Who

I began to print out some portfolio proofs this morning for new editorial and project books that I'll be taking to NYC in August (19-26), but before I could take down my current bulletin board I thought I'd save it for posterity here. As seen above: clips, promos, favorite out takes, notes from editors, pics of the newly born, the Miami telephone book circa 1902 (dial "11" for my forefather's grocery store), a picture of Judyta's family's cat perched on a cooler, old and new family snaps (baby me in my father's arms on the right), gift card, expense receipts, postcards, and a left over Christmas ornament from our 16" stainless silver "tree."

I've written about the portfolio process before, so I'm not going to even touch that this time around, but I was thinking about the way in which collecting a portfolio, especially during this time of economic down turn, focuses our sense of self and purpose as a photographer. Take all of your talent and passion, coalesce it into 20-40 portfolio images, and then narrow the overall effect until you are left with as cohesive statement as possible of what it is that you do (you should probably then tell your parents, because they've been wondering that as well), while still managing to maintain a spark of interest and new to the book.

Despite being a healthy if wrenching exercise, as someone who cares more about craft than art, and therefore subject myself to a set of professional standards and liabilities that though self-imposed become somewhat rigid, the process of determining who you are as a photographer for clients sucks. Really sucks.

None of us are just one type of photographer, and that's really the point of being creative in the first place. Most of our best editors are fully aware of this and celebrate our diversity of interest and talents by occasionally asking us to do something totally different to see what happens, like kids in a McDonald's playing "suicide" on the soda machine. But because so few of us anymore really work with just a small handful of clients (I wish), we have to rely on our niches and categories to bring home the bacon year in and out. And that pig loves to keep us in our little boxes, and is sometime really thrown off if we display work that falls outside. "Oh my, I was going to hire X to shoot a white business owner on a white seamless, but now that I see this picture, I'm just not so sure."

The other reason that it sucks, assuming that you have paid close enough attention to the market to be influenced by what editors are assigning and publishing, is that the cycle perpetuates itself and sooner or later you can't remember when you shot what because all of the portraits just look the same. Anyway, some thoughts while I put the finishing touches on new books. I'll be in Vegas and NYC in August, and hope to see many of you along the way.

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Comments (3)

I like the picture of the couple holding a cat like a newborn baby.

The cat has actually been upgraded for the baby just up and to the right. Congrats Lucy and Matt!

give us a shout if you are in nyc-

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