The Beginner Photography Podcast

How to Make Your Photography Impossible to Ignore with a Portfolio

• Raymond Hatfield

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#452 In today's episode of the podcast, we explore how to build a captivating photography portfolio in the digital age, focusing on showcasing your best work, building a professional identity, and the transformative power of a well-curated portfolio.

THE BIG IDEAS

  • Showcase Your Best Work: Select images that distinctly reflect your talent and style. Focus on quality, impactful work that resonates with your niche. Regularly refresh your collection.
  • Build a Professional Identity: Establish your unique artistic vision and credibility through a portfolio that demonstrates both your emotional depth and technical skills.
  • Transformative Power of Curation: Continuously refining your portfolio not only tracks personal growth but also enhances your professional opportunities and adapts to trends.
  • Presentation Diversity: Present your work across various platforms to ensure accessibility, from digital galleries and physical portfolios to social media, each telling your unique story.

Resources:
Download your free Portfolio building workbook - https://beginnerphotopod.com/portfolioworkbook

Sign up for your free CloudSpot Account today at www.DeliverPhotos.com

Connect with Raymond!


Thanks for listening & keep shooting!

Raymond Hatfield:

Hey, welcome to the beginner photography podcast. I'm your host, Raymond Hadfield. And today we are talking about creating your first photography portfolio. So this is a very important topic because, we spend a lot of time talking about going out and shooting, what to shoot, how to get better at the things that you do shoot, become more confident with your camera, but what's the point. Right? Like taking photos is only half of photography. The other half is actually sharing your photos and sharing your your voice, your message and how you see the world with others. And a photography portfolio is going to help you to do that. So today I want to help you to create your own photography portfolio in the hopes that you can go out there and after listening to this episode, you'll have everything that you need to build a portfolio for yourself because it really is a super cool thing to see a collection, even if it's just a small collection of your best work all in one. Now it is important to know before we get into this, that like a portfolio is not social media, right? portfolio is a collection of your best of the best of that best. And just know that, maybe you haven't been shooting for a long time and you may be thinking, yeah, but I don't have like a huge collection of images to be able to create a portfolio. If you walk away from this exercise with just like five photos, that's awesome. That would be wonderful because five photos can be a very impactful thing, right? Because a portfolio's job is to showcase your abilities as a photographer, both from a technical sense and an emotional sense, so that you can appeal to, a potential client or somebody else who you are connecting with. And that doesn't always take a thousand photos like, we may think that it does. So, with that, let's just go ahead and jump into the first part of this equation here, which is just talking about the modern photography portfolio. So if you were to think of a photography portfolio, you would probably think, some large printed binder of images going to like an art buyer or something and showing them off or an editor so that they could, see your style of photography. And, times have changed, I think, since, like, the, those days of, going to a newspaper and hoping to be hired as a photojournalist, there's a lot more, we live in a more digital world today, right, and because of that, that means that we also have access to more digital tools as well not only from, like, online galleries like our sponsor CloudSpot, but also our social media profiles And, these digital presentations that we have to show off what it is that we do to the world. Now I will get into why I think that a physical portfolio is extremely important. But know that, if you are just getting started you have to have some sort of digital presence. And that could be, having your own website or using tools like CloudSpot, like I just mentioned. And in fact using CloudSpot. It's easier than ever to have a photography portfolio ready at a moment's notice because with with a website, you can pull up your website and show it off to people, but there's also going to be a lot of copy. They're talking about who you are, what you do, calls to action. I really enjoyed having a cloud spot gallery as my portfolio, which is what I do currently because at a moment's notice, you don't want people to go through your website, like reading all this stuff. If you just want to show them some photos and with CloudSpot, you can upload your photos to it. And then what I do is you can download your gallery as an app on your phone so that it's always ready to go with just like, like those best photos to show off. And that's like the job of your portfolio is to be able to show off your images, who you are. Your proficiency, your skill as a photographer to somebody off, or to somebody quickly, so that they can make a decision, or something like that. So, again, remember, you don't have to have a ton of crazy tools to be able to to do this, to just show off your work, but using the right tools is extremely, extremely important. Now back to the point of having a portfolio in today's digital world. It's so many reasons, and I want to stress that like having a portfolio, even if you're not a professional photographer, if you're not, like if you have no intentions of becoming a professional photographer is important for. A lot of these reasons, right? So, so for the first one, a portfolio allows you to build one, a professional identity not necessarily like as a business person, but professional identity as far as what you do, right? Like who you are as an artist, a portfolio allows you to show off your specialization it allows you to show off how you communicate your value. And who you are, because who you are will attract to the kind of person who you, who would love your work. I know that that sounds, difficult to do. We talk a lot about creating your own style and identity in your images. But the best way to do that is just to be who you are and we can definitely explore that topic a lot more which I've done in the past and I know that we'll do more in the future but sticking within the world of building your portfolio. really important to show that off show off who you are. It's not even though you think that it might be it's not just about the images. It's also about you because you're the person taking the images Reason number two why a portfolio is still super important today is because not only does it allow you to show off your kind of professional identity, but it allows you to showcase your artistic vision and what's different is that we all have a artistic vision And an image, when we're thinking about it from a, what is in this image, what makes an image good or what makes an image bad, it comes down to the technical and the emotional. Being able to showcase your artistic vision allows you to show your technical and your emotional capabilities. It shows how you use lens choice, right? Are we gonna go wide here? Are we gonna go nice and tight? It shows how you use light, how you see light, how light can enhance your images. It shows how you edit your photos. Do you like these bright, saturated colors, or do you like more of a muted or more of a natural true to vision type style of photography? Your editing comes through in these images as well. It also showcases how comfortable your subject is with you. If you're photographing weddings, if you're photographing families, and your subjects look comfortable, we as humans are going to see that and say, okay, well, Raymond, this photographer, can obviously make his subjects feel comfortable in front of the camera, which inherently just feels awkward and feels weird anyway. And that is an important thing as well. It can also show how you want your images to make others feel because as I said, on top of the technical capabilities, you want to show off your emotional capabilities as well. And if you can create an image with your artistic vision, you are able to see and capture the world in a certain way. Right? And emotion is going to come through in your images just inherently if, if people are in there, if there's light, if there's drama, if there's emotion in your photos, so, how you choose those photos that you, or how you pick the photos that you choose to show in your portfolio shows people how you want your images to make people feel. So, if all of your images have a, very, happy feeling. People are going to pick up on that. Maybe it could be self conscious or subconscious. If your images have more of a introspective, kind of creepy feeling, dystopian type vibe to them, people are going to pick up on that as well. So again, having a portfolio allows you to showcase your artistic vision very well. The next thing having a portfolio today does is that it builds trust and credibility. Those who have not worked with you are probably going to be the ones who will be looking at your portfolio, right? Because otherwise if somebody's worked with you, they don't, really need to see your portfolio. They already trust you. But people who haven't worked with you want to see your portfolio to know that they're not going to get scammed. Nobody wants to be scammed. It's already uncomfortable enough as is. Before you get in front of a camera, the last thing people want to do is to do that and not get the images out of them. So they want to make sure that they're not going to get scammed. And your portfolio is this tangible proof of your abilities, right? this proof that you are able to consistently deliver results that they may be looking for. It also shows that you have invested time and effort into your craft of photography. And again, that is really important to be able to do if you are a new photographer and you haven't necessarily built a reputation for yourself. So having this portfolio is almost like instant. Like, yeah, I don't, you don't know me by name, but like, here's proof that I've done things. And if you like them, then it's proof that I, I can do things that you like for you as well. Another thing that having a portfolio allows you to do is that it opens up these doors to other opportunities as well. So, just from my own experience if somebody were to reach out to me to ask to be a guest on the podcast, but like they didn't send anything with them and I had no idea who they were, I'm very likely to say, no thank you but if they send a series of images and I can kind of get an idea of who they are as a photographer and what it is that they do, I'm more likely to say yes. So because of that, if you have a portfolio of these images you can start to grow a, a professional position for yourself. By being on, say, other podcasts or often if you are applying for grants or something like that, you would need to provide some sort of portfolio so that this organization knows that they're giving their money to you. Somebody who again is reputable and can probably, do something with this money. there's this quote that luck favors the prepared. So having a portfolio prepares you for when luck happens. If somebody were to say , Hey, I have this great idea for you. You should apply for this grant to be able to do it. Well, if you're prepared, you have a portfolio Then that's wonderful or maybe a more common situation. Maybe, Hey this is my friend, Sarah or whatever. She's actually getting married in a few months. And I told her about you. It's like, Oh, great. I don't have anything to show you, she's probably not going to think twice about you and she's probably not going to hire you to shoot her wedding, but if you had a portfolio ready or just able to show, send something then your chances go way up, again, having a portfolio opens up these doors and opportunities that maybe you didn't know that you were missing And lastly, having a portfolio, this one's actually my favorite, is that it allows you to benchmark your personal growth. Your portfolio should be your best images up to that point, right? If you're showing off a portfolio, these should kind of be your best photos and most accurate representation of who you are as a photographer today. But next year you're going to be a different photographer because you will have had more work, you will have had more experience, you will have had more time to develop your artistic senses and abilities that you're going to want to show them off to. So, next year you're going to have a new portfolio and we'll talk about that here in a bit as well. So over time, say four or five years time of doing this updating your portfolio every year. What is so cool is to be able to look back at your different portfolios and, be able to definitively see where and how you grew as a photographer, because I can tell you. I have before felt like I've been in a slump, like, oh my gosh, I don't know if I grew at all this year. I don't know if I did anything different, but then when I build my portfolio for that year and I look back at the previous year's portfolio, I can definitively see there's no question that I grew as a photographer and seeing where I was and where I am now, and even though I didn't recognize it in the moment, because it's a slow build, it's a slow process it allows me to see like, oh, I'm actually changing in this way, I like this, and now I can continue to do that, I can continue to get better at that thing or, Ooh, I see this and I actually am not liking this as much as I thought that I would. So I'm going to go back to kind of what I was doing before. So again, it allows you to kind of benchmark your growth as a photographer. And that is such a, a big thing that even if you're not shooting for clients or for money for business. And it is just a personal hobby of yours that is hands down the most valuable thing that you can do. Because, not all of us have a network of other photographers who we can send them our photos and get feedback and, and see how it is that we are growing. So those are kind of the benefits of having a portfolio still today. So again, it's not all about, Oh, I'm trying to, work with this ad, I'm not, I'm trying to get in front of this editor. I'm trying to book these big clients or something. There's a lot of reasons to have one that aren't necessarily related to, what you thought that a portfolio of the past was, and again, like there are so many tools. that you can use for a portfolio. I know that when I had started out, I just used my website because I wasn't networking in person or anything like that, but I quickly realized that potential clients really wanted to see more from me. And I think that's because like I was just new, right? I didn't have a reputation or trust built. So it's like when I'd meet them. They'd be like, yeah, we saw all the photos on your website and be like, oh good, like, are you ready to book? And they'd be like, do you have anything else to show us? So what I did was I, I just built an eight by eight album with probably only 20 to 30, like of my best images at the time. And I, I had that album made by a service called album 99, which is by Nations Photo Lab here in the states, it's called the album 99 because albums are just 99 and the quality. Like, most people have not actually held an album in their hands, so they just think that, it's flimsy paper, like it's photos printed on flimsy floppy not great quality paper. To get an album that is made out of real thick, Cardstock, lay flat pages great matte texture inside that not only allows them to, see more photos that they were hoping to see, but like, physically built trust with them, because they were able to hold in their hands this thing that is the same quality album that they would be getting. Today, because I'm not actively booking weddings as I had before, as I mentioned earlier, I keep those images that I had in my past portfolio in a CloudSpot gallery. And, again, because CloudSpot allows you to download a gallery on your phone as an app, which is great for clients because now they can just, have they don't have to remember a link, it's always on their home screen. They can just view all their photos whenever they want to. It's also great to have as their portfolio because it's just instant access. You don't have to wait for the internet to download all these photos. You don't have to remember the link. You don't have to type anything in. You're just there, right, from your home screen. And that, now removes me from having to carry around what turned into a 50 page 12 inch by 12 inch album. , and, still, you find yourself in these situations where you're talking about yourself and it's great to show, but it's no replacement for a physical portfolio, but being able to share something is wonderful, and we all have our phones on us 24 7 now anyway, so that's great. Let's talk about the part of a portfolio that is probably the most daunting and is also the main point sharing our best work. This is a scary thing because again, if you are a new photographer, maybe you don't have a large body of work and you think that you probably don't have enough work that is worthy of building a portfolio. And actually going through all of your images to pick out your best of the best feels kind of, tough when you go through like 40, 000 photos and find that, Oh, there's only 10 here that I would want to put into a portfolio. That's okay. I want to give you some tips here on, on what to do about that. And trust me, we've all been there. It is totally, totally, totally fine. But how do you pick out your photos? How do you pick out the photos that you want to go into this album? There's several parts to this. The first part is knowing who your portfolio's target audience is. Because, a portfolio made for potential clients, like a bride or a family is different than a portfolio that you would show to, professional contacts or a potential art gallery. If you're just showing off things like headshots or architecture, it doesn't need to be the same thing as if showing off your images to to a bride, right? But if you if you shoot weddings or lot of new photographers shoot in multiple genres, right? did this You may do this too. So if you shoot something like weddings and seniors, I would implore you to have two separate portfolios because a bride does not care how grown up you can make a 17 year old look. They just don't care, right? And you may think like, oh, but technically this is such a good photo and look at the light and look at the company. I get it, but a bride does not care, again, what photos of a senior may look like. They simply want to know that you know how to do the job that they're looking for to a degree that they will be happy with so if you shoot weddings, create a wedding portfolio. If you also shoot seniors create a senior portfolio So to start again, you need to pick your key audience for me for brides what I ended up doing was including images in my portfolio that actually my portfolio had more photos of the bride and their mother than like my website did. And I'll tell you why here in a second. Because step two here is that we need to think about where they will also be viewing your portfolio. So if you're meeting a person, then have something physical to show them. It's just great, honestly, holding onto something. It's awesome. But if you're the type of photographer who often you get booked online, maybe it's commercial product things like that. Then the easiest way possible for them to view your portfolio is what you got to figure out, it's really important so that you can make an impact, maybe it's a PDF, maybe it's a link to a special page on your website. Maybe it's at CloudSpot gallery. Having a CloudSpot gallery is, is honestly probably the easiest way if you are starting out. Because one, it requires no knowledge of how to build websites. But two, also requires no knowledge of how to, to do any sort of designing of images, like in a PDF. When you upload your photos to CloudSpot, it already looks beautiful when you create your gallery. It's already done. There's already like image template layouts. It just looks great. You can also give people private access so that you'll know when they view the portfolio, which you can't necessarily do with a website or a PDF. My portfolio again was for brides. But it was, when I had to think about where they were going to be viewing it, it's for brides to view in a coffee shop or a brewery. And again, this was going to be in person. So, it had to be physical. Coffee shops, breweries, these are typically dim spaces. I decided to make my book. large my portfolio large, make it a 12 by 12 album. And typically there was only one to two pages, or I'm sorry, one to two photos per page max to, make sure that they stayed a large size. There was a white border around the images to frame them in. And all of the photos in the album, because I knew that it was again, a dim space, actually bumped up the exposure by about half a stop. And then I lowered the contrast a bit as well just to make them easier to view in a low light place like a coffee shop or a brewery. So that is why it's important to think about where they're going to be viewing this. , if they're going to be viewing it just on their computer. Obviously, you want it to look good, but if they're going to be viewing it in person you should probably make some changes to the images, whether it's going to be outdoors some event , maybe you're sharing photos at like a, like a bridal show or some sort of like a farmer's market or something or if you're going to be showing them off in a dimly lit coffee shop. So there we go. We figured out who our target audience is so that we know how many portfolios to create. And then we thought about where they're going to be viewing it so that we can make some considerations on how to actually build the portfolio itself. Now that we know who our portfolio is for. We need to start picking out our best work. And again, , this is a very difficult thing to do. So I'm going to give you some tricks on how you can very quickly create a portfolio, maybe not today, but definitely in the future. Since I edit all my photos in Lightroom within Lightroom, after I would ingest a wedding, I would then cull through all the photos so that I could pick the keepers and the rejects. And then I would do a second pass of just the keepers and then give just the best of the best images a green color rating. Now, in a whole wedding, this might be 10 photos. This might be five photos. It might be 15 photos. it's not a hundred photos. It's a very, it's literally like the best of the best and what I'm looking for is not what are the best, 15 images that can tell the story of this wedding day. I'm thinking. What is the best here technically, and what is the best here emotionally? Like, what draws me in the most? And then, within Lightroom, I created a smart collection. So, I told it any images that are colored green, put it in this collection. So that way over time, Lightroom just automatically builds a collection of my best images. It's just one spot where they all are. So I really suggest that you start doing this yourself today before your Lightroom catalog gets, 40, 50, 60, a hundred thousand images, and you have to go through all of them to pick out your best photos. So just start with your next session. Flag or give all of your best of the best, a green color rating. And, for engagement sessions, this might just be like two photos. Honestly, like, seriously, be real strict with yourself. Just only pick your best of the best here. But if you don't have this set up, then let's go ahead and, do a little exercise here that I call the first impressions test to get your photos picked out. So all you need to do is simply open up your Lightroom catalog. View all photos so that, all photos are, right there in front of you, you can scroll, it's not just, this event and then that event, and it's like everything all at once, right. And then just quickly go through your photos and flag all of the photos that jump out to you and make an impression. If something jumps out, flag it green. Don't sit there and analyze like, Hmm, what is it about this photo that makes me like, we're not getting, we're not getting there yet. Like just do the first impressions, flag it green. And again, if you only have like 5 or 10 photos in your whole collection, that's fine. Like the point of this portfolio is so that you can grow as a photographer and shoot more. Book more shoots, do more. So it will grow. But right now it may only be 5 or 10 photos and that's fine. But the next step here is then to figure out what you have and then what you need. So when you look at your best of the best photos, you're going to realize some things that you never realized about your photography. And that might be, Oh, wow. I take a lot of full body shots, but I don't actually have many close up, tight headshots. Or maybe it's the opposite. Maybe it's, maybe I have a lot of headshots, but they don't have a lot of emotion. It's just like, dead eyes looking into the camera. Like, wow, I never really realized this before. Maybe you're gonna see, wow, I have a lot of black and white images that are my favorites, but only one to two in color. What does that mean? What does that mean for you? And these are things that you're gonna have to figure out. Do you actually want more headshots? Do you want more emotion in your subjects? Do you want more color images? Or, are you realizing a pattern that's going to help you in solidifying your style of photography? These are things that you gotta figure out. But let's say that you realize, Oh, out of all of my favorites here, I picked a lot of wide shots and I don't have many headshots. This is the time where you now go back through all of your images. Again, just do a quick scan to see if you have any photos that maybe fit the need. So maybe you have a headshot or two, that, like, it's good, but it didn't necessarily jump out to you at first. Well, maybe include one in there. Because, I've had times where I've shown a couple of my portfolio and they said, Oh, you know what, like, we just like, I didn't get picked, because, oh, we didn't see a lot of group photos of, the entire bridal party. And I thought to myself, like, Huh, okay, well, I have plenty of those, I just didn't include them here in my portfolio. So, if there's a gap that you think needs to be filled, then go ahead and look through all your photos and see if you have what it takes to fill that for now, because now you're going to have a starting point on where you can improve because if you have these wide shots that you love. Headshots, not so much, right? Close ups. These people don't really look that great or that happy. You now have marching orders for your next session or portfolio building shoot to focus on exactly what you need to get. So, we'll just use that exact example there, after I built my first portfolio, I realized that I had way too many wide shots and not enough close ups. Close ups that you can, , connect. So for my next few weddings, I really focused on getting those close ups that had emotion in them, so that I could put them into my portfolio to make an emotional impact. these are things that you may not realize at the time while you're shooting, because maybe you just like wider shots better. But now knowing that there's kind of this empty spot, you can go for those photos because, as a photographer, you can get those. They may not be your favorite, but you can get them. And you know that, maybe brides like them. So you can get them. So you might as well show them off if you can get it really good. So that's super helpful to now be able to have something to go out and specifically shoot for the next time you go and shoot. Now, once you have all of these images, I'd recommend that when you export them, you keep them all in a folder of just the exported images. So if you ever need something like really quickly to post online maybe you need to build a flyer for, charity event bridal show, something like that. You're going to have quick access to your best work. Super helpful. Saves a ton of time. Next let's talk about diversifying your portfolio. That just sounds all like stocks and bonds, which is always fun to talk about everybody loves talking about stocks and bonds but this is kind of the the next phase because we have chosen our target audience. We know how we're gonna show the portfolio. We've now picked out our favorite photos Now we need to figure out this it like do we just have this portfolio because the answer is no, when we talk about creating our first portfolio, it is really important to have several options to showcase your work. There's that phrase, be where the people are. For me, while a printed portfolio was important because it made the most impact, I was only showing that when I was at the stage of meeting them in person. Before we got to that point, they may have found me. And then they were interested enough that they went to my website. And then they were still interested enough that they would then contact me to meet. There were several stages that I had to go through before I could get to showing them my portfolio. So, having a collection of your images in different places is important. We can all understand this, but still remember that social media is not a portfolio. Social media is simply a place to pique somebody's interest and show that you're active. Right. The next step being your website, the job of your website is to deliver your message of what it is that you provide to your clients. And then your portfolio shows how serious you are and just is the goal is to solidify their choice in you. So think about the things that you'll post on your Instagram. Think about the photos that you know, you'll post on your website. And obviously we've now gathered the photos that we're going to post in our portfolio. For me, I'll kind of give you the behind the curtains look. of the strategy that I used when it came to choosing the images for Instagram, choosing the images for my website, and then choosing the images for my portfolio in the hopes that it'll help you. I tended to post like happy or funny images on, my social, even if it was less than a technically good photo. Because that's the type of bride that initially I want to attract. A bride who finds light even when, say, most would feel stressed out, which is common on a wedding day. My website is then where I shared images with more connection, because that's kind of the point of a wedding, right? And after all is, is you're connecting your lives together. And then my portfolio was focused on more technically sound images, because at that point, maybe mom was there, maybe, both parents or, this may be the first time that the, groom to be could also be seeing my images. I wanted those photos to be the best that they could be to build the most confidence because at that point, I don't really need to sell them on what it is that I do. They just need to know that I can do a good job for them. It's also important to remember that what I shoot and how I shoot is exactly the same. So this is just a difference in image selection. So it's not like when I'm at a wedding, I think to myself, Oh, this photo will be a happy one. This one will be a funny one. This one will have more connection. This one will be technically much better than the rest. It's like, I still shoot the same. It's still the same people. It's still the same event. It's just a difference in image selection. It's not like somebody is going to check out my, Instagram and say like, yeah, I really like this person. Then go to my website and be totally confused because the images are so different. They're not again, same people, same smiles. It's just a different focus on the images that I have chosen to show. So for you. Try to come up with a simple system like that for diversifying the images that you are going to show. So all of this leads us to this next section right here, which is more of a next level. This isn't the 101 of how to build your portfolio. This is the 201 of how to build your portfolio. This isn't necessary. But this step right here is going to help you make more of an impact with your portfolio. And that is telling a story through your images. So now that we've collected our images and figure out kind of where they're going to go as far as social, website, portfolio. It's now time to sequence them, which means, put them together in a way that tells a story. Now, you may be thinking, but I got multiple sessions. I have multiple different people. I have multiple different subjects. How am I going to tell a story, that essentially is, a year or two years worth of photos in a linear fashion? As humans, we are really good at looking for and understanding stories. Our brains crave it, every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. We know this. Our brains fundamentally understand this. This is who, this is how it started. This is the drama or the action. And this is how it ended, right? Every book. And if your portfolio is, in a, it starts here and it ends here, it's going to have a middle as well. So you might as well do your best to turn these images into some sort of narrative. If you shoot weddings, this is easy. If you shoot families, this is easy. But, like, I don't even have to get into how you build that. There's a clear beginning, middle, and an end. But what if you shoot things like food, or architecture, or landscapes? Then, creating a beginning and a middle and an end is a bit trickier. People love a story that grabs their attention right away. So, I suggest starting your portfolio with your absolute best photo. Let them know you're not playing around, right? This is what you're going to expect throughout this portfolio. That's what you want them to feel like. Whoa. Okay, like settle in here we go. And then you get into the beginning the middle and the end And this is kind of a structure that follows and this is how I built my portfolio in the beginning section of my portfolio. I would choose images that might be a bit wider. It might be more establishing shots. It might be not necessarily like a, , whoa, what's happening here, but just like a, okay, I'm starting to get it. Just kind of lay out. If somebody were to say, like, pick out your three or four images that say, this is a, Raymond Hatfield image. What would that look like? This would be it. So that I can start to set the scene of who I am as a photographer so that they can kind of get an idea of what to expect. The middle part of my portfolio was much more juicier. I might have a might choose images with a tighter lens it might have more detail. There might be more emotion. There would be some drama in my photos so if you're shooting landscapes or food or whatever, that may mean images with, more saturation or more bold colors or contrast. And then the end of my portfolio is where we start to wrap things up. This may be, you know, another, probably 20%. of the portfolio and these images are going to be more serene. It's going to be more mid shots, not wide, not tight, kind of more mid, more serene images that make the viewer feel like they completely understand what's happening. There's no weirdness. There's no like, that's a crazy moment at a wedding or wow, that's the wildest cocktail I've ever seen if you're a, food and beverage photographer. But just like, this makes me feel happy, this makes me feel comfortable. That may literally be a sunset shot. Don't overthink this, just, try to feed into that human psyche of like why we like images and how to build a story. And again, these images don't necessarily have to directly link together or be from one session, but subconsciously you should be able to explain why each photo that you chose in that section makes sense for why it's there. That's it. If you want to go more in depth about, everything portfolio related from building story into your portfolio to writing an artist statement, then I would encourage you to grab my free workbook, curating your first photography portfolio. It is a step by step guide to work through as you build this for yourself. It's going to help you transform your collection of photos into a captivating narrative. So if you want to grab it for yourself, head over to beginner photo pod. com forward slash portfolio workbook to download your free copy and start crafting a portfolio that is not only going to showcase your talent, tell your unique story. So again, that's beginner photopod. com forward slash portfolio workbook. If there's really one thing that I want you to know about having a portfolio, it's that it truly. Is a tool for not only personal growth as a photographer, but like for opening up the doors to other opportunities. The job of a portfolio is to be a tool to help you get hired by potential clients. And if there's one thing that I learned over 10 years of shooting weddings, it's that. You will never know where a booking is going to come from. I'm sure they came from Facebook and referrals, but they also came from overhearing a couple talk about wedding planning while at a restaurant. They came from someone asking if I shoot weddings while I was just out on a photo walk. They came from, fellow business owners. be prepared to show off your best work when the moment arrives. Keep an 8x8 portfolio album in your car or your camera bag, it's small enough, it'll fit in there. And then when showing somebody your portfolio, here's a tip that I wish I would have known earlier on, don't feel the need to talk through every image. So when somebody's looking through your portfolio, you think you don't have to be there to describe that moment or you know what you did hear from a photographic sense I had found that the less that I would say when somebody looked through my images The more they would I don't know connect the dots on how even if they didn't need my services How they could figure out who in their life would need my services. So when you let somebody look at your portfolio, just let them look and let them enjoy. So this brings us to the last part here, which is updating our portfolio and maintaining it. So as you build your portfolio, the goal is to book more shoots, right? So you will book more clients as you book more clients your skills will grow and as your skills grow, you will become a better photographer, who can then take better photos. Your portfolio should reflect that. So, I would update my portfolio once a year. I found that that was a good amount of time to see change in my photography skills and still keep my images up to date. So it's not that necessarily I would be a radically different photographer but it's always nice to, keep those updated images, but still not have to, I'm not going to do this after every session because that would just be a waste of time. But for your type of photography for your clientele for your style, you may need to update more or less often. If you're a new photographer, you will probably need to update it more often. I would say every four to six months as your skills and abilities just kind of grow more rapidly. And that's another reason why it's important to keep your photos organized in Lightroom with your favorites so that you can make this process more efficient. quicker. Building a portfolio shouldn't be like a month long thing. It shouldn't require like a project management background, you should just be able to pump this out real quick. So again, having the tools set up for you within Lightroom, super important. And another thing, like you don't need to completely update the entire thing or replace all of your images. Some images are just timeless and that's fine. I mean, literally the first engagement session that I did here in Indiana, still to this day, some of my favorite and best images, and they are timeless, so they're still in my portfolio, even though I took them, I don't know, 13 years ago or so but they're still the point is, like, look for gaps, we talked about earlier. Gaps are errors on your part. Update those images. If you realize that, you don't have a lot of headshots with emotion, well, hopefully over the past year, you had been shooting hoping to get those. So that now you have the images that you can update your portfolio with and that may mean say that your portfolio is 10 images. Maybe it's 20 images, maybe you only update three or four maybe you update six. Maybe only update one. That's fine. That's totally fine The point is is that you are growing and that you are moving forward now once you're done It is so important to get some feedback, right? If you have a photographer friend that you can show this potential portfolio to, then great. If not feel free to share it with your family, but I gotta tell you. Any photo that I would show, I don't know, my mom, she'd be like, this is great. This is wonderful, even if it wasn't. So rather than asking, what do you think of these photos? Try to ask questions like if you had to remove one photo, what one would it be? What photo do you think is the strongest? Is there anything that you think is missing? Questions like that, questions where there's a direct answer. All right? And then when you do that, try to remember that they are simply sharing their opinion and if they say that a photo doesn't work, consider it, but take into account the photographer that you are or that you want to become and the audience that the portfolio is intended for. So I don't know if that photo is the best that you have to accomplish those goals. Well, then keep it. But still try to work on getting something better moving forward. That is how I would go about getting feedback. If you are not in a community of photographers or have friends who are other photographers. So that is it, building a portfolio again, is something that is, is incredibly helpful still in today's more digitally focused world in helping not only you to book clients, but also see your own growth as a photographer and just be prepared if something were to happen, maybe you decide 10 years from now that even though you didn't want to be a professional working photographer for the past 10 years, maybe you would like to do that. I know a lot of photographers decided that when, once COVID hit, once, a lot of people got laid off fired from their jobs, let go, they realized, oh, I have a skill that I could lean back on or lean on and still create money. If that's something that you want to do in the future, then that's great. So preparing yourself now for whether or not that actually happens is just a super important thing to do. . So hopefully I walked through everything for you today from, talking to you about why a portfolio is still important, how to pick out your best photos how to organize those photos to be able to tell a story, sequence them how to use your portfolio to grow your clientele start booking more, how to know what to focus on when shooting, and of course, how to update and maintain your portfolio as well. That is it for today. If you have any questions, I'd love to hear from you within the beginner photography podcast community. It's a free and private place to ask questions and interact with other photographers. So you can feel free to join. I would love to have you over at beginnerphotopod. com forward slash group. Today. So that is it until next week. Remember the more that you shoot today, the better of a photographer you will be tomorrow. Talk soon. Thank you for listening to the beginner photography podcast. Keep shooting and we'll see you next week.