Photography portfolio
Photos & Frames
A photography portfolio built to prove that image-heavy sites do not have to be slow.
- Client
- Higgins Digital
- Industry
- Photography portfolio
- Build type
- Image-led portfolio
- Status
- Live
- Capabilities
- Custom Website Builds, Performance and UX Optimization
- Stack
- Next.js, Vercel
The problem
Image-led sites are usually the slowest sites their owners have.
A photography portfolio is, by definition, mostly large pictures. The default outcome is a page that looks beautiful on a fast connection and falls apart on a phone, which is where most people will open it.
Fixing that is not a matter of compressing harder. It is a question of what loads first, what waits, and what never loads at all.
The direction
Treat performance as part of the design rather than a pass at the end. Modern formats, real loading priorities, and a layout that reserves space so nothing shifts as the images arrive.
What was built
- Gallery structure and viewing experience
- Image pipeline with modern formats and responsive sizes
- Explicit loading priorities across the gallery
- Responsive build
Details
- AVIF and WebP served ahead of the original, with responsive sizes per breakpoint
- One preloaded lead image; everything below it deprioritised rather than merely lazy
- Dimensions declared on every image, so the layout never shifts as they land
- Deployed static, with no server in the request path
