Portfolio participants, hopefully you have found your inspiration, crafted your artist statement and started gathering images. There aren’t that many opportunities to show and be critiqued on a body of work, so this is an excellent chance to grow as artists and photographers. Participants are strongly encouraged to look at the images other members of the project have posted in the gallery, interact, offer encouragement and constructive comments. This is the most challenging part of the project, not just creating your images, but deciding what to include and what to eliminate.
Our preliminary portfolio critique with Sherwin Kaplan is set for January 29th. So now is the time to organize an initial selection of images and start putting them in your portfolio gallery folder!
As listed by Sherwin Kaplan, here are some things to consider as you shoot and select images to include in your portfolio:
- What I look for in any photograph
a. Technical Proficiency
b. Vision
c. Composition
d. Lighting
e. Background Control - What I Look for in a Portfolio
a. Theme
b. Variety within the Theme’s Concept
c. A demonstration of everything mentioned in # 1, above - Portfolio Problems
a. Repetition
b. Variations in quality (a Portfolio is no stronger than its weakest image)
c. Failure to fully demonstrate the maker’s artistic skills and craftsmanship
d. A theme that is not strong enough to provide a platform for the individual images - Artistic Statements
a. Should not be pretentious
b. Should explain why you, as an “artist or “craftsman” chose the theme
c. Should explain how you developed the theme
d. Should not try to do more than provide a rationale for this specific portfolio
e. Should Provide a basis or benchmark to evaluate your images
Arrange your images with your artist statement first as an introduction to your work. Sherwin will be looking at everyone’s entries prior to critique night and putting together some feedback for each of us. He will need to understand your objectives as set forth in the artist statement. If you still aren’t sure how to phrase your aims take the time to visit the portfolio gallery from years past and read what other people have said. Remember, simpler is better.
Even in these early stages the critique is a good opportunity to get feedback on your work and clarify your goals for the project. This experience can help in many ways. Is your artist statement too broad in concept, do all of your images hang together as a group, is there too much similarity, is there a weak image that may need to be re-shot?
Up-loading guidelines on size are the same as for competition. If you don’t have a folder in the portfolio gallery yet, here are the instructions:
Please send your Name and NVPS Photo Gallery user id to portfolio-gallery “at” nvps.org (we don’t need your password) and we will add a folder for your images in the 2012 – 2013 Portfolio Album and give you rights to upload to this new folder. We’ll also provide you rights to comment on others portfolios. We’ll also 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 let us know by sending an email to portfolio-gallery “at” nvps.org and we will be glad to assist you.
If you want to talk over your ideas please contact us, Ginger Werz-Petricka at vze39dgt “at” verizon.net and Ken Barnett at ken.barnett “at” gmail.com. If you have questions or need help with your portfolio, feel free to contact us at portfolio “at ” nvps.org.