I’m sometimes torn with “recent work”. I’m always aware that as much of it won’t make it into my main galleries, it feels at odds with the idea of “less is more”. Surely best practice is only to show one’s very best* images?
Ideally, yes, that’s right. But the main problem with being so selective is that I’m not going to be posting very much: it’s hard to get more than about ten** good shots in a year.
So I try to remember that while all images stand alone, individually, they also play a wider role in a gallery (or blog post) of related items. And, indeed, each individual gallery is itself a subset of a portfolio. If I consider a blog post as a gallery of sorts, and contains work that I think is good enough to show, then it absolutely belongs on my website. An image’s strength may not lie in its impact as a photograph (“best”, again), but perhaps as evidence of a certain kind of work or technique. Or it’s a reference to a certain publication or client, or another example of a cohesive style etc.
Which is all to say that “good” is relative, and not absolute; and has many facets other than “impact”.
And so, while “recent work” nonetheless seems a very loose category when compared to, say, a full series from a particular assignment, I don’t know how else I could otherwise publish some of my work.
*“Best” in terms of website content, of course, not necessarily “most artistic”. For instance, an average picture of a celebrity carries more ‘weight’ because it implies access, and it shows one is current. So it would go in a portfolio ahead of a similar, slightly better shot of an unknown person. (Actually, it’s even quite reasonable to pull long-forgotten shots from the archives - I think of the photographer I met who’d taken an actor headshot of Benedict Cumberbatch in about 1998. Anyway, I’ve discussed portfolio theory in depth elsewhere on occasion on my blog.)
**And even if you were shooting every day, with various and interesting subject matter, clients and briefs; and produce, say, a hundred really wonderful photos, you’ll find yourself in the same position for two reasons.
One, unless you want a bloated (and slightly repetitive) portfolio, you have to make way for this new work, which means you have to remove old images.
And two, unless you want a jack-of-all-trades portfolio, you have to prune all but the very best of the best of the new stuff, as well as everything that isn’t core to your offering. Which might be forty images. However you look at it, there’s just some work that won’t make it into a portfolio.
