Beyond Instagram: Establishing Your Photography Website
While social platforms like Instagram offer immediate visibility within a photography community, relying solely on them to share your work creates vulnerability in your digital presence. These third-party platforms can change algorithms, terms of service, or even disappear entirely—taking your carefully curated portfolio with them. A personal website, however, provides sovereign digital territory where you control both presentation and accessibility.
Realizing the importance of claiming your own digital space, the question becomes how to name this creative sanctuary. Your domain name serves as both address and introduction, often forming a visitor's first impression before they've seen a single image. It's worth approaching this decision with intention, as the right name can enhance recognition, convey your photographic identity, and create a memorable touchpoint for those discovering your work.
Naming Your Photography Website
There's a subtle intimacy in choosing the name that will mark your corner of the digital world. It's like selecting the perfect frame for an expectant child—a name shapes how the world perceives what lies within.
When we create a digital identity tied to specifics—a location, medium, or singular passion—we unintentionally limit our future options.
There's practical wisdom in avoiding overly specific domain names like "MelbournePhotographyExperiences.com," which can become problematic when life changes direction. What happens when you move from Melbourne, shift from photography to another medium, or your interests evolve completely? The digital presence you've built—the backlinks, search rankings, and mentions—suddenly becomes misaligned with your new direction.
Using your own name as your domain creates flexibility, a digital identity that remains relevant regardless of where you live or what you create.
It's also a practical approach: your name stays constant while your work can transform. This way, you can follow new interests without sacrificing the digital authority you've built, allowing your online presence to evolve naturally alongside your creative journey.
While using your name as a domain offers flexibility, this isn't always straightforward.
My own name 'Bron Eager' with the .com extension already serves as my academic platform, where visitors find content related to my research and teaching career. Introducing photography content there would create a jarring experience for readers following links from my book, expecting resources on academic writing or AI digital literacy but landing among creative photography projects instead.
This highlights an important consideration: sometimes our different interests serve distinct audiences. Even with the freedom a personal name provides, it's worth considering how to create appropriate spaces for the various facets of your identity—professional, creative, and personal—to ensure each audience finds what they're looking for without confusion.
Choosing a Domain Extension
A domain extension is the suffix that appears at the end of a web address, after the domain name (like .com, .org, or .photography). It indicates the type of website or its purpose, and can signal to visitors what kind of content they might expect to find.
While .com remains the most recognized extension, there are now hundreds of specialized options available that can reflect your industry, location, or creative focus.
The extension you choose carries its own quiet significance. It's the final note in the melody of your online identity, a whispered suggestion about the nature of what visitors might find.
The traditional ones—.com, .net, .org—speak of permanence. They're the digital equivalent of established pathways, well-traveled and recognized.
For those drawn to more evocative possibilities, some alternative include:
.photography/.photo: These extensions transform your domain into a statement about medium and purpose. They declare a commitment to visual storytelling.
.studio: This suggests a space of creation rather than mere display. It invites visitors to witness process as much as outcome.
.art: An acknowledgment that what happens in this space transcends pure utility. It frames your work within a larger tradition of creative expression.
.me: An honest extension for a personal domain. A simple recognition that behind every carefully crafted piece stands a person with a particular way of seeing the world.
For those who find beauty in the unexpected, or simply have a quirky sense of humor, extensions like .xyz or .wtf offer a different kind of authenticity—they suggest work that exists at the edges, that finds meaning in spaces others might overlook.
The extension becomes not just a technical necessity but a creative choice—another opportunity to shape how visitors experience your digital home before they've even stepped through the door.
Does Domain Choice Affect Discoverability?
When it comes to search engine rankings (e.g. what position your website shows up on a Google search results pages), your choice of domain extension may influence how Google and other search engines view your site.
Traditional extensions like .com, .org, and .net typically carry more inherent trust and often perform better in search results, particularly for general audiences.
While Google officially claims no direct preference for specific extensions in their algorithm, people tend to click more frequently on familiar extensions, which indirectly affects your search performance through improved click-through rates.
Location-specific extensions (like .com.au) can boost local search visibility when targeting regional audiences.
Newer, creative extensions such as .photography or .studio may help with niche relevance but sometimes face challenges in broader recognition.
The key consideration isn't just search engine algorithms but user behavior—if your target audience is comfortable with specialized extensions, using one aligned with your field might actually strengthen your brand identity and memorability, potentially offsetting any slight algorithmic preferences for traditional domains.
Photography Domain Name Challenges
When creating a domain for your photography website, certain naming choices can inadvertently create barriers between your visual work and potential viewers.
Photography-specific terms with variable spellings can confuse visitors—should they search for "foto," "fotography," or "photography"? Similarly, artistic terms like "bokeh," "chiaroscuro," or "portraiture" might resonate with fellow photographers but present spelling challenges for potential clients.
Numerical ambiguity in photography domains is particularly problematic. A domain like "35mm2digital.com" forces visitors to guess whether to type the numerals or spell them out. The same applies to domains referencing camera models ("canon5dshots.com") or aperture settings ("f2photography.com").
Creative photographers may gravitate toward artistic or evocative foreign terms that perfectly capture their aesthetic vision. While "luminescence-imagery.com" or "chiariphoto.com" might beautifully reflect your artistic approach, they become barriers if consistently misspelled by visitors seeking your portfolio.
Likewise, overly descriptive photography domains like "atlantaweddingandportraitphotography.com" may be comprehensive but prove unwieldy on marketing materials, difficult to remember, and prone to typos when potential clients attempt to visit your site after seeing your work at an exhibition or event.
Hyphens can be equally problematic. While tempting for separating words, they can create confusion when sharing your website verbally—"Is it photo dash blog dot com or photoblog dot com?" This verbal ambiguity can lead to lost visitors and frustration.
Despite the conventional wisdom against hyphens, I ultimately decided on a hyphenated domain for my photography site. This wasn't my first choice, but practicality guided the decision. With my ‘name + .com’ already established in my academic work, and not wanting to box myself into being strictly a ‘.photography’ or ‘.art’ site, a hyphen provided the clearest solution. Yes, there's a slight verbal awkwardness when sharing the address aloud, but the benefit of name consistency outweighed this drawback. Additionally, the increasingly digital nature of human interactions somewhat diminishes the "verbal sharing" concern with hyphenated domains. People discover websites through links rather than manual typing—clicking from social media posts, email signatures, online portfolios, or search results.
When choosing a domain name, prioritize clarity and simplicity—something easily pronounced, spelled, remembered, and shared without confusion. Ultimately, the best domain name is one that disappears as a barrier, allowing visitors to find your work without the domain itself becoming an obstacle in their path.
Once you've brainstormed potential domain names, the next step is confirming its availability.
Visit any major domain registrar like Namecheap, GoDaddy, or Domain.com and enter your chosen name in their search bar. Don't be discouraged if your first choice is taken—this is common in today's crowded online space. If your firse choice is taken, use this as an opportunity to explore variations or alternative extensions. Many registrars offer suggestion tools that generate available alternatives based on your keywords. Consider checking your preferred name across multiple extensions simultaneously, as securing your brand on several domains (.com, .photography, .me) can protect your digital identity and prevent confusion. Remember that domain availability can change daily as names are registered and released, so when you find one that fits your vision, it's wise to claim it promptly rather than risk losing it to another creative soul seeking their own digital home.
Importantly, if you’re going to be using a platform like Squarespace (see below) to design your website, hold off on registering the domain with another provider as it will complicate the process of launching your website due to needing to move the domain into the Squarespace ecosystem (or learning how to ‘point’ the domain to your Squarespace site.
Once you've decided on a domain name that effectively represents your work without creating barriers to discovery, the next decision is where and how that domain will live online.
The platform you choose becomes the structural foundation supporting your domain and the content you share with the world.
WordPress vs. Squarespace for Photographers
Two popular options for where your website could live online are WordPress (.org—note, not the .com option) and Squarespace.
My digital presence exists across these two platforms, serving distinct purposes in my creative and professional lives.
My academic blog thrives on WordPress.org, which I'd argue is a far superior tool for blogging in general because it offers incredible flexibility, robust content management capabilities, and customization options. The platform's extensive plugin ecosystem allows for specialized features supporting citation management, and content organization. Yet, despite the advantages, I’ve always struggled to get the design of the website to ‘pop’. Perhaps due to a lack of talent for wrangling Wordpress design templates, I find that what I build in WordPress always feels a bit…flat.
For my photography work, I chose Squarespace. The platform was already familiar territory, as I've worked with it for many years—currently holding status as a Squarespace Gold Circle Partner.
Squarespace's visually oriented templates are beautifully designed for portfolio work, with consideration for image presentation that would require significant customization on other platforms. It’s kind of like an iPhone—it just works out of the box with minimul friction.
Ultimately, if you’re just getting started, it matters less about which option you choose and more about getting your work into the world.
The journey of establishing your photography website begins with a name but ultimately leads to your unique visual voice finding its audience. Whether you choose the flexibility of your own name, the specificity of a descriptive domain, or something entirely unexpected, remember that your domain is simply the door through which visitors enter your creative world—it's the images and stories waiting inside that will truly leave a lasting impression.
Your Website as an Evolving Creation
The beauty of a website lies in its fluidity—a living, breathing artifact that can evolve alongside your photographic journey. Many photographers hesitate to launch their sites, paralyzed by the pursuit of perfection or fear of judgment. Remember that unlike other creative outputs, your digital presence isn't set in stone. Unlike a printed photograph that captures a single moment in time or a published book where typos remain permanently in readers' hands, your digital presence offers the freedom of constant refinement. Taking that first step—even with an imperfect site—is far more valuable than waiting for an elusive "perfect" version that never launches.
You can update images as your style develops, refine your artist statement as your vision crystallizes, or completely reimagine your portfolio structure as your body of work expands.
This malleability allows your online presence to remain an authentic reflection of your current artistic identity rather than a static monument to a particular creative phase. Your website becomes not just a showcase but a creative companion that grows with you, adapting to new inspirations and directions without the permanence that constrains other forms of publishing.
The perfect website never launched helps no one discover your art. So choose a name that feels right, find a home for it online, and begin the rewarding journey of building your photographic presence online.
