Top 10 Lessons Learned from PhotoShelter’s Webinar with Stella Kramer, Building a Better Online Portfolio 2

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Build a Better Online Portfolio with Stella Kramer from PhotoShelter.com on Vimeo.

PhotoShelter & Pulitzer Prize-winning photo editor Stella Kramer recently teamed up to hold a webinar, Building a Better Online Portfolio. A very informative session, I’ll be changing how we display our portfolios here on MacklerMedia and my personal portfolio site as quickly as a llama can spit! Here are the top ten concepts I took from the webinar:

10.  Get An Objective Eye. Bring in someone unfamiliar with your images and the stories surrounding them to help you honestly critique and narrow down your images. Sometimes your just too attached to your own work to produce a good, clean edit. Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there.

9.  Commit to an Edit, You Can Always Change it Later. Edit your portfolio tightly, but always remember you are never permanently  stuck with an edit. It’s an online portfolio, change it frequently to keep it fresh. Even by simply changing the sequencing around, your create a new dynamic portfolio.

8.  Don’t Overload Your Portfolio With: Too Many Categories, Too Many Images. Generally, you want to limit your portfolio categories to as few as possible, and limit your images to about 15 per category. You can always hold back some of your other work from a larger edit to “refresh” your portfolio. Even if the images are not recently shot, they’re new to the viewers of your site.

7.  Create an Emotional Connection Between Your Images & The Viewer. Photo editors want to fall into an image, give them a respite from their workday.

6.  Bigger isn’t Always Better. Photographs should take up the space they need, not necessarily the space a template may designate.

5.  Sequence, Sequence, Sequence! This is most important in telling a visual story throughout your portfolio. Make sure the person looking at your portfolio can determine who you are in the first five images. A talented photographer with a portfolio that does not logically have a narrative flow will lose out when put up against a less talented photographer with a tightly-edited, sequenced portfolio.

4.  You’re Ultimately Looking to Create Relationships. As a photographer, you’re ultimately looking to create relationships with art buyers, photo editors, studio managers, etc. Also, do you follow through with relationships? Do you email your contacts when you update your portfolio or post a relevant blog post?

3.  Know Your Audience. Do not cast a wide net, but rather narrow your focus. What makes you, as a photographer, unique? Is your passion and skill level in editorial photography? Landscapes? Food photography? Whatever it is, shoot what you want to shoot, rather than what you think you “need” to shoot to be marketable.

2.  Online Portfolio No-no’s – No black backgrounds, watermarks, long-winded about pages, unreadable fonts, can’t get ‘home.’ Apparently Stella Kramer does not like black backgrounds on an online portfolio. At all. And, knowing where Stella comes from, I think it would be wise to follow her advice. A dark background brings across a negative mood, and detracts from powerful imagery. Watermarks are an instant turn-off. Besides being visually distracting, watermarking images tells the viewer that you do not trust them. Why put your work out if you can’t trust editors not to steal it? Everyone wants to read a little bit about the photographer, but keep it simple. Inserting humor into your ‘about me’ section is always a good idea. Don’t use unreadable fonts – editors have limited time, if they can’t read your portfolio, they’ll move on. Make it easy to get back to the home screen of your site, or they’ll end up frustrated and move on.

1.  Keep it Clean, Clear and Easy to Navigate. Most importantly regarding your online portfolio design, keep it:

Clean – limit erroneous design elements, such as background images, over cluttered features.

Clear – Is your objective/target audience clear? Are portfolio categories easy to understand? Does your portfolio have a clear aesthetic?

Easy to Navigate – Can you navigate between your portfolio’s categories and between images efficiently? Is contact information easily available?

~ Chris Mackler
chris@macklermedia.com

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