As digital photography becomes more popular, it becomes harder and harder to get your name out there into the real world. These six websites will help you showcase your work to its full potential, and hopefully impress a future client or employer! If you use a different website on a regular basis, feel free to share in the comments!
Flickr
Let’s start with the biggest photo collection on the internet. Estimated to contain over 4 billion images, Flickr will have almost any type of image you could search for.
Free users are only allowed to post 100MB of content each month and have a maximum of 200 photos at any one time. You can purchase a full membership for $25, which gives you unlimited uploading, removes advertisements, adds advanced stats, and plenty more.
If you post your images on Flickr, the biggest tip I can give you is to tag as many things about it as possible – these tags are then linked to the search box. This increases the chance of more people visiting your work.
DeviantArt
DeviantArt is my favorite showcasing website as it is so vast, with many different artists all coming together on one site. Currently containing around 11 million members and over 100 million submissions, it is one of the largest collections of multiple artwork on the internet.
The photography section makes up a small portion of the site, but you will still find many tens of thousands of photographs under all manner of different categories. It is free for anyone to sign up and post an unlimited about of art. Users can watch you and will be notified when you submit a new piece of artwork. You can also “watch” any one of the 11 million members on the site as well.
DeviantArt offer a premium membership programme which gets rid of the adverts, allows you to view more images on one page, as well as having more widgets on your profile page. Premium membership also gives you discounts on various products and services.
The premium membership is cheap (at around $30 a year), which I find to be great value.
Creattica
Creattica is another site run by Envato. It currently only has around 6,500 designs, and the photography section is quite small. In my opinion, that’s all the better reason for you to sign up and get uploading!
Phototuts+ showcases images from Creattica on the right hand side of each page, so what are you waiting for? Your work could be there right now!
Unlike Flickr and DeviantArt, Creattica requires the user to fill in a form and then the image is put up for vote to see if it deserves a place on the site. The gallery currently receives thousands of visitors every day and showcases your work in a much more pleasant way with a link to your personal website.
Stock.XCHNG
Stock.XCHNG is a free stock repository which anyone can upload to. I personally think it is a good way to get some exposure. If you give out a few free stock images and they end up being very popular, your name can start to become well known after a few months.
If you include your personal website in the comments, there is a good chance that people will come onto your website to find out more information about you.
There are plenty of other free stock websites for you to post your images onto – just search around!
RedBubble
"RedBubble is a place that inspires creativity and allows people to experience joy through art and the artistic process."
RedBubble is a great way for photographers to attempt to make some money on the side by selling prints and t-shirts. When you sign up you will receive your own blog, allowing you to post whatever you like. This is a great feature as search engines such as Google can pick up your blog and bring more traffic to your profile.
You can price your own prints, so you sell your work for the price you feel it is worth. All the profit from the image will go to you (RedBubble will just take the cost of production from you).
Overall, I found it a nice site to use and Ifeel that in the next few years it will become even more popular than it already is.
Don’t Forget Phototuts+!
Last of all, why not post your images up for a Friday Photo Critique on Phototuts+? You can submit your art to be critiqued through our simple form. Hopefully we’ll be showing off your image on the site soon!