Your Portfolio Will Practically Be Selling Photographs For You!

Regardless of which photography market you want to earn an income from, you are definitely going to require a portfolio. You should even make multiple portfolios if you are selling photography services in more than one field. When a potential client reviews your portfolio, it needs to be focused on their niche. I know it seems obvious, but don't be tempted to include some of your landscapes if you are trying to land a fashion shoot - now matter how good your images are.

If I meet a band to discuss a shoot, I always take a physical portfolio of pictures I have taken of other bands. These will be the best music related photographs I have, assembled into one portfolio. I even have different portfolios just for music photography, in case the client is interested in purely on-stage footage, or promo-style shots.

You should create an online portfolio and offline portfolio. You can use flickr.com to store your photos, and then link to them from your website, to create your online portfolio later. Your physical portfolio is needed when meeting clients and discussing possible contracts, so you need it to look outstanding and appealing if you want it to be selling photographs regularly.

Have your portfolio shots printed out for you by a local, or online, printing service. A professionally constructed Photo Book of your portfolio is likely to impress a potential client much more than if you try to print your photos yourself, and present them in a folder. In most cases, you can choose from a range of quality papers, and, with online sites should be able to see what your finished product will look like - enabling you to rearrange or change photos before you have it produced. A decent portfolio need not be expensive, but will be a great investment to help you achieve your goal of regular business.

You are going to need to take pictures in the first place and you may be thinking how to take the pictures if you have no portfolio to get the deals. Well, to start with you need to bite the bullet and offer free services, in order to get permission to use the resulting pictures. You will find that many individuals, or small businesses, will be prepared to take a chance on you if they know they are getting a freebie.

Your portfolio should show only the best of the best of your work. You'll need to be objective, and pick shots that truly represent your strongest work. I carefully review each set of shots I take in Photoshop. I use the Bridge part of the system to sort my images into similar shots, and then, quickly eliminate those which are clearly not as good as others. Once I have my potential 'keepers' left, I then work through these in groups, one by one, rating each one. When I have just '5 star' images left, these are the ones that will be considered for the portfolio. Hopefully this portfolio will be selling photographs for a long time to come.


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