Developing your Photography Portfolio: A Five-Step Approach

1. Introduction: Developing a solid portfolio is one of the most instrumental steps that you can take in your journey towards becoming a professional photographer. To start making money from photography, you have to give people a reason to hire you. The best way to do this, of course, is with visual examples that can attest to your vision and your skill level. And a portfolio does just that. It's a selection of photographs that show a photographer's work. My name is Sa Carey and I have been working as a professional photographer for close to a decade. Working across various genres, from portraiture and fashion to live music and events. In today's class, we're going to be exploring how you can develop a portfolio in your chosen niche. Whether you are brand new to photography and you don't have any work to your name as of yet. Or maybe you are, you know, already an established photographer within your niche, but you're looking to develop a portfolio in a different genre of photography. Within this class, we're going to be exploring a five step approach that is going to help you streamline the process of building a portfolio, whether you already have work to include or not. So that you can kick start your photography career and get straight into creating the type of work that you want to be creating and photographing the things that you are passionate about. The five step approach I've created is really simple. Anyone can follow along. And I've designed it so that it's applicable regardless of what genre you are interested in. So whether you want to be a wedding photographer, a live music photographer, or a product photographer, hopefully this class will have a little bit of something for you. Join me in the next lesson as we talk about the class project before heading straight in to the five step approach. 2. Class Project: Thank you so much for choosing to join me in this class. By the end of this five step approach, you should have a portfolio that is ready to go out into the world and help you start to attract the clients of your dreams. The class project for this class in particular is really simple. All you have to do is follow along with the steps and for your outcome which you will be uploading to the class project gallery. I want you to present screenshots of your portfolio. Or three to five images roughly, that you feel represent you and your work as a photographer. I'm also asking you to write a short paragraph just explaining what kind of photography you want to go into and who your ideal client would be. And you can be as specific as you want when you're answering these questions. Keep the class project in mind and without saying much more, we're going to jump straight into step number one. 3. Step 1: Identifying Your Niche: Welcome to the first step of your five step approach to developing your photography portfolio. Step number one is what we're really going to base the foundation of your portfolio on. And it's likely that you've already come into this class with some understanding of what genre of photography you enjoy. If you haven't, don't worry. We're going to be going through a handful of questions to help you answer that question. So in this Essm, we're going to be talking all about Niche. And this is a buzzword that is thrown about a lot when it comes to anything to do with marketing. And so I think it's important to kind of identify what a niche is and what it is I'm referring to as we go through this class. So a niche is defined as a specialized segment of a market. Often we also refer to niches as genres. So if you think about music, you would think of genres of different music, and we're really thinking about that in regards to photography. So we're thinking of genres or niches of photography that you might be interested in working in. A couple of examples might be music photography, food photography, product photography, portrait photography. These are all different niches or genres of photography that you might choose to get stuck into and start your career within. I really want to preface this section of the class saying that a niche doesn't have to be forever. You know, often we are asked to decide on a niche and to kind of define this avenue that we're going to go down. And this doesn't have to be something that lasts your whole career. This is just something that helps you streamline the marketing process and realistically, when we're creating this portfolio, this is a marketing tool that is going to help you create work that you want to create and attract clients that you want to work with. I'll also say that you don't have to define yourself to just one niche. But the process of this class, we're going to be focusing on just the one. But you can develop portfolios for a number of different genres of photography. For example, the way I work, I have predominantly two avenues of my business, the first being portrait and fashion photography, and the second being music photography. And I also have kind of a bit of a crossover between the two, where we have portrait photography, press photos for musicians. That being said, I have worked in product photography. I have worked in wedding photography. I have worked in corporate events. I have created work for university prospectuses. I have kind of, you know, gone over the whole sphere of photography and dipped my tore into various different niches. So I am a huge advocate for not boxing yourself off forever. The reason that we're going to be focusing on just one niche in this class is because like I said before, it is a lot easier to market yourself when you have an idea of what genre you want to be working in. It's going to help us identify your target audience. It's going to help identify what kind of work needs to be in your portfolio to create work that fits within that genre of photography. But like I said for this class, we're just gonna be focusing on one niche. And we're going to get into choosing that right now. So you might already have an idea in your head coming into this class of the type of photography you enjoy. The type of photography you eventually want to work within. Or maybe you've already started working within. But if you don't already have one yet, don't worry. I have kind of devised a set of questions to help you start thinking about the type of photography you might want to make. The first question is, what do you enjoy taking photos of? Presumably, if you are starting to look at monetizing your photography, you already understand that you enjoy photography. It's something you want to do. It's something that maybe you want to take up as a career, or maybe you are already a photographer, but you're looking to develop a portfolio in a different genre of photography. In which case, you probably already have an idea as to what that genre is or what it is that you enjoy taking photos of. So whether you're taking photos of the people around you or things on your daily walk, you should probably, at this point, have a good understanding of what it is you enjoy about photography. Think back to the photos that you have taken to date. What is your eye naturally drawn towards? If I asked you to go out with a camera and spend the day in your city or your town or your village, what would you naturally lean towards taking photos of? Would it be, you know, the people that you see in the street? Would it be portraits of said people? Would it be their behavior and that kind of like street photography. Would it be buildings? Would it be nature? Have a think about what it is that you enjoy the most. It might be that you are drawn to capturing moments. You have a skill for taking photos that help your audience feel as if they are also in the moment. And if so, maybe documentary or event photography are two genres that you might want to explore. Or maybe you prefer, you know, taking photos of the food you create in the kitchen. Food photography is a great genre of photography with a lot of viable options in creating a career within photography. The great thing about most genres of photography is that those skills are transferable. An example would be that I started my career working in live music, which is still a genre that I work in today. After live music, I went into wedding photography and portrait photography. And I found that a lot of the skills that I had developed, photographing musicians on stage and backstage, you know, when they're kind of coming on and off of stage, chatting to their friends, that kind of more casual photography. Those skills were great skills to take into other events, especially things like photographing weddings. So try to identify your strongest skill set, or the things that you are most drawn to when you're taking photos as a way to help identify your ideal niche. The next question would be, what photos do you enjoy looking at? If you haven't started taking photos yet, then this question is probably a good one to try and fathom. Do you follow other photographers on Instagram? Do you own photo books that you really enjoy looking through? If so, do those photographers and the photos that you like looking at tend to fall within a similar category? And next up, you might want to consider your other interests. If you're going to be working within an industry, it's ideal that you enjoy that industry. So for example, if you have a specific interest in fashion, then maybe fashion photography is something that you want to explore. Or maybe you love music and a career working in music photography is something that is made for you. These are just some of the things that you want to consider when deciding on the niche that you want to follow. And remember, you don't have to stick to one genre forever. But for the purpose of this class, I am asking you to narrow it down just because it can be useful At the beginning of your career. Defining a niche makes it a lot easier to market yourself, to decide who you're marketing to and how your portfolio should be constructed. In the next cessome, we're going to be diving into step two, which is the really fun part of this class. And it is of course all about actually creating the work and taking the photos to build your portfolio. 4. Step 2: Creating Your Work: Welcome to step two of this five step approach to developing your photography portfolio. At this point in the class, we're going to be creating the work that will be displayed in your portfolio. Of course, your portfolio is an ever changing and ever developing body of work. It will improve as your skill level improves, it will become more concise and reflective of your personality as a photographer, as you grow and as you develop. But for this class, we're going to be starting with around three to five shoots to create a variety of images that we can use to develop your portfolio. So depending on the niche that you've chosen, the ease of being able to develop a portfolio will vary. For example, in niche such as wedding photography, it can be pretty difficult to get those initial images because you don't already have a portfolio in order to be hired for a wedding. So it creates this kind of like catch 22. This is often something that demotivates photographers. But in this lesson, we're going to be kind of like demystifying that process and breaking down a couple of genres of photography, like wedding photography, and seeing how you could create a portfolio in order to book your first wedding without actually having photographed a wedding. So let's start off with wedding photography, since we're already talking about it. Wedding photography, like I said, can be a really difficult genre to build a portfolio in without already having photographed a wedding. This is often down to the fact that there are so many different elements to photographing a wedding. You need to be able to display your skill set in portrait photography, in documentary photography, in low light photography often, and so because of this, if wedding photography is the avenue that you are particularly interested in, you want to make sure that you have each one of these elements kind of ticked off and displayed in your portfolio. So even if you haven't photographed a wedding, a prospective client can come and see that you are capable of taking portraits, are capable of documentary style photography, and are capable of, you know, capturing all the different elements that are involved within a wedding. So for the portrait aspect of wedding photography, you can reach out to models who are willing to work in collaboration with you. You can also contact various wedding vendors, You know, from dressmakers to florists who might be able to donate items for the purpose of this shoot. So that you can set up a style sheet to show what a wedding portrait session might look like. So these types of shoots tend to typical tests styled shoots. You might also refer to it as TFP, which is trade for print or a shot on a collaborative basis. Tfp, which is trade for print or time for print also is basically the term that is used to describe a scenario where everyone working towards a shot. So this shot in particular, let's say we have some models. We have a florist, we have a dressmaker. Everyone is donating their time or their skill set to this shot in return for these images. So everyone in this scenario works for the common purpose of getting images for their portfolio. For the event portion of weddings, consider taking photos at your own personal gatherings. You know, birthday parties of friends, Christmas dinner, other similar events where your friends and family are there, you can take photos and kind of practice this kind of documentary style event photography. Next up, let's talk about live music photography. Say you want to be a live music photographer and you don't have that portfolio yet to be hired by artists or venues or promoters. A great way to kind of tackle this is to head to small local venues. A lot of big venues will have rules where you can't take your cameras in, but a lot of small local venues will let you bring in a camera head down to these events. Take photos of the artists, take photos of the main act, the support act. Take photos of the crowd. Take photos of the venue, the production. This will give you a really good starting point to demonstrate your ability in live music photography to other artists, promoters, and venues in the future. Portrait and fashion photography. For portrait and fashion photography, you can adopt a really similar approach to the portrait element of wedding photography. Reaching out to models who need images for their portfolio in return for you practicing with what they have to offer. This way, you both get images for your portfolio. It's an equal exchange. The idea of this kind of collaboration is something that we're going to be touching on a little bit more in the next lesson. You can also photograph your friends, your family if they're also comfortable in front of the camera. Food photography and product photography, I'm going to put both of these in the same kind of category even though they are, of course, different genres. But both of these are arguably to easier niches to get into. Because you can take photos of food, you've created food, you've made food that you have ordered at a restaurant. Or you can take photos of everyday items like jewelry, perfumes, candles, soap that you just have lying around the house to create a product photography portfolio. Food and product photography doesn't always have to, you know, involve other people, which means that it's a lot easier to build that portfolio yourself without having to rely on other people to collaborate with you. Documentary photography, again, you can approach this the same as with wedding photography. Documenting things that happen in your everyday life, in the communities that you live in that you work within. If you can define a specific theme or a specific story, then that's great because when you're looking at documentary photography, when picture editors are looking for documentary photographers, they are really looking at someone that can tell a story and create a narrative with their images. So when creating work for your portfolio, focus on taking the photos both thematically and stylistically that you want to be hired for. There's really no point in creating work that you don't want to make. Remember, creating the work is the Fum bit. So at this point in the class, head out and just enjoy yourself. Take some photos and really get into the flow and find what it is that you enjoy taking photos of. In the next lesson, we're just going to touch on an important detail about collaboration and deciding if it's actually a true collaboration or if you're just working for free, which is something that I do, of course discourage. So I will see you in the next lesson. 5. When is Collaboration Not Collaboration?: When is collaboration not a collaboration? In this lesson, we're going to be taking a really short break from the five step approach to discuss what collaboration actually means and how to ensure that you are not being taken advantage of in a situation where you should be paid for your time. Tfp or time for print trade for print and collaborations are great ways to work with other people to help you build your portfolio. Especially in cases where it's difficult to build portfolios in your niche without the help of others, such as in portrait photography. However, there is this really fine line between collaboration and between working for free, Which is something that you want to avoid as it not only sets a precedent for your own work, but also damages the industry itself. Sometimes it can be really tricky to decide whether or not someone is taking advantage of you, whether or not you should be being paid. And this works on, you know, both sides of the coin, as a model or as a photographer, as a stylist or a makeup artist. The way that I best define something as a collaboration, opposed to something where I should be being paid for it, is to consider the value exchange. So if the value exchange of a shot is equal measure, that is where I would call it a collaboration. If I am getting out of a shot as much as the other person is getting from that shot, we're going to call it equal. For example, if I'm working with a model who is fairly new in their career, and I'm also fairly new in my career. I'm getting photos to build my portfolio. They're getting photos to build their portfolio. This is an equal exchange. However, if it gets to the point where I don't need to build my portfolio anymore and I should be being paid by the agency or the model for their portfolio update. Because my experience is that much more of their experience, that's where that value exchange is different and you should be being paid. A similar example of imbalance and maybe a clearer example is if a clothing brand was to approach you, they want you to shoot an entire collection for them, like all of their summer collection, and they want you to do that for free. This is an example where you should be getting paid because they are going to make money directly from your photography, whereby the value they're receiving from the shoe is much larger than the value that you are receiving from this shoe. Understanding when to work on a collaboration basis is not always a cut and dry scenario over time. As you work more as a photographer, your own definition of what is and what isn't valuable from your collaborators is likely to change. But this exchange is something that I urge any photographer who is new to the industry to consider when you're setting up collaborative photo shoots. But now that you've taken your photos, we're going to be heading into step three of this process, creating the actual portfolio. 6. Step 3: Curating Your Portfolio: At this point in the class, you should hopefully have a series of images from around three to five shoots. If you haven't managed to complete as many shoots as three, don't worry. It is, of course, ideal to have more content to work with throughout this lesson. But if you've only managed one shoot, then that's not a problem at all. A portfolio can be created with just one shoot. So in this esson, we're going to be looking at how to create your portfolio. What are the considerations that you need to have in mind when you're putting together your portfolio? Firstly, as we've discussed earlier on in this class, it is important to look at your portfolio as a marketing tool. Your portfolio is what is telling the world and your prospective clients about you and the work that you want to make. And because of that, like with marketing any product you want to consider your audience. Who are you targeting with the portfolio you are creating and is it tailored towards them? Let's take live music, for example. When working in live music, there are a lot of different people or types of people who might want to hire you for your services. From venues and promoters to the artists themselves. Each of these different clients will have different needs. For example, promoters might be more interested in selling like the user experience and the lineup themselves. So you might want to have a mixture of crowd moments and artist shots. However, if you're working for the venue, then they are probably more interested in production moments, how the venue looks, photos that show the scale of the venue. Having an idea of who you're targeting can help you to tailor your portfolio towards them. Of course, it's okay to have multiple different target audiences, especially in this example of music photography. But in this case, you're going to want to make sure that there is something in your portfolio for each of those different target audiences. So if you want to target promoters and venues and artists, you want to make sure that you have a mixture of venue shots, production shots, crowd shots, and artists shots within your portfolio that show any one of those clients that you can meet their needs. That leads me nicely onto my next tip, which is to select your strongest and your most diverse photographs, which aligned within your niche. Showing the best of your work and aiming for quality over quantity is important for a number of reasons. One being that you don't want your work to be diluted by the work that isn't as strong. But also because people tend to have quite short attention spans, especially in, you know, this modern digital age. And so if you are bogging them down with a lot of work that doesn't speak to them, then they might lose interest quickly before they've reached the stuff that is really strong. I'll also recommend not choosing too many photos from the same shoot. And this is kind of why I suggested three to five shoots to be a good ballpark to come into this class with you want to show a diverse range of shots that alludes to your experience as a photographer. And if all of your photos in your portfolio are from one shoot, then the client might be left wondering if you do have the experience needed when creating your portfolio. Another point is to think very similarly to when you're actually creating your portfolio and choosing to display the photos that are similar to what you want to be hired for. So for example, if you have dabbled in interior photography, for example, you've done that in the past, but it's not something you want to do in the future, then it's probably not a great thing to put into your portfolio because the chances are a client that is looking for, an interior photographer might think that that is something you want to do and hire you for that. And you end up in this cycle of shooting work that doesn't serve you and shooting work that you don't want to create. Hopefully this lesson has given you some ideas on what you need to consider when creating your portfolio. In the next lesson, we're going to be diving into step four and we're going to be looking at common ways of presenting and sharing your portfolio. 7. Step 4: Presenting & Sharing Your Portfolio: Firstly, congratulations for getting to this point in the class. Creating and curating your first body of work is no small feat and is the first step to starting out in your career as a photographer. In this lesson, we're going to be looking at some of the common ways to display and share your portfolio. Starting with the most common way in the modern day, using digital media. So using digital media and online platforms is arguably the most accessible way to currently display and share your work. Not only does it actually require less effort on your part, because you know, SEO and social media algorithms come into play to help support and share your work and get eyes on your work. Whereas, you know, in more traditional media you have to do all of that work yourself. But it's also a lot easier to update as and when you need. Maybe the easiest way to display your portfolio is to use social media such as Instagram. Instagram has become a commonplace for people to search for photographers, meaning that you are putting yourself in the right place to be found by potential clients. It also means that you're able to take advantage of like the whole networking aspect of social media. Building relationships with clients, prospective or existing clients, and keeping them updated on what you're doing your work as it progresses, and reminding them that you exist to be hired. Another social media perk at this time is that platforms such as Instagram are currently free to use, so you have no upfront costs. Something that is important to consider though is you don't want to put all of your eggs in one basket. Social media. You don't own social media platforms. And they can go within moments. And because of this, I really believe in building your own platform in the form of a website. Having your own website gives you a place that you have more control over and that you can steal, customize freely. I would recommend featuring a lot less work on your website than you would on social media and really honing in on the quality of your work rather than the quantity. You might also want to consider creating different areas within your website for different genres of photography that you work within. Or maybe even having separate websites for different niches. So for example, for me in particular, I have one website that is my main website that has all my commercial work, my portrait work, my live music work, things that are targeting a commercial or corporate client. And then I have another website for weddings. And this is because this is more of a private client, a personal client, than it is a corporate client. And it's likely that someone that's looking for a wedding photographer isn't really all that interested in photos that I've done. For musicians, for example. When it comes to finding a host for your website, there are loads of different options from platforms such as wicks, to platforms such as square space. And choosing the right one for you will come down to a number of things, maybe budget and price. How much of that investment you want to put into your website and also just usability and how easily you get on with a certain host. Personally, I use format for my commercial work and for my wedding website, I use square space. The final digital form of portfolio that I want to talk about is a PDF. So you can create a PDF portfolio on something like Google Slides or Camera, or Adobe in design. And it's a great way to display a array of your work within one niche. And with PDFs, I really would be very specific about what you're showing. So PDFs are usually used to e mail to specific clients. So you want to make these PDFs, so specific to that client, you know, if you are pitching to, for example, food brand, they don't want to see your live music photography. So this PDF really needs to be specific to the type of work you're pitching for. A similar but more traditional approach to creating a PDF would be to create a book. You can even print your PDF into a physical form and create a book that way. But I do think that there are a couple of downsides to having a physical portfolio. One being that it's a lot more difficult and expensive to update frequently. And secondly, I personally have found as big a need for a physical portfolio. We don't really live in the age where photographers are always invited into offices of clients to go through their physical portfolio. Because so much is accessible on the Internet. So you probably won't end up using a physical portfolio as much as you will a digital portfolio. But hopefully this gives you a few ideas on how you can present and share your portfolio. In the next Esson, we're going to be finishing the class off with the final step, your feedback and refinement process. 8. Step 5: Seeking Feedback & Refining Your Portfolio: We've reached the final step at the class, and it's time to seek feedback and refine your portfolio. Refining your portfolio is something that will become a continuous process for you in your journey as a photographer. The more work you create, the more your work improves, the more often you're going to need to update your portfolio. Photos that you love today will likely not be photos that you love in years to come. And that's straightly okay, because that is a sign of you growing as an artist. During this lesson, I'm tasking you guys with seeking feedback. And you could seek feedback from your fellow photographers, people who work within your niche. You could seek feedback from your target audience directly. Or I really would encourage you guys to just upload your class project to the class project gallery and allow myself and other students to share feedback. And help you get a second or third or fourth set of eyes on your work to see if your work is fitting really nicely within that niche that you've identified and if it's effectively targeting your target audience. Using the feedback that you have been given, give your portfolio another look over with a fresh set of eyes. And consider the following points. Does the work in my portfolio represent me as an artist and the work that I want to be hired for? Does my work demonstrate my abilities and skill set in a way that will be relevant to my ideal client? Again, the two most important things when we're constructing a portfolio is, is it work that is true to you and that you want to make? And secondly, is it effectively targeting the audience you want it to target? If you've answered yes to both of those questions, then you are ready to go. It is time to launch on your portfolio, Start posting on Instagram, set up your website, or create your PDF. In the final lesson, we're going to be recapping some of the most important points, the key points, of this class. So join me to wrap up this five step approach to developing your portfolio. 9. Wrap Up: Congratulations on not only finishing the class, but also hopefully, developing a portfolio that represents you as an artist. And that is going to help you find clients that care about your work as much as you do. Throughout this class, we've explored the five steps to developing your photography portfolio. You've started off with deciding on the type of photography you enjoy and want to be creating. You've hopefully completed three to five shoots to kick start your portfolio. You've learned to create a portfolio full of work that you want to be booked to create more of. And you've found a way of presenting your portfolio that speaks to you and your ambitions as you continue through your photography career and you have to refine and develop your portfolio as your skill set grows, remember that you really want to focus on your portfolio, representing the type of work that you want to create. There's no point in creating a portfolio full of work that you don't enjoy making. Remember that you can absolutely use this five step approach at any point in your career if you're deciding that you want to, you know, branch out into different genres of photography and you need to make a portfolio for that genre. So don't worry if you complete this class with product photography in mind. I need to decide two years down the line that what you really want to do is be shooting events. Or maybe you want to be shooting events as well as product photography. You can use the same process to build and develop an events portfolio. Deciding on a niche is, of course, an important step in marketing yourself. But the beauty of being an artist is that often we can't be put into just the one box. It's okay for your taste to change, it's okay for your ambitions to change and grow with you as an artist. Experimenting in different types of photography and subsequently working in different types of photography has been one of the most fulfilling parts of my career. So don't be afraid to branch out into different niches even once you have a successful business working within one. Thank you so much for your time during this class. I really do hope that you found it insightful and that you can use it as you know, one of those steps in building your dream as a photographer. A quick reminder that you can upload your portfolio, your class project, to the class project gallery and seek feedback from myself and other students. And I would really encourage to give feedback on other students projects as well, and have a look. And just see if you can take inspiration from each other and grow and learn with each other. I can't wait to see what you produce.