What are the best ways to have my photography seen (both online & in the real world)?

I use DeviantART to get my photo’s out to the Online Community. In the real world you can try entering some photography competitions or find a local gallery willing to show some of your work. Try and find photography clubs in your area to join which is also good to get some criticism about your work and ways to improve it.
What ever you do, good luck!

flickr is a great site for sharing your photos.

Create a dedicated website for your photos, albeit simple one as limited by your budget.
The problem of Flickr, DeviantArt, etc., is that your potential buyer is now seeing other competing work right next to yours. Distracting, kind of looking at yellow pages ads when you look for a plumber. You don’t see just one, you see aaaall plumbers. I know this is a poor example as you’ll most likely call the one closest to you, but I hope you get my meaning.

Thank BronzLens. I’m actually a graphic/web designer, so the site’s no problem.

I’ve shot photographs for years for jobs (where no photographer was hired). Now I’d like to focus (no pun intended) on just my photography for a while.

Local businesses may be willing to hang your photos as art on their walls, with your contact and/or purchase information posted in the corner of the frame. I see this frequently in my hometown.

There are, of course, detriments to hosting your own photos. Normally I’m a huge fan of rolling one’s own websites for projects and work, but you have to keep in mind that if you’re on Flickr, people will simply stumble upon your photos because that community already exists. How are people going to find your photos if you section them off onto your own site.

Part of the solution to this problem depends on what you’re displaying photos for. Do you want people to view and offer feedback on your photography? I’d go with Flickr. Are you looking for a location to put on a business card, trying to sell prints? I’d host your own.

You could also, perhaps, get the best of both worlds by hosting your photos on Flickr but setting up a shell/content management system on your own server that pulls the photos from your Flickr account and displays them in your own templates. Sort of like http://unexpectedlyquit.com/. Those aren’t photos, but that’s the technical idea I’m getting at. (If you click on any image, you’ll see that it’s actually hosted on his Flickr account.)