Building a Portfolio

It is my personal belief that you should not start a business to get a portfolio.  The idea to me is keen to “putting the cart before the horse”, so to speak.  Unfortunately, I can’t say that I followed my advice, but simply that looking back I would have done things a little differently!

Why build a portfolio first?

You need experience and practice in order to open up shop.  You also need a killer portfolio with images that sing!

You can get the experience and practice having a quiet weekend business charging cheap prices that will absolutely attract a crowd.  But this route will not always leave you with a killer portfolio to set you apart from other newby photographers with the same intent.

I’ll be honest.  I had the cheap photography business.  It definitely played a part in my career.  It basically accomplished three things:

1. It gave me lots of work.

At the time I had another day job and a husband who was also working full time.  We had no children or other debts.  Every penny I made from these cheap photo stints went back into photography and paid for all my equipment upgrades, computer, software, and books to learn more about what I was doing.

When you broke down my time vs. compensation, I would have been more profitable to work a minimum wage job.  Thankfully, I wasn’t in it for business success.  Otherwise it would have been a drastic monetary failure.

2. It helped me discover my likes and dislikes.

I probably wouldn’t know how much I disliked shooting weddings , or how I lacked the passion for maternity and newborn, had I not gotten that experience.  I definitely learned that there are some types of shoots that I like more than others and that I was better at achieving good images with certain session types over others.  I learned what my style was during this period.  Understanding this helped me to determine which direction I wanted to focus my efforts.

3. It often left me with generic photos and established an attraction to cheap clients who I couldn’t carry with me into a successful profitable business.

These clients often had little room for imagination or creativity in their photos.  And since they were paying me x number of dollars to take their family photo or shoot their wedding, they were calling the shots (rightfully so).

How was I ever going to get a “portfolio that sings” when I didn’t have enough control over the session?  I couldn’t insist that they not wear their matching outfits if they had their heart set on it.  I couldn’t insist that they do a session at a creative location if they already had their mind set on the park.

Here I was working extra hard to please people who were paying practically nothing for hours of my time and service.  If I already know how to work the camera, what is the use of this type of “practice”?  If it is not my style, what is the use of this type of “practice”? Even using the excuse of having it be “business practice” isn’t useful—since this is not the type of client I want or will be working with when I finally achieve where I want to be.  And for it to be a successful business I should have been making a profit.  Not breaking even and barely having enough to pay for my gear.

I admit, there is indeed a place for the cheap photography stint. I needed that period of my life and learned much from the experience.  But if you are ready to grow as a photographic artist and a business person, there is a better way.

As I continued to work the cheap photography route, resentment began to form inside as this hobby I enjoyed and thought I could make a little fun money at, became a burden that made me feel overworked, tired, and non creative.  I was putting in more and more hours, making very little money when I actually looked at the numbers, and was sacrificing time away from my family without a lot to show for it.

Then one day I had a revelation.  I decided that I wouldn’t allow myself to be controlled any longer and I wasn’t going to shoot things that I did not enjoy.  I needed to build a portfolio based upon my own style, my own vision, and my own interests.  Thus was born, my FREEdom approach to portfolio building.

This approach of mine that has been one of the biggest factors in establishing my confidence as an artist, my credibility as a business and has given me a portfolio that truly does “sing”.

FREEdom Shooting…

Its hard to forget the first time I advertised for “free family photos” that I booked sight unseen for practice and portfolio building.  The family showed up in ill fitting stained clothing, the two boys cried the entire time.  One had a scab across his forehead.  The very large mother was missing her front teeth, and the poor dad just seemed bewildered by life in general.  My heart sank immediately when I realized that I would be working for free and unable to use any of the photos for the original intent of portfolio building.  Some experiences you have to chalk up to a good deed of community service and an opportunity to establish guidelines for a successful experience in the future!

After being officially in business for almost a year, I found myself finally clear on what my photographic “style” was (it does take time to discover!).  Unfortunately, I didn’t have much in my portfolio that actually showed my preferred style!  I wanted to shoot relaxed portraits of everyday people and activities that had meaning and emotion.  Yet, who was going to book me for this type of shoot unless I had examples of these images to share?

More specifically at the time, I had just made the decision to no longer shoot wedding DAY photography.  I did however have a keen interest in shooting creative wedding sessions with couples on a day other than their wedding that would allow for a more relaxed session as well as more artistic settings, locations, and a lovely time of day for light…all of this without the restrictions usually presented on a wedding day.  But how was I going to sell people on this idea without images to view as an example of what was possible?

I needed to build a portfolio based entirely on my style and intentions.

Thus was born the idea of FREEDOM shooting.

FREEDOM Shooting