Portfolio woes
Making a portfolio is easy: you start with the images you like, and from there select those which best represent you.
You then remove shots with a similar style or subject matter. Ditch any which don’t sit well with the rest of the gallery, and those which will date badly. Delete ‘one-note’ images eg portraits which solely rely on a subject’s celebrity status; fisheye shots; basic silhouettes. Get rid of generic, broad images which have no discernible or unique style. But equally, consider setting aside highly-stylised images (as these risk defining your abilities too narrowly). Finally, dump any you’re not quite sure of.
If you have anything left, that’s your portfolio.
This was from my very first portfolio, and I was really proud of this, once upon a time. This was my NCTJ (basic press photography qualification) entry as the sports image (back in the early 2000’s). Looking at this photo after so long, I can say it’s pretty rubbish.
Maintaining a portfolio over time is even worse, as you never really get past the starting point: you hate nearly everything you’ve shot. It’s just the way of things: partly it’s over-familiarity, and partly it’s one’s critical eye.
Out with the old - two
At the start of lockdown, I culled a number of photos from my website: my efforts last time didn’t go far enough, and I’d felt for a while that more pruning was necessary to improve my portfolio.
This was my sports entry for the NCE press photography final exam (perhaps from 2005?). Again, I must have liked it once, but now think it is a horrible image and it hurts my eyes. Our final exam requirements also included portraiture, news, fashion, night, use of flash, weather, and some other things. I still have my final portfolio, and may scan the images for a future blog. Or cringe, and bin it.
For me, although I may dislike my work(!), that’s not the hard part. I find this inevitable boredom with one’s own images can, at least, help with objectivity.
No - the tricky part is separating an image from its context: how difficult it was to achieve, how technical, how pressured, how enjoyable, even. And the more that goes into our images, the more we want to like them. We are there through their creation and delivery: the more memorable and significant, the more inextricably tied up when we view them. Yet, rarely do these aspects actually come through in the final image in any meaningful way. They really shouldn’t count for anything.
All that matters, in the end, is that a portfolio should show the best work you can do and the work you’d like to do, as I’ve said above. All the while having a clear, consistent style. Subjectivity is only there as a guide. Be objective. Yet even the most ruthless approach brings doubts, later.
The best way around this issue is to have someone else do it, with your potential clients in mind. It’s your shop window, after all, and not a vanity project. A fresh and unbiased point of view is painful but - with trust and understanding - the sensible way to go.
…nah. Perhaps next time. And after removing a dozen or so irrelevant or weaker images, I was happy enough.
Diamonds in the Rough
I expect that for many photographers there’s something inevitable about the occasional browse through the archives, especially during lockdown. I do this anyway from time to time, collecting content for my occasional “From the Archives” blog series. On this occasion, my portfolio having been on my mind and little actual commissioned work, I was soon at it with a different mindset: actively trawling for photographs I’d once liked and discarded, to put them on my website.
Yes - finding ‘new’ images rather undermines the earlier cull - but anyway. And I knew a positive result would be unlikely.
We’ve all done it - we hope for a rediscovery of a photo in some unhelpfully-named “Maybe” folder which, with a fresh look after some years, aligns with one’s style again. One which might represent what we can and want to do, which could then be put into a portfolio. It would be something previously unappreciated, carelessly ignored. Something which with a bit of a dust-off, a new interpretation (we’ve since forgotten the context of the image), even a fresh run through PS, would be enough to get it onto the website. A new image, without even leaving the house.
The typical ‘deadpan’ portrait was one from a ‘Maybe’ folder and keeps coming up when I trawl old folders. I so want to like this kind of Sunday supplement image (or at least my efforts at them). But I don’t. I used to try to shoot this way from time to time, but it always felt forced. In this case, it didn’t really suit the subject. Somehow, others do the same shot better, and I’m never sure what ingredient is missing when I try. And although it’s important to push our boundaries and try things, with some shots I find I don’t really care after a while. This particular style is just not me.
Not from a “Maybe” folder, but posted as it’s the same basic shot as above, but this looks like I’ve done it more my way: a smile; her feet skewy; and her hands where she wanted them. Still, it’s nowhere near good enough for it to make the grade - it’s too simple a portrait.
Taken during corporate portrait sessions, these two images (above and right) were once potential portfolio material. While, I suppose, they fail by traditional standards, I felt they could perhaps fit in the portrait gallery instead.
However, on revisiting them again, nothing had changed. They’re not strong enough as portraits, and aren’t corporate. And perhaps the reason they don’t work is precisely because they’re neither one thing nor the other.
In the end, nothing was added to my website. But it’s never time wasted. Whenever I look through old work, I’m stock-taking, seeing how and where I’ve improved over time, how my approach and style have developed. Improving in some areas, and by definition, narrowing at the same time.
Oddly, I even notice things I used to do better. Or rather, I wish from time to time I could get something back of my older approach and style which, although less mature and of lower quality (technical and aesthetic), has an appeal, with its simplicity and immediacy. The combination of enthusiasm and ignorance.
There’s almost never anything good in old portfolio folders. And fewer which fit with what we’re up to now. It’s very hard to justify an image that never made it before, regardless of a retouch and wishful thinking. They all lack something - whatever was missing the first time, with years added.
From the Archives
Still, some images catch my eye even if they’re not very good. Often unworthy of much commentary, they’re interesting nonetheless - hence my “From the Archives” sets. These last few images below (to clarify - not potential website material) are some which popped up on this occasion:
Take that jarring colour palette from the earlier motocross shot, and add it to a dreamcoat.
Jazz hands, off-camera flash, a low angle, saturation off the scale, underexposed sky: this is a staple of simple, quirky ‘show picture’ press/PR photography. It actually ticks those boxes quite well - it’s not bad for what it is.
I always felt this was one of those images which, with a few tweaks, could have been very good. It’s an example of how the little details can add up. Maybe not now, but at some point in the past, this could have been a possible portfolio shot but for some simple improvements: a looser composition overall; the hand on the right lit properly; both hands more visible; a better sky; a bit more expression; jacket tidied up and/or pulled out at the bottom, perhaps filling the bottom of the frame with some movement blur.
Seeing these things and taking care of them in the time available for this sort of photo is a tall order, but the more you do it, it becomes second nature. If you didn’t read the link earlier, I talk about this in depth here.
This is another ‘show picture’, which I use in my Instagram / photography classes as an example of storytelling. A local school was creating a newspaper (boring), so I had them hamming it up (fun).
Nothing to do with show pictures or portfolios, but to close today’s post, this was an interesting one for me. A PR commission from many moons ago, above is one of the shots from a quick portrait session I did of two competition winners.
A portrait exhibition (not mine, alas) was being projected onto the National Theatre’s Flytower, on a loop. Part of competition prize was to have these images they’d just had taken, displayed first, to up open the show.
