I am sitting in an Anaheim hotel room after a long day in the car. In Anaheim I will present and judge for the 2011 JEA Spring National Convention. Last time JEA held its Spring convention in Anaheim, more than 6,000 people attended.
My Friday workshop is about photography portfolios. I co-present with two photography education legends. (Please read more about Jim McNay and Mark Murray.) We will provide three guidelines about creating a photography portfolio. In our first guideline, we emphasize that photographers should select a strong first image, because first impressions matter. I thought about our first rule when I saw the first two photos that Denise Gamboa sent me for this post.
Personally, I loved her first two photos, but even more importantly, I knew she was a good photographer who understood her own aesthetic. I did not need to see any more of her photos or have her explain anything. I spent at least ten minutes looking at the photo below. And I will always remember it.
Denise Gamboa is SmugMug's Marketing Director. I started reading her Twitter posts (@dcg), which led me to her blog A Girl in The World. I also read her LinkedIn bio. She is smart, talented, artistic, techie and funny. She has many layers, like her photos.
I also knew she was a photographer from looking at her travel photography portfolio. I was impressed by the number of locations, but it was not until yesterday when I really looked at her photos. Now I will never forget her, because I will remember her images.
Before SmugMug, I used to create galleries on the fly, mirroring the folder structure on my hard drive with my online galleries. I organized galleries alphabetically, according to place (because most of my photography has been focused on travel). Now with the advent of great new upload tools, I can streamline the process and save myself a lot of time.
SmugMug is built into Lightroom 3, which enables me to upload my freshly post-processed photos directly to a SmugMug gallery with one click. Once I’ve polished my shots, I create a SmugMug gallery within the Lightroom interface, specify my gallery settings (security, metadata, file naming etc) and then drag-and-drop photos from my library to my online gallery. So simple! I don’t even bother converting files from RAW to JPG because Lightroom does that for me automatically.
Has social media changed the way you organize your portfolio?
Definitely, especially since so much of my casual shooting happens through my phone.
Mobile Photosharing
With the rise of many new mobile photo sharing apps, I can shoot more often and it’s easier to share my shots with more people. I think it’s wonderful that I can take photos of everyday life with my mobile phone and not have to lug around a large DSLR with me everywhere I go.
I love apps like Instagram, Hipstamatic and PS Express because they enable me to process ordinary (and sometimes badly lit) mobile photos and turn them into fun pieces of art. But because I want to be consistent with where I organize and keep my photos online, I always upload them to a SmugMug gallery with SmugShot, our mobile photo uploading application. SmugShot lets me keyword and geotag each photo and choose into which gallery I want to upload.
Online Social Media
Online social sites like blogs, Facebook and Twitter have also changed the way I organize and share my photos. I use SmugMug’s embeddable links and social sharing features to publish photos to my blog that will link directly to my SmugMug gallery, where people can purchase prints. This forces me to think more carefully about what photos to include in each gallery, knowing full well that friends, family and complete strangers will be viewing them. The same is true when I publish to Facebook and to Twitter.
For professional photographers, online social media can play a dramatic role in growing business. By publishing to my social networks(s), I’m essentially multiplying my sales and acquisition channels. Every blog reader has the potential to be a paying customer or client. Every friend of a friend who sees a Facebook Like or retweet of my photos/content can become a potential customer. My reach broadens exponentially through social media.
This means that what I link to and how I’m organizing the galleries that I’m showcasing becomes a much more important task. I’m mindful of showcasing photographs that are unique to my personality and my style. Because I usually prefer to tell a story, I’ll very often link to a blog post with a featured photograph. Depending on whether I’m trying to tell a story or showcase a specific aspect of my photography or writing, I’ll re-organize my portfolio accordingly.
3. Do social media applications provide better opportunities to represent your unique style and vision than a traditional portfolio?
I think that social media has definitely given me the opportunity to better represent not only my unique style but also my personality. Twitter and Facebook are giving big and small brands the opportunity to present a human face to their business. Not only is it about the product/service that you’re selling, but it’s also about who you are and how your audience can identify with you.
In one of our focus groups, I came across a pro photographer who uses Facebook to manage different client segments so that he can message to them appropriately. He creates different Friend Lists and sends out specialized wall posts for each list. For example, he organizes his clients into lists like: Wedding, Family, Corporate. He will post updates on his wall and share galleries one list at a time so that he can control his messaging to appeal to each client segment.
SmugMug is built into Lightroom 3, which enables me to upload my freshly post-processed photos directly to a SmugMug gallery with one click. Once I’ve polished my shots, I create a SmugMug gallery within the Lightroom interface, specify my gallery settings (security, metadata, file naming etc) and then drag-and-drop photos from my library to my online gallery. So simple! I don’t even bother converting files from RAW to JPG because Lightroom does that for me automatically.
Has social media changed the way you organize your portfolio?
Definitely, especially since so much of my casual shooting happens through my phone.
Mobile Photosharing
With the rise of many new mobile photo sharing apps, I can shoot more often and it’s easier to share my shots with more people. I think it’s wonderful that I can take photos of everyday life with my mobile phone and not have to lug around a large DSLR with me everywhere I go.
I love apps like Instagram, Hipstamatic and PS Express because they enable me to process ordinary (and sometimes badly lit) mobile photos and turn them into fun pieces of art. But because I want to be consistent with where I organize and keep my photos online, I always upload them to a SmugMug gallery with SmugShot, our mobile photo uploading application. SmugShot lets me keyword and geotag each photo and choose into which gallery I want to upload.
Online Social Media
Online social sites like blogs, Facebook and Twitter have also changed the way I organize and share my photos. I use SmugMug’s embeddable links and social sharing features to publish photos to my blog that will link directly to my SmugMug gallery, where people can purchase prints. This forces me to think more carefully about what photos to include in each gallery, knowing full well that friends, family and complete strangers will be viewing them. The same is true when I publish to Facebook and to Twitter.
For professional photographers, online social media can play a dramatic role in growing business. By publishing to my social networks(s), I’m essentially multiplying my sales and acquisition channels. Every blog reader has the potential to be a paying customer or client. Every friend of a friend who sees a Facebook Like or retweet of my photos/content can become a potential customer. My reach broadens exponentially through social media.
This means that what I link to and how I’m organizing the galleries that I’m showcasing becomes a much more important task. I’m mindful of showcasing photographs that are unique to my personality and my style. Because I usually prefer to tell a story, I’ll very often link to a blog post with a featured photograph. Depending on whether I’m trying to tell a story or showcase a specific aspect of my photography or writing, I’ll re-organize my portfolio accordingly.
3. Do social media applications provide better opportunities to represent your unique style and vision than a traditional portfolio?
I think that social media has definitely given me the opportunity to better represent not only my unique style but also my personality. Twitter and Facebook are giving big and small brands the opportunity to present a human face to their business. Not only is it about the product/service that you’re selling, but it’s also about who you are and how your audience can identify with you.
In one of our focus groups, I came across a pro photographer who uses Facebook to manage different client segments so that he can message to them appropriately. He creates different Friend Lists and sends out specialized wall posts for each list. For example, he organizes his clients into lists like: Wedding, Family, Corporate. He will post updates on his wall and share galleries one list at a time so that he can control his messaging to appeal to each client segment.
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