Your Photography Portfolio

This week Marcus talks about building a portfolio as a photographer. He breaks this down into three areas, photographs, pace and presentation.

Marcus starts by taking about Robert Frank and his book 'The Americans', that was published in 1960. He took photos and made what he called about a visual poem out of them. Marcus encourages you to look at the book and focus on the fact that it is a series of images.
Sam asks why a photographer wants a portfolio. Marcus says there are two reasons. One is to get more work. The other is to present a body of work. Years ago a portfolio was leather bound and shown to people to show your work. Marcus still has some of these. Clearly now there are many more options. You could have pdfs, movies and more, but printed material still has it’s value. And printing out work and showing it to clients will make you stand out from the crowd. You can also make a slide show to go at the back of Zoom calls during networking meetings.  Marcus thinks 20 to 30 images in a portfolio is about right. Less is more. Sam says that on websites photographers usually add far too many images.

When you are putting together a portfolio the beginning and the end are really key. They are the parts people remember. The middle is almost a filler. The beginning and end does not need to be your best shot. It may be more your most impactful or alternative to get attention. Tweaking portfolios for the viewer is also really important.  Marcus says to look at your portfolio from the back forwards, remember some people flick through books this way (if it is physical).

Think about how the photographs are arranged. So colours for example, or work on themes. Working through a time frame can also work. The key is do not put them together randomly. Sam introduces the ides of adding humour in there and Marcus agrees this is a great idea.

Finally Marcus talks about pace. Allowing space and allowing your portfolio to breathe. Marcus gives examples of leaving blank pages or part pages.

Marcus explains that he offers online portfolio reviews that can be booked in via his website.