I can’t tell how important it is to have a website… Do you have a website, and if so, how often do you update it?
[Yes, but] I get so busy [and that’s] why my website hasn’t been updated. It’s always, I’m going to sit down and do this, but then all of a sudden it’s like, Oh crap, I’ve got five jobs, I need to finish all these.New design clients are strictly word of mouth — I don’t even have a design website. They usually want to see some design work from me, but I’ll just reference stuff that’s out there in the market that they can currently look at.
Having a good, polished website I think helps quite a bit too. It’s just a good sort of overview of my photography and style that someone can take a look at and just sort of see how I like to shoot and what kind of stuff I like to shoot. Having that as sort of a marketing piece that you can show someone you’re trying to get a job with is a huge help.
[I update my portfolio] every three months or so maybe. I’m not on a total schedule but the fall after each ski season, after I know which photos are picked up by magazines and after stuff gets published somewhere, then I’ll put those images up on my site.For contracted shoots with specific clients, after the client is done with those photos and it’s okay for me to show them to the world, I put my favorite shots into galleries on my website. So if another prospective client is going to go take a look, they can see I shot photos for another company and produced good deliverables.
I have a store on my website but I tend not to use it because I feel like it adds a whole extra step and it’s so easy to do through Instagram. They’re talking to me and I’ll be like, Okay, give me your address, I’ll get shipping figured out and then I’ll send it out as soon as possible.
[And for collecting payment,] depending on where they’re at [I’ll use] PayPal, Venmo, any of those online banking things. It makes things so easy it’s crazy.