Advice, Writing
01.06.2012
01.06.2012
Portfolios
QUESTION
When did you make your first portfolio (relative to your career, not a specific year or anything) and how did you decide what to put in it? What led you to decide it was ready to show people? How did you decide if you had enough of a certain type of work (shooting travel I assume you'd need some portraits, also landscapes and food, maybe even interiors)?
answer
My first portfolio came during my limited time assisting, once I realized that I wanted to start shooting, but needed something to show for it. At the time, Muji made what was essentially a low-budget photo album, with those clear pages that stick to the backing of the paper. So I bought one of those, and printed photos that fit with just enough space for the adhesive to stick. That was 2009 or so.
In terms of being ready… I always tell people that my spirit animal is a golden retriever, in the sense that I tend to be fairly uninhibited and genial and extroverted. It was less of “am I ready to show this work, oh gee, am I in a position to take a meeting and put it on the line” and more of a “HEY you look cool, do you want to hang out?!?” and brought my tennis ball over to photo editors.
TBH the portfolio was spare, it was a series of mostly 4x5 plates from a cross country cycling trip across the US I had taken over the summer. It had no bent to it other than “this is what I shoot like, here is a single project”. It had no sense of “sales” to it, and neither did my vibe, I was just an earnest 22 year old. My first meeting ever was with Clinton Cargill at the NYTimes Magazine, and I remember he flipped through the 40 or so images slowly, and asked a lot of terrific, inquisitive questions.
To this day, I still think it’s really important to create a portfolio that feels less like you’re selling your work and more like it’s a window into who you are, how you see, what your story is. I often find photography relates well to music, and my favorite albums are the ones that are most visceral, where you’re taken to a new place, no matter how specific or challenging. The albums that try to be everything to everyone (the slow song, the club song, the safe hit) never hold appeal because you never really know who the musician is, it just feels like they’re trying to make a hit album. Same goes for portfolio… don’t feel like you have to sell or prove your versatility per se, you should think of your viewpoint and your most compelling images first. Cause a photo editor will ultimately recognize that potential.
QUESTION
Once your first portfolio was out in the world, how did you get people to look at it? Via traditional "setting up meetings" methods or did you already know people that you wanted to show it to?
Answer
Yes, I definitely struggled with that, and it’s still hard for me to land meetings sometimes. In the early years, I didn’t know a soul. I was early 20s, living 3,000 miles from NYC, and knew nobody, had no name. I hit the mastheads hard, as I didn’t have the cash for a database, and kinda worked from there. Often, I would ask if the PE I was meeting with thought the work would be a good fit for someone they knew, as they know personal tastes better. And that helped open some more doors. I have a whole post about how to get meetings (in 2009) here. I will soon have a more comprehensive space for this kind of info, and additional questions like these.
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Did you get constructive criticism on your book? If so, who did you ask? What was the criticism and did you immediately take action to fix the things they critiqued?
Answer
Mmmmm I never really showed anyone else. In my experience, most everyone has a different opinion, so it’s like person A would say “take this image out” and then person B would say that’s their favorite image in the book. So, I just learned early on to go with my gut, and make my own album, so to speak. In the past and in the present, I do like to put a couple challenging images into the portfolio, just so it feels less like a slick and sales-y product, and something that ventures a bit. It’s also a nice way to keep variety to the sequencing. I often sequence in a way that would (theoretically) keep you on your toes, so that you never know what spread will come next (as opposed to feeling like you’re definitely in the food section, the portrait section, etc).
QUESTION
What were some of your first jobs? How did you figure out what to charge?
Answer
First jobs were for local weekly papers and magazines in Portland, Oregon, which is where I lived at the time. Those folks had very flat rates, and sometimes some built in expenses. You know, I’m such a dinosaur that I can’t really recall how I started to learn pricing structure, but it was pretty touch and go, and knowing that as the assignments started to require assistants and travel, that the overall numbers game would go up to. I remember that a photo editor would be like “we need to keep it under X number” and I’d almost fall over because it seemed like such a huge budget at the time. But I was also living in a land where beer cost a dollar during happy hour. The estimates definitely developed by talking to a network of friends who were all at a similar career level, and being super open-source with all of them.
QUESTION
When composing your images how much of what goes through your mind subjective vs objective, and if some is objective what are the rules do you keep in mind? (Especially for still life/food related shots) If subjective, what do you look to for inspiration that informs your taste? I'm wondering because as an assistant I'm mainly asked to think about and work on light but I spend little time composing the shots and directing talent.
Answer
I think it’s a good baseline to always try to be as subjective than objective. I’d always prefer the photo that makes me feel something and has a POV than a photo that’s maybe technically sharp but lacking in feeling. That said, I personally like more chaotic photos, and my favorite photographers— Lars Tunbjork, Rosalind Solomon, David Goldblatt, Malick Sidibe, Jack Davison, Takashi Homma— are all about taking you there in their POV, with no regard for objectivity.
When did you make your first portfolio (relative to your career, not a specific year or anything) and how did you decide what to put in it? What led you to decide it was ready to show people? How did you decide if you had enough of a certain type of work (shooting travel I assume you'd need some portraits, also landscapes and food, maybe even interiors)?
answer
My first portfolio came during my limited time assisting, once I realized that I wanted to start shooting, but needed something to show for it. At the time, Muji made what was essentially a low-budget photo album, with those clear pages that stick to the backing of the paper. So I bought one of those, and printed photos that fit with just enough space for the adhesive to stick. That was 2009 or so.
In terms of being ready… I always tell people that my spirit animal is a golden retriever, in the sense that I tend to be fairly uninhibited and genial and extroverted. It was less of “am I ready to show this work, oh gee, am I in a position to take a meeting and put it on the line” and more of a “HEY you look cool, do you want to hang out?!?” and brought my tennis ball over to photo editors.
TBH the portfolio was spare, it was a series of mostly 4x5 plates from a cross country cycling trip across the US I had taken over the summer. It had no bent to it other than “this is what I shoot like, here is a single project”. It had no sense of “sales” to it, and neither did my vibe, I was just an earnest 22 year old. My first meeting ever was with Clinton Cargill at the NYTimes Magazine, and I remember he flipped through the 40 or so images slowly, and asked a lot of terrific, inquisitive questions.
To this day, I still think it’s really important to create a portfolio that feels less like you’re selling your work and more like it’s a window into who you are, how you see, what your story is. I often find photography relates well to music, and my favorite albums are the ones that are most visceral, where you’re taken to a new place, no matter how specific or challenging. The albums that try to be everything to everyone (the slow song, the club song, the safe hit) never hold appeal because you never really know who the musician is, it just feels like they’re trying to make a hit album. Same goes for portfolio… don’t feel like you have to sell or prove your versatility per se, you should think of your viewpoint and your most compelling images first. Cause a photo editor will ultimately recognize that potential.
QUESTION
Once your first portfolio was out in the world, how did you get people to look at it? Via traditional "setting up meetings" methods or did you already know people that you wanted to show it to?
Answer
Yes, I definitely struggled with that, and it’s still hard for me to land meetings sometimes. In the early years, I didn’t know a soul. I was early 20s, living 3,000 miles from NYC, and knew nobody, had no name. I hit the mastheads hard, as I didn’t have the cash for a database, and kinda worked from there. Often, I would ask if the PE I was meeting with thought the work would be a good fit for someone they knew, as they know personal tastes better. And that helped open some more doors. I have a whole post about how to get meetings (in 2009) here. I will soon have a more comprehensive space for this kind of info, and additional questions like these.
MY current portfolio
QUESTIONDid you get constructive criticism on your book? If so, who did you ask? What was the criticism and did you immediately take action to fix the things they critiqued?
Answer
Mmmmm I never really showed anyone else. In my experience, most everyone has a different opinion, so it’s like person A would say “take this image out” and then person B would say that’s their favorite image in the book. So, I just learned early on to go with my gut, and make my own album, so to speak. In the past and in the present, I do like to put a couple challenging images into the portfolio, just so it feels less like a slick and sales-y product, and something that ventures a bit. It’s also a nice way to keep variety to the sequencing. I often sequence in a way that would (theoretically) keep you on your toes, so that you never know what spread will come next (as opposed to feeling like you’re definitely in the food section, the portrait section, etc).
QUESTION
What were some of your first jobs? How did you figure out what to charge?
Answer
First jobs were for local weekly papers and magazines in Portland, Oregon, which is where I lived at the time. Those folks had very flat rates, and sometimes some built in expenses. You know, I’m such a dinosaur that I can’t really recall how I started to learn pricing structure, but it was pretty touch and go, and knowing that as the assignments started to require assistants and travel, that the overall numbers game would go up to. I remember that a photo editor would be like “we need to keep it under X number” and I’d almost fall over because it seemed like such a huge budget at the time. But I was also living in a land where beer cost a dollar during happy hour. The estimates definitely developed by talking to a network of friends who were all at a similar career level, and being super open-source with all of them.
QUESTION
When composing your images how much of what goes through your mind subjective vs objective, and if some is objective what are the rules do you keep in mind? (Especially for still life/food related shots) If subjective, what do you look to for inspiration that informs your taste? I'm wondering because as an assistant I'm mainly asked to think about and work on light but I spend little time composing the shots and directing talent.
Answer
I think it’s a good baseline to always try to be as subjective than objective. I’d always prefer the photo that makes me feel something and has a POV than a photo that’s maybe technically sharp but lacking in feeling. That said, I personally like more chaotic photos, and my favorite photographers— Lars Tunbjork, Rosalind Solomon, David Goldblatt, Malick Sidibe, Jack Davison, Takashi Homma— are all about taking you there in their POV, with no regard for objectivity.
