New Images for the Portfolio

November 9th, 2011 by Kris

It’s that time again. Actually, I’m long overdue. It’s been over 2 years since I’ve really updated my web site and I’m not even sure where my printed book is. And that’s a little sad. We all get busy, but this is something that we all need to put on our calendars at least once every six months. Take a day or two and go thru the work that we’ve been slaving over for the last 2 months! Regardless of medium, if you’re freelancing in the current economy you either have lots of little jobs mixed in with a few big ones. I bring this up to say this, don’t over look the little gigs, there are jewels in there that you’ll want to show off. Especially if you can tell a narrative that is loaded with drama, everyone loves a good story. Well, I found this article, “Editing Your Portfolio” by Zack Arias out of Atlanta. Cutting my teeth in the Atlanta market admittedly gives me a bit of a soft spot for any shooter carving out a niche there, but it’s a solid article with some great tips. Here’s an excerpt:

“The BIG Edit :: Brew 10 pots of coffee, grab all of your archive drives, kiss the wife and kids goodnight and  start harvesting every photo that you like from all of your jobs. Grab the RAW untouched files where possible. Don’t get the processed JPGs. Get the originals whenever you can. You may think your post production skills three years ago were awesome but as you put your work together today you may not like those 14 crappy actions you dumped on your work back then. Trust me on this… harvest the RAW files every chance you can. Don’t think “is this going to be in my portfolio?” while you do this first step. You’re just looking for photos you like. Like you really like them. Maybe you shot five consecutive frames of someone laughing and you like all five. Copy all five of them to a BIG edit folder. Notice I said “copy” your photos into the BIG edit folder. Don’t move them out of their home in the job folder where they lived. Make a copy. You want ONE folder holding all of the images. You can then copy specific images into genre folders if you want but the main folder holds all of them.

Go through your edits and any other RAW files you may have from the job that you did not deliver to the client. It’s always amazing to go back into a shoot and find a gem of a shot that didn’t make the edit when you first shot and delivered that job. You not only grow as a photographer but you grow as a photo editor in your life. A shot you may have passed up three years ago suddenly jumps out at you now. That is why I never delete my unpicked files. I always keep them. I go through these old folders a few times a year.”

Alright, to read more click here. I’d love to see what you end up with!  Alright off to go start my “big edit” folder!

KD