Portfolio

bland

I'm needing a professional portfolio to send to prospective clients and need suggestions in building it. Thanks

Ade

If you're serious about building a portfolio, my advice is to work with a professional photo editor / reviewer. We are often "too invested" in our own photographs when it comes to evaluating images for a portfolio.

You may want to contact local pro photo groups / guilds / associations, as they will often have regular portfolio review sessions for their members.

Gareth

Well it goes without saying that it needs to be professional.

It should be made from the finest quality materials that ooze quality, such as a high end photo book or professionally printed and matted prints, boxed and possibly protected with clear sleeves.

If you want clients to buy prints, show them prints of the size you want to sell.

All of your work should look right at home in a high end magazine. Everyone sees thousands of images that are outstanding all of the time. If you are professional your images will not stand out, they will fit in. People aren't amazed by high quality professional images. They expect them.

There are many options for how to present the portfolio itself and they will depend on your style and target audience, however you must use professional images and materials.

bland

Thanks for the info, I'll start looking into all of that and see who has what around town.

Msmoto

My thoughts would be to have a very limited group of photos, and have an independent individual critique these. From my Flickr photostream I would pick one motorcycle, one car, one sunset, one or two portraits, one macro, one landscape, one action sports, one event, one documentary. In other words, about ten nice photos. And, if you are selling prints like Gareth has said, it would seem important to show the size. I would have about 10" x 14" size for a portfolio, easy to handle, large enough for a client to see.

Each step of a client presentation must be flawless. One's working attire may be bluejeans and a T=shirt, but a suit and tie should be worn when seeing prospective clients initially.

Good luck...oh, I would make certain you are slightly higher priced than the competition. This is a personal bias, but you can always negotiate a price if the budget is inadequate. The key is to get the art director to want to use you based upon your portfolio, then money can be brought in to the discussion..

sevencrossing

..... In other words, about ten nice photos. ..

I agree completely no more than 10 photos

but they need not be of different subjects, if you specialise in motor sport, then there is no reason why they should not be all be of that subject ( may be include a grid girl and a driver to prove you do people as well as "things " also include a shot taken in difficult conditions eg pouring with rain at night

If you have two specialist subjects I would make two portfolios

you will need a hard copy of ~ 20" x 16" prints and a soft copy on your iPad, which should be available on the web

bland

I can't thank you all enough for this valuable information.