As a portrait photographer, you will specialise in producing taking photographs of people, either individually or in groups.
Usually, a portrait session takes place in a studio, at the client's home or in an outdoor setting.
Generally, there are four main types of boudoir photography.
Traditional Portraits
Traditional portraiture is the most classical style of portrait photography. Typically, a traditional portrait focuses on the face as the predominant element of the image. The purpose of the image is to capture a visual representation of the person.
The subject is normally looking directly at the camera and is either captured as just a headshot, two-thirds of the body or full-body.
Environmental Portraits
An environmental portrait refers to an image where the subject is photographed in their "natural environment". For example, a builder on a construction site, an artist in a studio or a chef in a kitchen. The image is usually carefully set up by the photographer with the surroundings designed to emphasise the subject's character.
Candid Portraits
A candid portrait is usually taken without the subject's knowledge or when they don't expect. This is done in order to capture the raw emotion of the subject and is usually used in photojournalism, street photography or event photography.
This is a similar style to an environmental portrait, however, it is usually captured in the moment rather than set-up beforehand.
Lifestyle Portraits
Lifestyle portraits are designed to show a particular "lifestyle" experienced by the subjects as well as to evoke an emotion. This is most commonly seen in family portraiture, however, it is also used by industries such as editorial publications, fashion brands, pharmaceutical companies and food industries in order to sell their products or services.
Your portrait photography website should be designed to reflect your personal style as well as attract your ideal client. The majority of portrait photographers aim to create a website that mimics the style of their photography. This will very much depend on what style of portrait photography you specialise in. For example, if you specialise in child portraits or family portraits you might want to focus on light, bright colour palettes, classic typefaces, and modern portfolios. On the other hand, if you are classic portraits or corporate portraits it might be best to keep things clean and simple, with a more minimalistic approach.
Either way, many portrait photographers also wish to give their website visitors a bit of "wow factor" to showcase their beautiful images as well as illustrate why a client should invest in professional portraits. The banner links page allows you to display a beautiful, full-width image at the top of your web page making it easy to create an immediate impression on clients.
On a practical note, it is important that all portrait photographers implement the appropriate privacy settings. We would highly recommend that you set your collections to "private". This option will display an access code box, with the images inside the collection only viewable to those with the correct password.
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If you use social media, and we highly recommend that you do, you will want to make your profiles easy to find. By linking your social media platforms to your website is a really great way to do this. Not only does it make it easier for your visitors to find and follow your social profiles but is also great for your search engine optimisation. You can link to your social media platforms from anywhere on your website, but the most common is from your website footer, website header and contact page.
Pop-Up Boxes
Pop-up boxes are a great way of isolating a visitor's attention and initiating a particular response from them. Generally, a pop-up box is used to display an important message. For example, to encourage visitors to book a session, spend over a certain amount at the checkout, follow your business on social media or to sign up to your mailing list.
Pop-up boxes appear on your website periodically, according to your chosen schedule. For example, you could select to display your pop-up box on every page of your website, or just one, such as your home page. You could also choose to display different pop-ups on different pages of your site. For example, you could encourage visitors to sign up to your mailing list on the home page but have a different pop-up box advertising a special session display on your services page or contact page.
Notification Bars
Notification bars are mainly used as either an announcement bar or a cookie bar.
An announcement bar is typically used to display current, important information to your clients and should be updated fairly regularly. Announcement bars could be used to display information such as special offers and discounts, seasonal announcements, holiday breaks and other important announcements, for example, Covid-19 pandemic updates.
Alternatively, a cookie bar is used to link to your cookie and privacy policy so that visitors can read, should they want to, how you handle their information and data. A cookie policy is required on any website using persistent cookies i.e. if you are offering gift vouchers to customers.
If in doubt, we would recommend that you always display a cookie policy, just to be on the safe side!
Introduce your client to their private gallery using beautiful cover photos. A collection's cover photo displays one large, full-screen image with the collection title in the centre. The image is selected by you and the settings can be customised to best suit the collection requirements. You can also select a different image and settings for each collection, giving you complete control over the appearance of each client gallery.
Big, Responsive Thumbnails
It's important to consider your client gallery in the same way you would any other page on your website. After all, it's the main way your customer will view and purchase their images.
Using big, responsive thumbnails allows you to display image thumbnails as big as you want within responsive client gallery layouts. Not only that, but you can also select different watermark profiles depending on the media type displayed. This allows you to really customise the appearance of your client galleries as well as give your customer's a unique, well-designed experience.
Date Field
Make the booking process even easier for your clients by adding a date field to your contact form. This allows client to directly say which date they are interested booking your services for. This not only makes things simpler for your client, but also saves you time as you can immediately see whether you are free on that.
You can sell anything in an online shop with theimagefile, from physical products (such as traditional prints and other photo products) and stand-alone products to digital downloads, and services.
As a boudoir photographer, you will most likely want to focus your efforts on selling downloads, prints, and other photographic products. However, you could also consider selling other services like mini sessions or gift vouchers.