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…
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?
[...] 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 [...]