The Crystal Pier at Pacific Beach, San Diego, CA
In this age of electronic media and digital photography, making your photographs pleasing to your audience means more than just getting space on Yahoo or MSN to store and display them. You want the entire presentation to say something about you and your photography, from wedding photographs, to your pets, family and nature. A portfolio theme will definitely say something about you.
Finding a Place for Your Portfolio
With the many ways we can store digital photographs, it's important we make them easy for people to view, especially if we store them online on some type of photo-sharing website. Many sites offer photo storage and viewing options, and most are free, so it's just a matter of finding the one that fits your needs. If a site offers the option to pay for extra features, like unlimited storage or ad-free pages, consider paying the yearly fee. Viewers will appreciate it. Two examples are Photobucket and Tiny Pic, two of the most popular photo-sharing sites online (see Resources below).
What Portfolio Themes Say About You
One of the easiest ideas for creating portfolio themes is to keep it topical. For many personal albums on a family website, titles of albums could be "Ken and Cindy Visit, September 2006," or "Christmas 2008." This method makes it easy to catalog not just what is in the photographs but when they were shot.
One of the benefits of this method is that it's limited only by how often you take photos. For instance, living near the Pacific Ocean might afford you ample opportunity to take photos at the beach. So, you go on your photo-sharing site and create an album for "Beaches." Then you can add subalbums for each day you've taken photographs at the beach or, if you visit multiple beaches, subalbums for each beach and even more subalbums for each day you visit that beach, although it's recommended not to over do subalbums.
It seems complicated, but once you create a method for your portfolio, and stick to it, your portfolio will not only look interesting to those you invite to view it, but it will be organized and simple to navigate, the two essential points for every portfolio.
Ease and organization are paramount to creating online portfolios. If you have only one category, or album, in your portfolio and you've posted a couple hundred of your best photos in it, most viewers will, at best, skim through and maybe stop at a thumbnail of a photo if it appears interesting.
Now, when you create albums and subalbums inside your portfolio, with specific themes for each, the viewer might be more inclined to view each photograph in an album that catches their attention. One of the guidelines to follow when creating these albums is to keep the photographs to a maximum of 30 per album. Fewer would be better.
If your online photo-sharing site allows you to limit the number of photographs per "page," it is important you show no more than three "pages" for that particular album. If a viewer looks at the bottom of the first page and sees a page count of 10 or more, they can feel overwhelmed and take a pass on going beyond the first page.
Some photographers have multiple interests, from weddings and special events to nature, fashion and glamour photography. They keep their portfolios simple and easy, with each category/album title easily understood. They may have subcategories for each album: for fashion, they might have subalbums for particular shoots or fashion shows. Each subcategore is also easily understood.
The name of the game for photography portfolios is "simple and easy." When the viewer is looking at your portfolio, you want him to feel like he has entered your world and become privy to your interests and ideals.
For aspiring professional photographers, your portfolio is your resume and what it tells prospective employers is that not only whether you a good photographer but also if you're organized and diligent in your work. Your portfolio is as much about you as it is about your art.
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