As a frequent traveller and photographer, I feel it’s extremely important to have a good system in place for protecting your travel photographs and also to show them to potential clients. I currently use Smugmug which is an online website application that allows you to easily build a website mainly for photography purposes. I have used them for several years now and have been very impressed. Below are some of the reasons why I recommend you choose Smugmug for your travel pictures.
1. Beautiful designs and easy to configure
Within the design section you have a huge range of themes and other options, allowing you to easily make a professional looking portfolio to show your travel photographs.
Themes/Site Designs – Here is a screenshot showing you some of the designs to choose from. Once you choose a design you can then configure it to make it your own.
Content blocks – When customising your website you will use Content Blocks which you just drag and drop into place and then adjust as necessary.
2. There are lots of ways to show, or sell photographs to clients and buyers
If you are wanting to sell your images to clients, or just visitors to your site, then you can easily do this using the many options available.
Prints, downloads and other products – Within the site you can enable the shopping mode which allows visitors to buy prints, downloads and various other products of your images. What’s more, it takes minimal configuration and you don’t have to worry about the delivery or producing the products, it’s all taken care of by Smugmug and their partners. They do take a cut of the selling price though as they are making and delivering the images.
Private galleries – A feature that I really like is the private galleries. I often use this to provide clients with a private link and password. I will then often enable the download buttons so that my client can then download any images they want. If they wish they can also download all the pictures using a bulk download link.
3. You can access anywhere
A benefit of the system is that you can login and access your site from anywhere. This means that when you are travelling you can use this to back up your photographs whilst on the move (assuming you have an internet connection of course).
4. The customer support is incredible
I’ve had to contact the customer support a couple of times and I’ve found the service to be fantastic. They call them Heroes and I’ve found that if you log a ticket you may wait less than 15 minutes for a reply. This may not always be the case but has been for me.
5. Unlimited uploads
With all the packages you get unlimited uploads. This makes the service great for not just having public and client galleries, but also for doing your backups! I have lots of private galleries which are in a folder I have called “Backups”. I then put all my photos in here once I have processed them, even the ones I don’t show in public.
6. Photo Protection
To protect your photographs you can add watermarks, including custom watermarks or some default ones. As well as this you can add a right click message to prevent anyone from downloading images from the display.
7. Great Price
Smugmug has various packages ranging from ranging from $3.99 per month to $25.00 per month (billed annually), or from $5.99 per month to $35 per month if paying monthly. The different plans have various features, so have a look at the full list when deciding. My recommendation though is to start on the lower packages and upgrade if you need more features.
If you are considering using Smugmug, then use my link below to get 20% off your first subscription.
secure.smugmug.com/signup?Coupon=USd7spHVH36yE
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