My next Travel Photography Portfolio - How To Choose the Photos
Last week on myblog I wrote about my favourite landscape photography photos of England.
To continue with the theme of actual photos I am going to write this week about my new travel photography portfolio and how I am going to choose the photos for it. This post is not about the photos for my new travel photography portfolio, it is about portfolios and the thought process of creating a new portfolio. This thought process can apply to any photography portfolio, the principles and considerations are the same.
I hope that youfind this post interesting, and that my thoughts help you if you areconsidering assembling a photography portfolio of your own.
And next week Iwill publish my new travel photography portfolio and write all about it.
Is this important?
My portfolios arevery important to me, as these are the things that I display on my website thatgive visitors to my website that very important first impression of me and myphotography. I am going to have a good think about this before diving in andproducing a collection of photos, and in this post I will tell you my thoughtprocess in collating this very important set of images.
I will not be selectingthe images in this post, that will be for next week. This post is all about thethought process behind creating a travel photography portfolio.
As I said this is importantto me and deserves having proper time spent on it.
Who am I?
Good question. I amRick McEvoy, a photographer based in England. I photograph buildings, nice placesand buildings in nice places. I specialise in
- Architectural Photography
- Landscape Photography
- Travel Photography
And that is it.
I have had two successful, formal portfolio reviews with the BIPP. The British Institute of Professional Photography, from which I achieved the qualifications LBIPP and ABIPP - Licentiate and then Associate membership of the BIPP.
So I have beenthere and done this before.
What is a photographyportfolio?
A photographyportfolio is a body of work, a collection of images that represent you and yourphotography. A portfolio should contain the best of the best of your images only.
A photographyportfolio is not a load of average photos chucked together in the hope thatsomething good stands out in there.
Each and everyimage has to be excellent – any rubbish and the whole thing falls over. Someonereviewing your portfolio will lose interest if they come across a weak image.
Should I only haveone portfolio?
This is the firstproblem. I have three areas of photographic work, which I have listed above. WhenI applied for my Associateship of the BIPP I tried to assemble a set of imagesthat included travel and landscape work, but it just did not make sense.
I ended up creatingjust an architectural photography portfolio.
So in my opinionyou should have one portfolio for each genre of photography that you specialisein.
Meaning that I havethree portfolios.
And here they areat the time of writing
My architectural photography portfolio
My travel photography portfolio
This is my currentportfolio, which at some point (this week) will be updated with the new set ofimages.
My landscape photography portfolio, which has been added to a blog post (which is the way my website is going by the way – less pages more blog posts).
Why am I writing this now?
I have justcompleted a major revamp of my website. You can read about this in these twoblog posts.
Squarespace to WordPress - this is what it is Really Like Moving
Squarespace to WordPress - 10 things you need to know
And this was aright pain. I have spent so much time on my website that I have neglected myphotography. And bored myself rigid.
I did not sign upto this photography lifestyle to spend my days lost in WordPress!
No – I am in this forthe photography!
Unfortunately nowis not exactly the best time to go out and take photos so all I am left with isthe photos I have.
Making this theperfect time to create a new travel photography portfolio.
How may photos do I put in a portfolio
For a BIPPPortfolio Review you need 30-40 images. For my online portfolios I go with 12images per portfolio.
12 is a quite arestrictive number, but for me it is a good number.
All my onlineportfolios have 12 images in them – I like the order of this.
And 12 images makesyou really, really think about the images that you are going to include.
What is wrong with my current travel photography portfolio
Quite simply the images do not hold together, and do notrepresent my best travel photography work.
I am not happy with my travel photography portfolio, so needto start again.
How many travel photos do I have to choose from?
The next problem. Ihave just checked my Lightroom Catalogue, and I have over 15,000 photos in my Worldwidefolder.
And over 6,000photos in my Websites folder (more on that in a bit).
Are my travel photos from abroad?
This is the nextquestion.
Do I include photosfrom the UK, or photos from abroad only?
I have thought aboutthis long and hard and have decided that I am going to include one photo fromthe UK, as for anyone from outside of the UK the UK is a travel location!
And if I add my photos of England that is another 25,000 orso more images!
So adding one image gives me another 25,000 images to gothrough. In theory!
Which photos to include
This is the hard bit.
Should I just use 12 photos from one location?
That would be easy. But then again what would that mean? Ithink that this is a no, but a great idea for a blog post or 20, My 12 BestPhotos of Rhodes for example.
No I will not get the best set of travel photography imagesby restricting myself to one location.
Or one country?
Another thought, giving me a bit of latitude. Countries I coulduse include
- Greece – I have thousand of photos of Greece
- UK – ditto - but would that be a travel photography portfolio?
- Barbados – 2 holidays there.
No this is not going to work.
Again great ideas for blog posts, but not for a portfolio.
Should the photos be of iconic landmarks in each location?
No. No. No. Iconic to me equals over photographed. What isthe point of me just chucking together 12 photos of things that everyone hasseen before?
No, not unless they are different in some way.
And I have some of those. So less of a no if I am beinghonest!
The thoughts are coming together in my head as I write.
Should the photos be of similar subjects?
By that I mean
- Sunrise
- Sunset
- Beach
- Building
- Shop
- Person
- Landscape
I say no to this, again this would not be a travel photographyportfolio, just a collection of beach sunrise photos.
Not a portfolio, but again another great idea for futureblog posts.
Or should I just choose my favourite photo from eachlocation?
This was the last thought and having gone through theprevious questions the only answer. This is what I am going to do.
What is the purpose of each photo?
For me each photo tells a story about each particular location.The photos have to be excellent in technical and compositional terms, but as Iam a photographer that for me is a given.
Each photo has to be to a high standard and have a specificpoint of interest relevant to travel, travel photography and that location.
And what is the purpose of the portfolio?
I want a single set of 12 images that each tell the story ofthat single location as I see them. It is only when I got to this point thatthis became clear to me.
And I want my travel photography portfolio to demonstrate toanyone who looks at my website my best work, creatively and technically.
I want visitors to my website to enjoy my work, tell otherpeople about it and come back to my website. I want people to look at my workand want to hire me to take photos for them.
This is the point of having three portfolios.
My architectural photography portfolio is aimed directly atpeople who want to commission me to photograph their building for them. So I amaiming for people in architecture and construction in my little part of theworld. And also anyone who is interested in architectural photography andlearning how to take photos of buildings.
My landscape and travel photography portfolios are aimed at,well that is another thing. Anyone on this planet of ours that is interested inlandscape and travel photography. And that naturally extends to photography ingeneral, image capture, gear and processing.
And as an aside this is why I love writing – it gives mythoughts structure, logic and depth.
OK – so what are the images in my new travel photography portfolio?
Sorry – I have not done this yet. I am going to spend thenext week going through my photos and next Monday will publish my new travelphotography portfolio.
I am thinking at the moment about including one photo fromeach of the following locations.
- Paxos
- Antipaxos
- Santorini
- England
- Barbados
- Canada
- France
- Spain
- Italy
- Rhodes
- Chile
- Maldives
- Greece
This is the list that I produced quickly and will be subjectto refinement over the course of the week.
It gives me something to start with, always a good thing.
What about portfolios of single locations
I discounted that earlier on, so no need to look at thatagain. Well apart from and endless number of blog posts.
What about travel architectural photography
I thought about this. Photos of buildings from my travels. Orphotos with buildings in. This is a thought. I can go more specific here, likesmall Greek Churches on islands. That is a very niche post but one that I likethe sound of doing.
There are so many possibilities to all of this.
Related reading
There is so much stuff that I have written about travelphotography, not so much about travel photography portfolios to be fair.
If you have read this far I assume that you are interested intravel photography so here are a few related posts which I hope you find interesting.
10 Best Olympus OM-D EM10 Mk2 Travel Photos – This Time With Descriptions!
My 12 Best Travel Photography Images of 2019
10 Best Micro Four Thirds Travel Photography Photos By Me
Is The Olympus OMD EM5 Mk2 The Best Travel Photography Camera?
Minimalist Travel Photography Gear – This Is What I Use
New Travel Photography Blog – 10 Tips For Success
My Micro Four Thirds Travel Kit – Travelling Light In Style
My other websites
I have two other websites at the moment.
This is more of a travel guide than a photography website,but I will get my photos on there when I have time.
Yes I have a dedicated travel photography website, where I featuremy photos of Santorini. And that is why of course Santorini features in mytravel photography portfolio – how could it not do?
So as you will see travel photography is quite a big thingto me.
And this is where the other 6,000 images I referred to earlierare from.
And the video
I have recorded a video about this blog post which you can enjoy on my You Tube channel.
And the Lightroom slideshows
I will also publish Lightroom slideshows of my old travelphotography portfolio, and also my new one once I have completed it.
I love travel
You might have guessed that I love travel and travelphotography – the two sit together perfectly for me and being a travelphotographer is my dream job!
Summary
I hope that you have found my thoughts on creating a travelphotography portfolio useful – there is one final point that I would like tomake here though.
This is entirely a personal thing. No one else knows what otherphotos I have in my travel photography collections, and no one else knows whateach and every image means to me.
Sure the images should be technically excellent, with an interestingsubject matter, great composition and high quality processing.
But this is my travel photography portfolio. So the set of imagesI choose are my choice and my choice alone.
And that’s all folks
Rick McEvoy Photography
#travelphotographyportfolio #travel #photography #portfolio