The Art of Making a Portfolio
By Brian Auer • January 4th, 2008
If you’re ever asked to submit a portfolio for a project, gallery, contest, etc. — make sure you know what a portfolio is before submitting anything! I won’t go into all the details, but this topic reared its head a few days ago in that password-protected post that many of you are probably wondering about. Don’t worry, you’ll find out soon enough… Nevermind, I’ve opened it up so everybody can check out the discussions.
Being able to produce a decent portfolio is a skill worth having. A poorly constructed portfolio can be the sole cause of rejection, even if you’re the most amazing photographer on the face of the Earth. So here are a few lessons on the art of making a portfolio.
A PORTFOLIO IS…
… a small collection of topic-related photos presented for the purpose of evaluation. And “small” typically means 10 to 20 photos. Any less and it’s hard to evaluate; any more and it’s hard to digest. Traditionally, a portfolio was in the form of prints bound into some kind of book or folder. With the digital age in full swing, portfolios can also take the form of a web page (which is actually the focus of this article). The photos should be your absolute best while also representing your style or capabilities as they relate to the given topic.
A PORTFOLIO IS NOT…
… a photoblog, a gallery, a collection of galleries, or any other large collection of images. Photoblogs and galleries take too much time to navigate and generally contain too much information to paint a clear picture. If somebody has to review 50 or 100 electronic portfolios, you don’t want them to spend their limited time just looking for the photos. If they have to search too hard, it will only leave a negative impression and you’ll go right into the “No” pile. If your images are not closely related to the given topic, you only give yourself the appearance of not being skilled on that topic — again, right into the “No” pile.
WHAT’S A PHOTOGRAPHER TO DO?
Put some portfolios together right now! Don’t wait until you’re asked to present a portfolio on a moment’s notice. With tools such as Flickr, Zooomr, SmugMug, Picasa Web Albums, other photo-sharing sites, and personal websites, there’s no reason not to have some portfolios put together and ready to go.
Remember, keep them concise and constantly updated. Evaluate your collection of images and make the determination on which topics you could make a portfolio for. Some ideas might be landscape, macro, flowers, black & white, bright colors, street photography, portraits, abstract, fine art, weddings, religious, beaches, travel, countries, colors, architecture, interiors, neon signs… you get the point. If you’re a Flickr user, you can check your tags to give you an idea of which topics are good candidates. You can see my current portfolios on Flickr.
UPDATE: If anybody has a portfolio or collection of portfolios they’d like to share, leave the links in the comments.
If the occasion arises to submit a portfolio already in your collection, GREAT! You’re done! If somebody asks for a portfolio on a different topic, at least you have the experience to know what a portfolio should look like. For further reading on this topic, see “Creating a Photography Portfolio” over at photocritic.org.
Brian Auer is a photography enthusiast from San Diego, California. He's also the guy behind the Epic Edits Weblog. As a hobbyist photographer since 2003, his passion has been to constantly improve his photography skill set, to share his own knowledge with others, and to become an integral part of the photographic community.
Visit the author's homepage | View all Epic Edits posts by Brian Auer
Just read this in my reader and I feel like to say thank you for the concise details of what makes a portolio. Thanks. I added a star to it.
Well Brian I wish you posted this before the project
I did try to prepare something and present it but I just didn’t know how to do it !
Thank you it is indeed very helpful
Hi Brian! Thank you for this idea, I studied yor flickr portfolio collection and without hesitating I did the same for my flickr account (you may check at http://www.flickr.com/photos/geopirat/collections/72157603642640297/ ). Cool and easy
That’s awesome! Nice work — it certainly helps to give people a quick overview of what your areas of expertise are. Anybody else have a portfolio or collection of portfolios they’d like to share?
I use smartsetr for flickr to automatically create “portfolio sets” according to tags
Some of them need refining, but they generally show my “good work” and the plus is its automatically generated and sorted by interestingness
Some of the sets are manual such as “Explored” showing images that have been on explore and may not be of the same theme. Another “A visual treat volume 1″ is of a seemingly random set of photos - its the photos I used to created my first (and so far only) photobook based on my photoblog
Heres the link:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hitkaiser/collections/72157600198474205/
My portfolio has 24 images in (more actually - the portrait oriented shots get combined into one frame) and it is my homepage. It’ll probably grow to 36 (or another multiple of 12, maybe 6) and eventually start getting split up into categories (or in the future, photographers) - but that’s for later.
As for flickr, I do have an account, but I’m not too keen on presenting that to clients as a folio. As a business owner, I don’t think hosting my folio on another site seems particularly impressive. Besides, I have total control over how my images are displayed on my own site.
Another good thing about flickr is that I can use it as a slush pile of sorts. I just keep posting images I like, and if I realize that people REALLY like a certain image, I would consider putting it in my folio.
That’s my two cents worth.
Good point about hosting a portfolio on a site like Flickr. For professional work, a self-hosted portfolio is probably best. But there are many other opportunities to use Flickr as a portfolio host.
I totally agree that Flickr is a great tool for evaluating the impact of a photo. I’ve seen the same thing happen — you upload 10 photos, and there always seems to be a few of those that really take off with comments and faves. It’s a good indicator of what works and what doesn’t.
This pos was so simple and good to understand that i set up my first portfolio sets in flickr right away, you can see them here http://flickr.com/photos/geopirat/collections/72157603642640297/
This is a great explanation of the hows and whats of building your portfolio. You can tell a lot of time was put into it. I will be recommending it to some of my photographer and artist friends because I know they can benefit from it.
Thanks.
Excellent posting, you would not believe the “portfolios” I receive from potential art teachers both online and offline versions.
In fact last week a student brought in an amazing portfolio, the art was exceptional! However when queried about it wound up being a collection of art THAT HE ADMIRED! lol!
Wow! Very good explanation here and I learned a lot of things that I didn’t know too! Thanks for posting such a great explanation on building a portfolio.
I would love to see someone’s portfolio as well. I am still trying to put mine together. I learn so well by example. Thanks for the info and I will check back to see other portfolios … hopefully.
Personally, I love animals, natural settings and nostalgia.
Photography is actually very interesting. I have not been into photography for about 10 years but I remember I chose to take photography as my Art credit at my community college. It actually turned out to be one of my favorite classes and reading this blog brought back those memories.