords.
Alt text descriptions will help your pictures to be found more easily in Google Images, where the competition is less harsh than on the main search results page.
To further improve your SEO, optimize your image file names with descriptive keywords, write clear meta titles and meta descriptions for each page, and include location-based keywords if you work in a specific area. These small optimizations help search engines understand your content and improve your visibility in local and organic search results.
Learn more: Is Wix good for photographers?
09. Optimize for mobile viewing
Smartphones and tablets are taking over. Thus, one of the major challenges photographers face when it comes to their online portfolio is ensuring that it will be easily seen on small screens. Don’t forget to optimize your design accordingly.
The Wix Pro Gallery will instantly adapt images to any screen. As for the other elements of your website, the Wix Editor lets you make your photography website mobile friendly in a few minutes by simply dragging and dropping your elements. Just don’t forget to do so before you hit publish.
Beyond layout adjustments, pay attention to performance. Large image files can slow down your site, especially on mobile. Compress images (under 500KB is recommended), aim for smaller file sizes and use modern formats.
10. Ask for feedback and keep your site updated
Before you publish, call your best friend to ask for an outside opinion on your freshly designed photography website.
It’s hard to be impartial when it comes to anything you created yourself, especially when it’s for the first time. Hearing someone else’s feedback – whether they be friends, family or colleagues – will help you optimize the navigation, fix any design issues and eliminate the stray typos.
Once your site is live, continue refining it by updating your content regularly. Adding new images not only keeps visitors engaged, but also shows that your work is active, relevant and reliable.
How to create a photography website FAQ
Can I make money from a photography website?
Yes, a photography website can be a powerful source of income. You can sell prints or digital downloads, book client sessions, offer licensing for your images or use your site to attract paid collaborations. A professional website also builds trust, making it easier for potential clients to choose your services.
What is the best platform to create a photography website?
The best platform is one that’s easy to use and designed to showcase visual content. Website builders like Wix offer photography-specific templates, customizable galleries and built-in marketing tools. This makes it simple to create a professional site without needing coding or design skills.
What does a photography website need?
A strong photography website should include high-quality galleries, a clear homepage, an about page and an easy way for visitors to contact you. Fast loading speeds and mobile optimization are essential for image-heavy sites. SEO tools and social media integrations also help more people discover your work.
Can I create a photography website for free?
Yes, you can create a photography website for free with Wix. This allows you to build and publish a basic site with essential features. Upgrading to a paid plan unlocks a custom domain, more storage and advanced tools to support growth.
What does a good photography website look like?
A good photography website is clean, easy to navigate and designed to let your images take center stage. It uses high-quality galleries, consistent branding and plenty of white space to avoid distractions. Clear calls to action, such as booking or contact options, make it easy for visitors to take the next step.
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