What is a Portfolio?
It's a word that is thrown around among photographers and artists across all medium - portfolio. And you might be asking yourself "What the heck is a portfolio anyway? Isn't my Instagram feed my portfolio?" Yes, and no. In one sense, your collection of images captured, posted, shared, etc. is the progress you've made in your personal artist's journey, but to call it a "portfolio" is potentially limiting yourself. This statement may make more sense once we define the word.
Portfolio - a set of pieces of creative work collected by someone to display their skills, especially to a potential employer
It's the goal of every professional photographer to possess a truly stunning portfolio, and let me explain why.
THINKING TWICE ABOUT BEETLES
Now, I pulled the definition above directly from the dictionary, so it's not me just making things up, I promise. According to our current dictionary, then, your photography portfolio is your collection of photos that best displays your skills as a photographer especially to share with a potential employer so that you are selected for a job. If you're trying to get a job with National Geographic as a photojournalist in war-torn regions of the world, your portfolio shouldn't be photos of your dog running around your backyard. If you're trying to get a job as a wedding photographer, you better have some golden lit, floofy bokeh romance photos on that Insta feed and not every coffee or pastry you've ever purchased. Get the idea?
The beetle you see above is pulled directly from my Instagram feed. Cute, yes, but definitely not part of my professional portfolio unless I want to get some freelance jobs from an entomologist.
Take some time and define your career goals before just throwing together all your best photos into a "portfolio." Knowing where you want to be with your life will not only help you define what your portfolio(s) needs to look like, but it will also help you find your artistic voice. From that point moving forward, you will be "on the hunt" for portfolio images instead of just haplessly snapping a photo at anything and everything that catches your attention... like my beetle.
WHAT HAPPENED TO MY PORTFOLIO?
If you've spent any time perusing my website, you might have spotted a "portfolio" tab in the menus. Upon clicking on it, you will most likely be disappointed (perhaps shocked) to see very few photos displayed there. This is not a website error, this is a direct result of the fact that 99% of the photos I take - and post on Instagram - are not portfolio quality.
Just because you take a good photo does not mean it automatically goes into a portfolio, and just because an image is not portfolio caliber does not mean it should not be photographed!
I honestly cannot emphasize this enough! Don't stress about your portfolio especially if you're still in the learning phase! Take a hundred photos of dumb stuff that may not ever be shared or even edited. Experiment with your camera and test different styles. Don't be afraid to take a photo even if you know it won't turn out good! I've taken hundreds and hundreds of photos since I started seriously pursuing landscape photography, and every single one of them was an experiment. To walk away with even a couple of portfolio level pieces is exciting to me!
IDENTIFY YOUR PORTFOLIO IMAGES
When first building out this website, I asked my wife if she believed any of my images were portfolio material. I had already narrowed down my gallery to roughly 30 photos that I thought were pretty amazing.
Side note: find someone you trust to be honest with you and have them look at your art both objectively and subjectively. The person I trust most in this world is my wife, but you could also ask a close friend, colleague, or mentor. I had a friend in college say "sometimes, we have to kill our ugly babies" (or something along those lines) which (loosely translated) meant that we, as artists, get very attached to a particular piece of art and have a hard time admitting it kinda sucks and that it should be let go of so that it doesn't misrepresent the quality we are actually capable of.
My wife, who is a professional wedding photographer, took a long look at the photos I had on my screen. It honestly felt like hours passed as she slowly clicked on each one scrutinizing every detail. She looked at me and said, "You're not quite there. There's something lacking in these photos to make them go 'bam!'" Honesty can feel like a punch in the gut.
Remember, we have to kill our ugly babies, and I had handed her over 30 ugly babies.
Maybe I'm too harsh? Maybe I'm a pessimist? But I totally saw exactly what she was saying. Photography is all about light and shadow, color, and contrast. The natural world can be viewed and appreciated, it can be captured and posted, but to truly create art out of it, there has to be an element that makes it go "bam!"
Every one of those 30-some images lacked either contrast, light and shadow, or color. So I took my two favorite black and white photos (one of which is the highlighted right above and at the very top of this journal) from that list, turned them back into color photos, did some local edits and found my current portfolio.
It's not easy to look at your art with the scrutiny that is necessary to identify true portfolio pieces, and it took the honest truth spoken by my wife to snap me out of my delusion and into the reality that a portfolio is not just a gallery of your favorite photos. It is the representation of your dedication to the art and the years of training, experimentation, and time you've invested in your craft as an artist.
CONCLUSION
Don't be afraid to make ugly babies! Every ugly baby is necessary and valuable and a learning experience. And you have to get through those ugly babies order to make those beautiful babies!
-Jude