A portfolio behind your bio link — for photographers, artists and illustrators
Instagram compresses your photos, crops them square, buries them in a feed and shows them next to an ad. It's where people discover you. It's a bad place for them to evaluate you. A client deciding whether to book you for a wedding, a brand deciding whether to license a piece, a collector deciding whether to buy a print — they need to see the work at full size, in sequence, with context, and then have an obvious way to say yes.
That's the job of the portfolio page behind your bio link. This guide builds it: how to structure the work, how to make images open full size, and how to put the commission form or the print shop right where the desire is.
The two things a portfolio page has to do
Show the work well, and convert the interest. Most portfolio sites do the first and forget the second. Most bio links do neither. A good page does both in one scroll: a gallery that makes someone want, followed immediately by a way to act.
Structure
Hero. Your name, one line ("Documentary wedding photographer, Manchester and anywhere"), your face or a signature image. One button for your primary action: "Enquire" for photographers who take bookings, "Shop prints" for artists who sell, "Commissions open" for illustrators.
Gallery. Your best work. Not all of it. Nine to twelve images, chosen for range and quality. The first image is the one you'd put on a billboard.
Proof. Client names, a testimonial or two, publications, awards.
The ask. A form (enquiries, commissions) or products (prints, originals), depending on what you sell.
Process and FAQ. How it works, what it costs, turnaround, what's included.
Socials. Instagram, Behance, Pinterest, wherever else the work lives.
BonPages has an Artist starter in this order, on the Blush theme, which suits soft work; Mono (black on white, square corners) suits photography that wants nothing between it and the viewer.
The gallery
Three layouts to choose from:
- Grid. Square crops in two or three columns. Even, tidy, reads as a set. Good for consistent work: a wedding portfolio, a series of portraits.
- Masonry. Images keep their own aspect ratio and stack like bricks. Good for mixed orientations, illustration, mixed media.
- Carousel. One row that scrolls sideways. Good for a small set of hero images, less good for browsing.
Whichever you choose, images must open full size on tap. A grid of thumbnails that goes nowhere is a preview, not a portfolio. On BonPages the gallery has a lightbox by default: tap an image and it fills the screen, with arrows, swipe and keyboard to move through the set, and the caption underneath.
Captions matter more than people think. "Oil on linen, 60×80cm, 2026" or "Editorial for Kinfolk, shot on film" gives the viewer the context that separates a snapshot from a body of work. Show them under the image, on hover, or only in the full-screen viewer.
Choosing the images
A few rules that hold across disciplines:
- Range, not repetition. Twelve images of the same subject in the same light tell the viewer you can do one thing.
- Lead with your strongest. Put the best image first, the second best last, and fill the middle.
- Recent over old. If your style has moved on, the old work is now misleading a client about what they'll get.
- Finished over process. Save the behind-the-scenes for an embedded reel below the gallery.
- Crop for the grid. If you use a square grid, crop the images yourself rather than letting the grid do it.
Multiple bodies of work
If you shoot weddings and commercial, or you paint and you illustrate, don't mix them in one gallery. Either two galleries with headings on one page, or two pages with a menu. Two pages is cleaner: "Weddings" and "Commercial" each with their own gallery, proof and enquiry form, and a home page that sends people to the right one. A multi-page site behind one bio link is still one link in the bio.
The ask, for photographers and anyone who takes bookings
An enquiry form directly under the gallery and the proof. Fields:
- Name
- Date of the event or shoot (a date field)
- Type of work (a dropdown: wedding, portrait, commercial, other)
- Budget range (a dropdown)
- A message
Every submission emails you and is kept in an inbox. The date and budget fields let you triage before you reply. Add a line above the form: "I reply within two working days. If your date's already booked I'll tell you straight away."
If you want people to book a consultation directly, embed your Calendly below the form.
The ask, for artists and illustrators who sell
Products under the gallery: prints, originals, commissions as a product with a "from" price. Each with an image, a name, a price, and a buy button to wherever you take payment: your own store, Etsy, a payment link.
For prints with sizes, use variants so A4, A3 and A2 show as options with their own prices. Mark sold-out sizes. For originals, one product per piece; when it sells, leave it up marked sold. A sold wall is proof.
Commissions: a product called "Commission" with a starting price and a "Enquire" button that scrolls to a form, or a form directly, with fields for size, medium, deadline and reference images described in a message.
Proof, for visual people
Client logos are strong for commercial work. Publication names for editorial. For weddings, a testimonial with the couple's first names and a line about the day. For art, "Collected in 12 countries" or "Sold out first edition" are the kind of numbers that reassure.
An embedded reel of you working, or a time-lapse of a piece, does something proof text can't: it shows the person behind the work. Put it below the gallery, above the form. It loads on tap, so it doesn't slow the page.
Process and FAQ
Especially important for anything bespoke. "How commissions work" in three steps. Turnaround times. What's included in a wedding package. Whether you travel. Print quality and paper. Shipping and framing. Licensing for commercial use. Every one of these is a question a serious enquiry will ask, and answering it on the page moves them from "interested" to "ready".
Pricing on the page
Visual people are often reluctant to show prices, and clients are often reluctant to ask. The result is enquiries that go nowhere after the first reply. A "from" price on the page, or a short packages table, filters kindly: people who can't afford you don't waste your time, and people who can stop wondering whether you're out of reach.
For weddings, three packages with what's included and a starting price. For commercial, a day rate or a "projects from" figure. For prints, the price on each product. For commissions, a starting price by size. If prices genuinely vary too much to publish, publish the range and say what moves it.
Licensing and usage, in one paragraph
Commercial clients will ask how they can use the images. Say it on the page before they ask: what's included in the fee, what costs extra, whether social use is included, how long the licence runs. A short paragraph under the commercial gallery or in the FAQ removes the most tedious email exchange in the business and signals that you've done this before.
Getting the work seen beyond Instagram
The portfolio page is also the thing you put in a Pinterest profile, a Behance link, an email signature, a directory listing, and the back of a business card as a QR code. Because each of those is the same page, the analytics show you which one sends the visitors who actually enquire. It's common to discover that Pinterest sends fewer people than Instagram but far more of them fill in the form, which is worth knowing before you decide where to spend your posting time.
Speed
Portfolio pages are image-heavy, and most visitors are on a phone on mobile data. Two things keep the page fast: images are lazy-loaded so only what's on screen downloads, and social embeds load on tap. BonPages does both by default. You still help by uploading images at a sensible size; 2,000 pixels on the long edge is plenty for a phone screen and the full-screen viewer.
Measuring
Three signals worth watching:
- Which images get tapped open in the viewer. That's what your audience responds to. Lead with it.
- Form submissions and buy-button taps versus page views. If lots of people look and nobody enquires, the ask is too far down or too vague.
- Where visitors come from. If Pinterest sends more than Instagram, put more effort there.
Setting it up
Sign up to BonPages, pick Mono, Blush or Linen, choose the Artist starter, replace the sample images with twelve of yours, add captions, set the gallery to grid or masonry, write the enquiry form or the products, and publish. Put the link in your Instagram bio, your Pinterest profile, your email signature and the back of your business cards.
It's free: the gallery with lightbox, the form, the products, and the analytics. When it outgrows a thousand views a month, PRO puts it on your own domain, which for a portfolio is worth having.
