Create a website that presents your commercial photography with the clarity and immediacy needed to win brand and editorial work, while also giving people a meaningful way into the larger creative practice behind it. The site should make your range easy to understand without over-categorizing it, allowing commercial projects, personal series, travel, writing, offerings, prints, objects, and more intuitive work to feel connected rather than split into separate identities. It should feel simple and image-led at first glance, but reveal more personality, depth, and experimentation as someone explores, giving you room to express the poetic, spiritual, and slightly cosmic side of your work without compromising its professional credibility.
The website itself will be custom designed and built in Astro. Sanity sits behind it as the content management system, so the site can be completely custom while still being easy for you to update yourself.
Sanity and Cloudflare both have free tiers built for sites at this scale. The site is expected to stay well within their included usage, so there is no reason to pay for larger plans now. If the site grows enough to exceed those limits in the future, either service can be upgraded then.
Most of the time, the only thing you will interact with is Sanity. You will sign in to a private editing area where you can manage your portfolio images, projects and stories, offerings, writing, About page, and other editable content.
You can add photographs, edit text, change the order of content, create something new, and publish it when you are ready. The design and page layouts are already built into the site, so you can keep the content changing without having to design or build new pages yourself.
Your print store stays in Pic-Time. The website can link directly to it, while your prints, orders, and fulfillment continue to live there separately.
Pic-Time and any other services you already pay for remain separate from these website costs.
Each package builds on the one before it. Underneath Ellen’s page names, each new level adds one standard content system to the site. Open one to see what it includes.
A complete photography portfolio focused on presenting the work clearly and making it easy to browse.
CMS structureProjects collection. You create a project once, add its images and categories, and it automatically appears in Work and opens into its own detail page.
Everything in The Portfolio, plus a structured home for the ways people can work with you.
CMS structureAdds an Offerings collection. You can create, update, publish, or archive offerings, and Light Garden automatically reflects what is current.
Everything above, plus an ongoing publishing space for the wider creative practice.
CMS structureAdds a Posts collection. You can publish new material whenever you want, and World automatically becomes the archive for it.
Included in every packageCustom design, Astro development, Sanity Studio, responsive development, testing, training, and launch. Prints remain in Pic-Time. Ecommerce is not included in this phase.
The project will move in four phases, with work happening alongside my regular schedule. The timeline leaves room for thoughtful design, development, feedback, and content without requiring either of us to work on the site full time.
Here are some references I pulled. I like different things about each one, sometimes the site architecture or interaction, sometimes the layout, pacing, or overall feel.
Closest to how I imagine the main Work page functioning. A lot of work is visible at once, and each image opens into a larger project. I’d keep that density, but add the filter you described so someone can quickly shift between the full overview, Portrait, Beauty, Lifestyle, etc.
I like the way small pieces of language appear through interaction without competing with the photography. It feels like a good way to bring some of the more poetic side of your voice into the site while still letting the work lead.
I like how naturally writing sits among the photographs. The words feel like part of the work rather than a separate section, which feels relevant as you bring more of your writing into the site.
I like the idea of different parts of a creative practice having their own spaces while still clearly belonging to one world. That feels useful for keeping the commercial work direct while making room for the more personal, experimental, and evolving parts of your practice.
These are less about specific functionality and more about the overall register: simple, quiet, image-led, and confident. There is enough restraint for the work to carry the site without the experience feeling generic or empty.