Just wondering...do you have a portfolio? By that I mean some completely finished presentation that shows off your work, on some sort of portable media you can take with you or leave behind for review.
Time was, most photographers had a "book." In most cases it was an actual box or a large book with pages in it, and you'd have a representative sampling of your work in it, in print form. Sometimes, photographers would customize the book for specific clients, to more neatly dovetail with their needs. Artists often had solander cases with matted fine prints inside. And sometimes a pair of cotton gloves on top of the top print. Remember that?
I was just wondering if anyone does that any more—or does everyone point to a website? For that matter, do you have a website (we would have said web "page" in the '90s) any more?
What do you do when someone outside of your circle of good friends, someone from a more professional or business context, asks to see your work?
Mike
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Featured Comments from:
Keith: "Funny you ask. A few days ago a person running a horse training seminar asked if I was available since her regular photographer has another gig. I tried to point her to a page listing the various events I've done so she could see examples of my work, except her internet connection is crap. That's what I usually do when people ask. However, I do have several books of images, mostly for my personal use, not as a tool to find work. The easy problem is to get together. The much harder problem is for them to take the time to leaf through the book. Everybody is in such a rush these days."
Mike Ferron: "Viewing that photo makes me question my understanding of base reality."
Ken Bennet: "Portfolio: yes, but it's from circa 2010, the last time I thought I would need to look for a new job. I spent a long time making the prints and building the book. As it turned out, the portfolio was hugely useful in introducing my work to our new leadership where I worked (small university) and I ended up staying there. Looking at it now, it's still a pretty good summation of the kind of work I did. Website: yes, but now that I'm retired it's just personal work."
Joe Kashi: "Yes, I still use a metal portfolio case with exhibition-quality 18x24 prints. Prints are neither obsolete nor ephermeral, unlike viewing on a screen. Further, displaying actual prints is more conducive to serious discussion and tactile pleasure than an 8-bit sRGB image."
Nick: "For many of my peers, lets say currently 30–50 years old, we maintain an Instagram page as a de facto 'portfolio' of recent work. Anyone that isn't on IG seems suspicious as a potential hire, given that almost all commercial brands are also on IG and likely to hire people with a presence there. They expect IG-worthy content including BTS (behind the scenes) pictures and videos. Or as an amateur, almost all of the potential audience attention is also on IG. But people also see this as more of a loose portfolio, not formal. Many also maintain a personal webpage, and maybe create PDF example brochures of different types of content, e.g. a fashion brochure, a food brochure, etc., to send to enquirers. Or at least separate webpages for each type of work. Maybe even two sites, if one is for weddings, and one for commercial or art or food, etc. These are often sadly neglected and out of date though, as the recent work goes to IG by default."
Stan B.: "I have a website—as encouraged here several years ago. I have books or 'zines to display specific projects. Prints, beautiful as they are, are a luxury—just too dang expensive! Once when showing my physical 'book' (i.e., prints) back in the day (B&W images made at Mardi Gras). The editor glanced them over, called a few people in from adjoining offices and they all started to view them, point, laugh, recount long-ago jokes and anecdotes. An instant office party—to which I was excluded. Eventually, the banter ceased, the people exited. 'Sorry, there's really no interest in photos like these.' Right, rimshot...."
Josh Hawkins: "I have a website. Within that I have a few public-facing portfolios. It also has a link up top to my work image collection. That’s an ongoing collection of images that I add to on a regular basis. It makes those images available to my coworkers, and hopefully encourages them to bring me to photograph similar situations when they have them. It can serve as in-house advertising for me. It also makes it really easy to go through my best/favorite images, download them, and make a portfolio for a specific need. If I have a need for a portfolio I build one for only that use, and I keep it around 20 images. I hope that all makes some sense."
Back in the day, I used Flickr but I pulled out when it was enshitified. I understand it's under new management now and much improved. I'm considering going back to it but I've got a domain name that I've never used and have hemmed and hawed about setting up a site of my own or, even, using the domain on an existing for-pay site. Right now, aside from a few stagnant urls here and there, I don't have an online portfolio.
Posted by: James Coleman | Wednesday, 28 May 2025 at 10:01 PM
I use my web site as a portfolio. It's organized in sections I can share with people. It's handy to be able to send people a link to a section that illustrates a point I want to make about the work.
When I'm working on a project where I'm collaborating with non-photographers, I use pages on my web site that I can share with them, but which are hidden from everyone else. This provides a live version of an evolving project.
In my current collaboration with environmental professionals, I have been bringing prints to workshops and meetings to focus brainstorming and idea generation.
Prints generate a profoundly different reaction than web pages because they are physical "boundary objects" that people can pick up, pass around, and organize on the fly.
Posted by: Rob de Loe | Wednesday, 28 May 2025 at 10:04 PM
I have a website. Within that I have a few public facing portfolios. It also has a link up top to my work image collection. That’s an ongoing collection of images that I add to on a regular basis. It makes those images available to my coworkers, and hopefully encongares them to bring me to photograph similar situations when they have them. It’s can serve as in-house advertising for me. It also makes it really easy to go through my best/favorite images, download them and make a portfolio for a specific need. If I have a need for a portfolio I build one for only that use, and I keep it around 20 images. I hope that all makes some sense.
Posted by: Josh Hawkins | Wednesday, 28 May 2025 at 10:09 PM
I've been a commercial photographer since the mid-1990's. I've never had a "book" or a portfolio. I've also never had a website which sounds a bit strange to say. I distribute client images using Smugmug. If someone asks to see my work, I would typically point them to my instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/john.gillooly
I would love to have a portfolio and a website, but I just don't think either will happen unless I found someone to edit my work. It would be a good exercise for me to "reify and redact" as my favorite TOP post described, but it is something that just sort of remains on the backburner.
Posted by: JOHN GILLOOLY | Wednesday, 28 May 2025 at 11:14 PM
I had a portfolio of prints -- but that was two decades ago. I showed it many times and was successful in getting several shows at local galleries and businesses.
Now I just point them to my websites. One is a curated gallery of photos; the other is a blog site with my most recent images.
Posted by: DavidB | Wednesday, 28 May 2025 at 11:27 PM
I'm an unusual case: I make hand-colored black and white landscape photos, with actual paint on a black and white inkjet print.
Most of my photo sales are through galleries, and I'm not interested in assignment work, so I don't use a print portfolio in the usual sense. Instead I show people what I do through my website, BobKeeferPhoto.com.
If a gallery is interested in showing my work, they ask me to bring in the actual prints that would be for sale. I did, for a time, keep a digital portfolio on a small tablet computer to show interested people. But carrying around the tablet all the time seemed silly when I could just send them to the website.
Times change!
Posted by: Bob Keefer | Thursday, 29 May 2025 at 12:00 AM
I keep boxes with prints at A4, A3 and A2. I keep sets of prints from prior exhibitions or proposed exhibitions (usually just scaled down from A0 or A1, which are my preferred exhibition sizes) and just hand over appropriate boxes if I'm trying to persuade a gallery to show my work. If a gallery will let me, I leave a few boxes of prior exhibitions work around for potential customers to play with. My experience has been that tactility is important and I sell a fair few smaller prints that way; I've recently had customers buying every print from an exhibition (boxed) at A4 in preference to one or two larger images - I assume that reflects that I exhibit in small inner city galleries with buyers living small, inner city housing. I don't matte anymore but print on heavy paper - 500gms for A2 - which is stiff enough to be robust on its own. I just print to 85% of the paper size to create a border. I don't bother with gloves anymore either. If a print is damaged, I can reprint precisely at the touch of a button - no hours or darkroom work involved - and my total loss is the sheet of paper and a bit of ink. But I'm hardly a pro - my best exhibitions break even on my out of pocket costs for the exhibition alone and wouldn't support the cost of an additional coffee, so I doubt my approach is best practice. It's just convenient for me.
Posted by: Bear. | Thursday, 29 May 2025 at 12:56 AM
Years ago when I started my newspaper career I made a portfolio with about 10 black and white prints about 8x10 inches in size that I printed myself, and no I never thought to include a pair of white cotton gloves. I sent these out to various newspapers in hopes of landing a staff photographer position, and I eventually did get hired through my unsolicited inquiries. For my fine art photography that I did on my time off, I never did make up portfolios to send to various art galleries. However I do maintain a website, which I made myself, its pretty basic and it comes in handy from time to time if I’m telling someone about my work, I still think its better than having a social media link which is rather generic, but I suspect most people would use their social media link, whether it be Facebook, Instagram, BlueSky or what ever as their “portfolio”.
Posted by: Gary Nylander | Thursday, 29 May 2025 at 01:09 AM
Coincidentally, I do some work for a Fine Art Printing company. We just published our catalogue for 2025 - a 280 page printed book dstributed to our resellers. This is not really like the traditional photographer's portfolio you mention, but the interesting thing is that it generates a lot of traction. It's available at resellers for customers to browse through etc. We also have online catalogues of course which can be used in a similar way on ipAds or whatever, but the book is more popular with customers and resellers alike
Posted by: Richard Tugwell | Thursday, 29 May 2025 at 01:25 AM
Yes indeedy.
Since I started my Royal Photographic Society Distinctions journey last year with an LRPS, I've been thinking a lot about the next steps (which require portfolios on specific themes). As a result, I've been gradually been converting my photography efforts to a project-based approach. Currently, I have identified 48 projects or series to work on, each with a defined "statement of intent" to drive their direction. Each project will result in a portfolio with the top 20 images forming a candidate Distinction panel. To assist in this shift, I've worked out a range of outputs I intend to produce from each project. This starts with a set of #tagged images in my digital library, leading to a gallery published on my website. From there I move to an A4 archival portfolio box of loose prints with a title page and statement of intent page, which leads to a refined set of matted/mounted prints in a deeper portfolio box. This gets further refined to a selection of larger, frameable, matted prints in a standard size. These portfolios of frameable prints will each get their time slot of being displayed as a framed portfolio in the stairwell gallery I'm building at home, before cycling back to an archive box. Eventually I will select one of these portfolios as my next RPS Distinction submission.
In addition, I'm working on some basic book binding skills so I can also make my own hand-bound books of original inkjet prints.
I want my work to be in the form of tangible outputs people can hold in their hands, not just digital images that will never be seen.
Posted by: Dave Millier | Thursday, 29 May 2025 at 03:31 AM
I made a book every year - for twelve years - until Covid ..when I didn't get out and about any more.
Each year I made an 80+ page high quality, thick shiny paper, 'Blurb' photo book, to give to my Beloved for Christmas.
We - well, I - get them out every couple of months, and browse through the photos (shot with all manner of cameras; Olympus, Canon, Lumix, Leica, Casio, Sony ..the make of camera doesn't matter) and I delight in the colours, the moments captured, the memories ..and if people do ask to see them, I show them.
I haven't pumped them all onto a website, but have made occasional pages to show particular aspects of photography (..e.g. the use of wide-angle lenses). Here, for instance:
https://www.edituk.com/Wide_Photos.html
Posted by: David B. | Thursday, 29 May 2025 at 05:45 AM
A single “master” portfolio? No. But I make a “collection” each year of the best images from that year. I usually end up with about 25 images each year. I have printed versions of these collections for about the last 20 years. Each collection is also stored in the cloud; and the last nine collections are viewable on my blog. Here’s the one from 2024.
https://onthecorkboard.blogspot.com/2025/01/2024-collection-every-year-i-gather-up.html
Posted by: David Littlejohn | Thursday, 29 May 2025 at 07:25 AM
I have used an Album on Flickr, but in a very casual way…
Recently, when asked to view my pictures in a cafe I was shocked to note that Flickr on an iPhone is a terrible tool. Too much Flickr stuff filling the screen, etc.
So, I am very keen to find a good app to do this on my iPhone.
Using LrCollections synched to an Album on Lr Cloud and using a url works very well on an ipad. Not so well on an iPhone as the scroll bars get in the way (not enough screen real estate).
Would love to see some suggestions on best way to present a portfolio on an iPhone
I was impressed with Portfolio 4 App previously and must revisit, but not available on iPhone.
Posted by: Matt O’Brien | Thursday, 29 May 2025 at 07:52 AM
I don’t have a physical portfolio. If asked, I refer people to my Linktree via QR code or link (https://linktr.ee/jameshengst). The Linktree has links to my infrequently updated website and social media outlets.
Posted by: James | Thursday, 29 May 2025 at 10:34 AM
I just use a website that I put together. I have not added to it in while, but soon it will be updated. https://www.robertclark.org/
Posted by: Robert | Thursday, 29 May 2025 at 10:58 AM
No need of a "portfolio" as I do not solicit work for hire.
But, yes, I've actively maintained a full web site for 20+ years:
https://www.kentanaka.com/
And I also periodically create collections of my work in Blurb books which I also make freely available for any visitor to peruse on my site at:
https://www.kentanaka.com/books
Personally, I consider both of these activities to be absolutely fundamental for keeping one's photo feet grounded. Social media (ex: https://www.instagram.com/kentanakaphoto/) is fine occasionally but it's crap as any kind of serious presentation of any body of work. It's chewing gum.
Posted by: Kenneth Tanaka | Thursday, 29 May 2025 at 11:43 AM
I started my website portfolio in the mid 1990s, when Netscape was the most popular browser.
"Photo Essays in Black and White".
Posted by: Herman Krieger | Thursday, 29 May 2025 at 01:38 PM
I don’t have a portfolio of my photography as I have studiously avoided turning it into any sort of a business. However I have been posting to 500px for many years so there is more work there than anyone will ever want to plow thru though occasionally some people try strangely enough. However I have been photographing and compiling images of furniture I have either built or restored for many years. I collected those as 4-6 prints in a small album which I showed to potential clients for many years. Eventually I transferred the effort to my iPad which actually works better. I can open the album and hand it to the client and let them thumb thru them as much or as little as they are comfortable with. This has worked out well for me.
Posted by: Terry Letton | Thursday, 29 May 2025 at 09:33 PM
I was originally going to state that I don’t have a portfolio. Then I realized that I have accounts on a few photography websites, and have posted photos on them over the years for others to look at. Those photos are in albums, which are, for all intents and purposes, portfolios. They might not be properly curated, but they represent some of my favourite photos over the last several years.
Posted by: Craig Yuill | Thursday, 29 May 2025 at 11:14 PM
I recently redesigned the front page on my website (https://www.sitkanature.org/) for the first time since I created it in 2007. It now actually features my photos.
I've been selling prints at local markets the past few of years. Definitely not a professional. I wouldn't even say I'm truly making money, but at least the hole isn't quite as deep.
People would ask if I had a website. I did give them the address with the caveat that they would need to work find photos that I considered nice. My website features thousands of photos scattered throughout in the context of nature journal entries (I call them photojournals).
My first photographic goal is simple documentation of what I'm noticing. While all of them pass that very low bar, far fewer rise to the level of aesthetically satisfying for me.
Now I'm featuring them, and slowly working to make the site more friendly for folks interested in looking at my photos.
I don't generally have the links publicly facing, but I do sometimes share photos via Lightroom's on-line galleries dynamically linked to my Lightroom collections. (For example, here's one of images I've printed at 8.5x11: https://adobe.ly/3ZH6f0d ).
As an aside, I have been reading you since you were on Luminous Landscape ~25 years ago. I think this is my maybe my second or third comment. I've enjoyed reading, and several times wanted to comment, but it can take me so long to craft what I want to say, I mostly didn't make time and the moment passed. Thanks for keeping at it!
Posted by: Matt G | Friday, 30 May 2025 at 03:05 AM
Hi.
Coming in late again, but yes, I have a web site for my portrait buisness, which is, as the big fish like to say,* one of my revenue streams.
I used to get quite a bit of work through it, mostly visiting foreigners (I live in Tokyo, and my website is in English). Almost too much at times.
But since covid, that’s slowed down a whole lot. It’s obvious why things trailed off (well, stopped abruptly), but less so why things stayed that way - post covid there are bucket loads more tourists here now than there ever has been. Dunno, but something’s shifted. I’m not too worried though, everything else is ticking along.
Peace,
Dean
* I’m such a little fish, I’m essentially a planktonic organism
Posted by: Dean Johnston | Friday, 30 May 2025 at 05:47 PM
I have a number of 7x10 prints matted to 11x14 in a black clam-shell boxes. They are in transparent sleeves so I don’t have to mess around with the white glove thing. No one has ever asked me to drop them off for viewing. They do come in handy for open studio visits and photogroup public portfolio events. If someone wants to buy a print, they are ready to go to their new home.
My web page serves as my primary portfolio and most of my contacts come from the web page. I have “Best of” folders (2025, Portraits, Farm Noir, etc.) on my computer which is super easy to keep current and to also see if the images have any staying power.
I would very much encourage people to have their photos as physical prints. Just pick an easy standard size and whenever you get something nice make or order a couple of prints. It doesn’t take too long to build up a collection and it’s hard to overstate how satisfying it can be.
Posted by: Kirk Decker | Sunday, 01 June 2025 at 12:34 AM
Website: https://www.simongriffee.com/
Book: https://www.simongriffee.com/work/windward/
I also carry little prints of my work while editing down projects, some of which you can see in the book link above, and show them to people and to see which ones they like.
Posted by: Simon Griffee | Wednesday, 04 June 2025 at 12:57 PM