Pixiq

These days, many people ask, “Why do I need a print portfolio?” I have asked myself that same question. Over the fourteen or so years I have been working as a professional photographer, I have only sent a portfolio to a client on three occasions—all to secure an assignment, and all successful. Most photographers rightly rely on their website to act as their main portfolio. I would say that in general it is extremely rare that a magazine or corporate client (in the outdoor industry) will call in your print portfolio before granting an assignment. In a few cases, where I was going to be shooting a major editorial assignment and there were a lot of expenses involved, my portfolio was called in before I was offered the assignment. In those cases, the client wanted to verify that my images were of excellent quality and up to snuff for the magazine.

In recent years, a print portfolio has been a requirement mostly for advertising photographers. If you are going to market yourself to ad agencies or larger corporations, then you’ll want to have at least a few top-end portfolios ready to go out the door at a moment’s notice. Before you start thinking about how to build your portfolio, consider a few key facts about printed portfolios and how they reflect on you. Just as with your website, the quality of your images and how they look will be a direct reflection on your skills. With a website, you don’t know exactly how your images will look on the client’s computer. With a print portfolio, the image is right there in front of the art director so there is no fudge factor. You have to have killer prints. You will be judged not only on your photography, but also on how well you produced the book.

A few years ago I created an entirely new custom print portfolio that would satisfy even the most demanding ad agency art director or photo buyer. I have since updated the logo that appears on the cover of the slipcase, book and the first page in the book and I have swapped out several of the images in the portfolio. Many photo editors and art buyers have told me that a nice, high-quality black book for a portfolio is totally fine. It is simple and clean and directs all the attention to the images. A fancy book is nice, but if the work isn’t up to par then it doesn’t matter what the exterior of the book looks like.

I figured a classic black portfolio in a slip cover would let my work shine and keep with my understated motif. Size is another big factor and I again heard from many photo buyers that it should be big enough to show your work off effectively but not so huge that it is hard to deal with or so heavy that just looking at the book is a royal pain. I chose a midrange size. The book is made by Moab and is called the Chinle portfolio. It measures 13 x14 inches and comes with a fitted slipcase. The pages that fit inside are 12 x 12 inches. The width of the book is just under two inches with forty pages in it. I felt that a page size of 12 x 12 inches was perfect for my work. It allowed me to print the images up to 10 inches long and still have a nice clean border around the edges of the prints. I chose a book with the standard screw-posts which makes it easy to switch out pages and I had my logo foil-stamped onto the cover of the book and the slipcase. With my old portfolios I found that I really prefer a square format instead of rectangular. I feel it gives equal billing to vertical, horizontal and square images. As an adventure sports photographer, I shoot a lot of vertical images so this was a particular concern when I started creating the portfolio.

Another big reason I went with this pre-made portfolio is that Moab makes a paper that fits the book and the screw-posts perfectly. The paper is a pre-scored version of their fine art Entrada paper [Moab Entrada Bright 190] which is a favorite of many art galleries, giclee printers and artists. It is a matte paper with a bit of tooth but it isn’t like some of the Hannemuhle rag papers which are a little too thick for a portfolio and a little to close to a watercolor paper for my taste. The other nice feature of the Moab Entrada paper is that they are double sided and can be printed on both sides. At first I didn’t like the way my images printed on the Entrada paper but the more I got used to it and worked with my images the more I came to like this paper. I realized that I see my images printed in magazines, catalogs, brochures and books which is closer to a semi-matte or luster type of paper and hence it was a new experience to see them on a fine art matte paper. Once I got used to the paper and fine-tuned my images so they printed with the degree of saturation and sharpness that I am used to I found myself liking the regal look this paper lends to my images. The prints look like they could be pulled from the book, framed and hung in a gallery.

Yet, another reason I chose to go with this paper is that I detest having plastic sleeves over my images. Plastic sleeves are hated by most art buyers and they get scratched up after just a few people look at your portfolio. The Moab Entrada paper is fairly durable and when used with protective sprays the images can deal with a fair bit of abuse. I have been using the Hannemuhle Protective Spray and give each print at least two coats right after they come off the printer, then I leave them out to dry for twenty-four hours. Speaking of printers I printed all of my images on Epson and Canon printers, both the Epson R1800 and the Canon iPF5100. The black and white images were printed on the Canon iPF5100 because it has far superior black and white printing capabilities than the R1800.

Yet another great reason to use this Moab paper are the excellent printer profiles that Moab supplies on their website. As many of you know, printing is an art form in itself so I won’t get too deep into the whacky world of printmaking. Suffice it to say that I made a minimum of two (smaller) test prints for each image that ended up in the portfolio. I printed each image on both printers to see which I liked better and then went from there. The result was that a lot of paper and ink was used to get the top-notch prints I was after. But, again, that is just part of the game. 

Choosing images for the portfolio was a grueling process because I wanted to make sure the images were on target with my positioning statement. [A positioning statement is a written manifesto of the type of work you produce and the clients you are going after and it is meant to help guide the type and style of the images included in the portfolio - or any marketing piece.] I also wanted to show the breadth of my abilities so photo buyers wouldn’t peg me as just an adventure photographer, but they would also see that I could capture outdoor lifestyle images and high-end portraits. And because I have three portfolios, each with a slightly different selection of images, it is easy to customize a book for a certain client before it goes out the door or before a face-to-face meeting.

Another important factor when building a portfolio is to take into account how it will be shipped and transported. I have a few bright yellow padded Patagonia courier bags that the portfolios fit in perfectly, and they are very outdoorsy looking, which fits with my images. Shipping a portfolio to a client is as easy as dropping it into the Patagonia bag and then into a large Fed Ex box.

Time will tell how successful these portfolios are at getting me more work. I have found the best sales techniques are to meet face to face with clients and having a top notch print portfolio is a useful tool when clients have time to meet. So far clients have responded very well to the new book. 

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