Shoot Film: Free Photo Portfolio Sites

This is the final part of Shoot Film, I’ve really enjoyed writing this series, many thanks to Jen for the opportunity to share some film love and I hope you have enjoyed reading, and have felt inspired to give film a go.

For this final post I will be exploring ways to share your beautiful photos online.

Of course there is always good old flickr, but would you like something a little more professional looking rather than a social networking site; a free, portfolio-style site to upload your favorite images to? Well firstly you will need to do one of several things to get your photographs ready to upload. Either ask for your negatives to be scanned to CD at the time of developing, or you can buy a film scanner and learn how to do it yourself. There are many to choose from, for a wide range of budgets, or you can simply scan your prints with a regular scanner.

These are my five favorite, free portfolio sites and believe me, I’ve pretty much tried everything out there! Don’t be put off by the professional photographers that use the premium versions, the free packages are a great way to show off your best pictures to friends & family, link to your blog or email signature. all require no html or design knowledge and are super-simple to set up.

1. Cargo has a great set of customizable templates and a nice, clean look. You can follow or be followed by other users, but it’s not really a social network as such. The free service gives you 12 different projects, 3 pages (great for an ‘about me’ and blog link) and 100MB storage.

{{genevieve bjargardottir on cargo}}

2. Shownd is used by many freelance designers and photographers, and can seem a little too professional, but don’t let that put you off. It has a huge amount of free space – You can have up to 15 projects, 75 images, and you can import your flickr files easily too.

{{isabelle bertolini on shownd}}

3. Paspartout gives you 5 projects, 35 images, and 3 pages. You can connect your facebook and twitter profiles, it has a really helpful online support and has several customizable options. (I use this site for my art portfolio here)

{{marco woyczikowski on paspartout}}

4. Although Carbonmade has the least storage of 35 images and 5 projects, it is really simple to use. It is also the least customizable options too, so all the free sites tend to look fairly similar unfortunately.

{{evita weed on carbonmade}}

5. Finally, my own favourite is Portfoliobox. The free package gives you 50 pictures, unlimited galleries, fully customizable designs and even password protected galleries if you want to keep some pictures private.

{{manuela morgia on portfoliobox}}

So that’s it! Enjoy a wonderful summer of creating some beautiful and amazing photographs, and then show them off to the world! If you do create a mini-portfolio, I’d love to see it, I’m very nosey like that. Just pop by my blog or send me an email with the link and I’ll swing by.

– Suzie Chaney runs Shooting the Breeze film photography e-workshops, blogs at Black-eyed Angel and sells her film photographs on etsy. Her column, Shoot Film, runs bimonthly on Mondays.