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Digital Photography and Photo Editing Portfolio

Having a photography or photo editing portfolio is essential to getting a job and to find out the potential of all your knowledge on the subject. Because the portfolio is the time to shine, using all the skills you have learned into several choice subjects/pictures that really represent 'you'. So you want to know how to create a good photography portfolio? well that will be covered in this section. The process of learning what you will put in your photo portfolio is a relatively easy idea but to actually gather your favorite pictures (or) the pictures that best represent what your conceptual idea is very difficult. Stick with it and its only a matter of time until your true photographer form shows.





So Many Themes! Photography

When starting out a portfolio your gonna need a motif or theme to show off a particular skill, editing style or art form in the photos. This can be hard if you generally like taking pictures of anything, but here are some ideas to make it easier. Start off with a category and go from there, Abstract, Portrait, Objective, Conceptual etc... What these categories mean is that you need to choose a type of subject to shoot or a certain way to shoot a subject. To give an example you could take pictures of a certain type of architecture, which is a subject that you are shooting. Or you could, lets say, take pictures in black and white which shows technical form and not so much as to what you are shooting. Finally you can take pictures of a conceptual idea which is very artistic and people love to see this, this means taking pictures of a intangible idea like 'trust or hate'. I will give you some more examples of a mix of the three forms of themes you can do... see if you can pick out which one is which: Scenery, Wide angles lens shots, Macro, nature, human suffering, love, urban coffee shops, high exposures, and family.

By now you should already know that you want to take the best of the best of your pictures, which means that you are going to need a lot of pictures. So try going out in your spare time, go into random buildings or places you have never been and take tons of pictures. You don't necessarily need to think of a theme before you take your pictures, because taking pictures is usually where you will get the ideas for a theme.

If you don't think having a theme is a good idea, you don't have to have one, but having 10 random pictures may cause some people not to see your strengths in certain areas, but it is good to show your versatility.

So Many Themes! Photoshop and Photo Editing

Even if you don't care as much about photography you should still read the photography section, because the same rules apply just slightly different in the case of picture editing. A photoshop portfolio mainly consist of your strengths as a picture editor, and they are perhaps a little more versatile because anybody looking to hire you is maybe looking for a person well rounded in the art of photoshop. Although versatility is important, you may be looking for a job specific in its work, such as superimposing, or web graphics. Try to stick to pictures that fit your theme and then put a few others on just to show that you have the capabilities of other techniques. Like if you want to focus on ads make 10 advertisements and maybe 2 or 3 graphic designs, just to show your potential in the business.

Now for the Fun and Frustrating Part

Choosing pictures can be the best part of the process but can also be very hard and sometimes frustrating. Don't worry everybody has these feelings, just remember when adding pictures to your portfolio don't think about it too much because if you stare at your picture long enough you might find every little thing wrong with it. Pick the pictures that strike you in the beginning as great, ask for peoples opinions but don't let that be the only basis. So you should have a ton of pictures to go through... which I recommend going through them using a computer if you have already printed them out or got them developed.

Pick about 50 pictures that you best represent your theme and yourself, now cut them down to about 20 or 30. You can do more then this but this is a good number because people don't have the best attention spans so it's best to just wow them for the small time they are viewing your photos. But you don't want more than 40 or 50 pictures, because people will stop paying attention. If you are making a photo editing portfolio you probably only want about 8 - 20 because it takes so long to make that many pictures so its okay to have less.

After you have your final picks you want to organize your photography or photoshop portfolio, the best idea is to make things very simple. It doesn't matter if they are on the internet or in a physical portfolio, people want to make it easy to look at. Group the pictures together according to themes, like black and white, superimposed, contrast etc. If you have a shot of the same thing put it together don't make people feel like they have already seen that picture. And finally make sure that your first picture is one of the best and most presentable pictures you have.