March 30th, 2010 - Photo Books, Calendars and the Portfolio Project

Here's a reminder to NVPS Portfolio Project participants that there's a presentation this Tuesday March 30th at 7:30 to help you with several aspects of the project.

On March 30th we'll have presentation that will benefit both Portfolio Project Participants and members in general. Scott Musson will present a discussion and review of options for creating photo books and calendars using commercial online and local vendors. He'll discuss how to get the best results possible when creating a portfolio or collection of images with an online service and some personal experiences. Several other members will also share their experiences and will
display their work for you to see.

Also Sherwin Kaplan will be speaking about what makes a good artist statement and comment on how he will critique the portfolio project. Sherwin has critiqued all of the Portfolio Projects and has provided wonderful comments and insight into everyone's portfolio. We're very pleased that he'll be providing the critique again this year.

The Portfolio Project presentation meeting on May 11th will be the final step of this year's Portfolio Project. At this meeting Portfolios will be displayed, critiqued and discussed.

The May 11th critiques will emphasize the portfolio as a whole - more so than critiques of individual images (although there may be comments on images as appropriate to illustrate their impact on the portfolio). There will be a display of all the participants' printed Portfolios, an opportunity for attendees to discuss the portfolios with their makers, and a slide show, discussed below, accompanied by comments by this year's critquer, Sherwin Kaplan. (Sherwin, a member of the club, is one of the club's best judges. He has reviewed and discussed the portfolios the last two years.)

The remaining portfolio schedule is as follows:

• You are asked to notify Scott or Bill by April 15, if you plan to submit a slide show of your images, participate in the slide show critique, and display your printed portfolio May 11th, 2010
• Send your Slide Show Portfolio to Scott Musson no later than April 27. The Slide Show Portfolio is a not-to-exceed 12 images digital-slide subset of your print portfolio. If you have more than 12 printed images, you should include your 12 best.
• Scott will bundle the slide show portfolios and send them to Sherwin Kaplan, the Portfolio Critiquer. His critique will be based on this slide subset and will serve to illustrate your larger print portfolio (if it is larger).
• On May 11th you and all other Portfolio Participants will display your Printed Version. The Printed version is for your personal use & display. Although we are imposing no firm image limit for the Printed version, we strongly recommend 10-12 images minimum & 15 -20 images maximum plus an artist's statement).
  
• If you are emailing the images to Scott, please:

• Title the email "Portfolio Project."
• Size images no larger than 1024 pixels horizontal and 768 pixels vertical.
• If your image is smaller than 1024 x 768, fill the background with black for optimal presentation
• Include your artist statement as your first image (named: yourlastname_00.jpg)
• Use a naming convention: last name_image number from 01 to total.jpg (example: smith_01.jpg, smith_02.jpg, etc.)
• Email images to smusson@nospam!#*&^#)type address - don't copy spam protection(*@.@nospammindspring.com

Other optional events for each participant include:

• You may be upload images to the NVPS website's portfolio gallery for informal critiques at any time. (Bill & Scott will start critiquing images online on or about March 30th) Feel free to add your comments to others images anytime
•  A March 30 Workshop is scheduled to provide information about various options to have portfolios printed and displayed. In addition Sherwin Kaplan will discuss how he plans to critique portfolios and what he looks for in a good artist statement.
•  Portfolios will not be critiqued at the NVPS meeting on March 30.

The final printed portfolios will not be collected, but each participant will bring their printed Portfolio the May 11th meeting.

In summary, the May 11th workshop will be devoted entirely to the Portfolio Project. At this meeting each portfolio will be available in printed form for NVPS members to view and discuss with the artist. Also, each portfolio will be presented in slideshow form and Sherwin Kaplan will make observations during the slideshow about each and all portfolios.

Please feel free to contact the project coordinators at any time with questions and suggestions.
Scott Musson and Bill Prosser, Coordinators

To get access to the NVPS Portfolio Gallery send your NVPS Gallery user id  to Scott Musson smusson@nospam!#*&^#)type address - don't copy spam protection(*@.@nospammindspring.com (I don't need your password).  When you do, I'll give you access to see the other portfolios and create a place for your portfolio to be uploaded. I'll also provide you rights to comment on others portfolios and  send you instructions on how to upload images to your new folder. 

If you don't have a user id, it's very simple to register, just go to http://nvps.org/gallery and click "Register".

If you need help in any way, just let me know. I would also be happy to upload your images for you, just email them to me and name them including a number so I know what order you would like them to appear.

Your first image in your gallery should be your artist statement, just paste the text of your artist statement into an empty image. This is very important since people will be critiquing your portfolio based on your artist statement. This is one of the reasons why it's important to develop your artist statement first.

Remember you can send your artist statement to Bill or Scott for feed back if you like.