I’ve been watching Zack Arias’ series of critiques over at zarias.com, and even though he didn’t critique my site directly, I took a lot of the general points he made to heart. Specifically he commented a lot on the need to convey a focused vision through your portfolio. It made me start thinking about my own port, and what I was trying to say with it. After some brainstorming and feedback I basically tore down everything and decided to redo my portfolios from scratch. Less of “my own work that I like” and more of “who I am as a photographer”. I broke down my work into my commercial/editorial work – separated by “environmental” work and “studio” work, and put all my personal work into it’s own section. I like the “flow” of the portfolio much better now – it still needs some tweaks but, overall I’m happy. I’m still deciding whether to put in a separate section just for tearsheets, or incorporate those into the regular galleries.( I also am thinking of doing one of those videos of my physical book (all the cool kids are doing it…)
I’d love to hear some feedback on the new ports -love em? hate em? don’t care either way? Click on over and let me know what you think…
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Following your lead on the Arias cleaning binge (haha), I’m not sure if I like that both environmental and studio go from people and abruptly to still life. Have you tried a people/portrait/human/breathing/etc gallery alongside a still life gallery?
Your still life is great, but the work with people is better, so by the time I get through the people I’m not as impressed with the still life.
I like the flow in general, just not that change. Ideas?
Thanks Tanya,
That’s actually something I’ve been going back and forth on myself. I originally had “non-people” shots in their own category, but it didn’t really seem to be anything cohesive… I wonder about cutting the non-people shots a bit more and spreading them out a bit rather than chunking them at the end… I know some photographers do this to great effect (Chase Jarvis for example has people/non-people shots mixed in his galleries and it totally works)… I guess I just have to find the right flow for my own work. Sometimes it can be maddeningly frustrating, no?
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[...] by Updating your portfolio, I’ve been watching Zack Arias’ series of critiques over at zarias.com, and even though he didn’t critique my site directly, I took a lot of the general points he made to heart [...] Less of “my own work that I like” and more of “who I am as a photographer”. via f1point0.com [...]