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Avoid these mistakes on your photography website to attract more clients

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Building an effective photography website is crucial for attracting clients and showcasing your work. It doesn’t even matter if you’re not a full-time pro, either. There’s no getting around it. Once you’re past the initial stages of photography and work with clients of one sort or another, you’re going to need a website. You cannot rely on Instagram and Facebook forever.

However, there are common mistakes that can make your work less appealing and less visible. In this video, Scott from Tin House Studio analyzes some websites that were shared in his Facebook group. He highlights both the errors and the elements done right. By learning from these examples, you can improve your own website and increase your chances of attracting clients.

You should probably delete the work that you’re the most proud of and here’s why

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In writing and filmmaking, there’s a term called “killing your darlings“. In Journalism, it’s the slightly more macabre “killing your babies“, but the end result is the same. It’s trimming the fat from the content in order to make it efficient and bring it to the point. For a writer, it means cutting out unnecessary large passages because they distract from the story. For a filmmaker or editor, time and budget constraints might mean cutting out scenes you love just because they don’t add to the story. For Journalists you’re often cutting the story short simply to make it fit in the allotted space.

Full-time photographer and part-time nomad, Adrian at aows believes that this principle also holds true for photographers. We need to often need to delete (or at least hide) some of the work we’re most proud of, because it’s just not very good – no matter how we might feel about it. And I’m inclined to agree with him.

Should beginners work for free to build their portfolio?

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To work for free or to not work for free? For some creatives, this isn’t even a question, but for others, it’s hard to decide, especially if they’re just starting out. As a newbie with no portfolio and with little experience, should you do some free work first? At least for a while? Chase Turnbow believes you should, and he explains his reasoning in his latest video.

This epic photography portfolio took 18 months to craft by hand

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Nowadays, most photographers only display their work online. However, we’ve recently seen how it can limit you and negatively affect your work, especially if you mainly share it on Instagram. So, photographer decided to make a printed, tangible portfolio and he raised it to a whole new level. He built everything from scratch, from woodwork to the carrying case. It took him 18 months to finish it, and he ended up with a unique portfolio he can be proud of.

Use your personality to stand out amongst the sea of photographers

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Today, more than ever, everyone is a photographer. From your pocket phone to your full frames, cameras are so accessible and everyone is using them. For many, it is just to document their life and then share it with friends and family. However, there is a large group of people, all around the world, that are wanting to monetise their art. In order to do this, they must exceed the competition, which is an extremely difficult thing to do as there is such a high standard in the field.

With this in mind, having a strong portfolio more often than not isn’t enough to set you apart from the rest of the pack. In this post, we will explore how you can use your personality to help reach your goals and get to the standard you are working hard towards.

Start culling your photos for a more effective portfolio

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One of the most common things I see today, especially from newer photographers is posting far too many images from a session online. We’ve all seen it, and probably all done it at some point. You go to a photographer’s page, look at their photos, and you see 50 images from one shoot, followed by 50 from another, then 50 from another.

While we’re proud of many things we create, this can really dilute our most impressive work. In this two-minute tips video, photographer David Bergman explains why we should edit ourselves and cull our work down to only the very best.

Photography marketing: preparing the ground for your business to flourish

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A guy that started his career without even having a portfolio wants you to know what he finds important to consider when it comes to market your work.

After I published “What is decisive in a photographer’s career?” I got quite a few comments in a couple of Linkedin groups.

In my article I pointed out how opportunities, more than technical skills, creativity or experience, are a key factor to determine success. Someone suggested me to change the wording from ‘opportunities’ to ‘marketing’, because good marketing generates opportunities and, more often than not, photographers seems to lack that very skill.
I totally agree with the fact that effective marketing is essential, but my focus was on something slightly different. What I was trying to underline was precisely the importance of opportunities. And, actually, I believe that marketing doesn’t necessarily replace opportunities.

I lost my portfolio and was reunited with it 30 years later

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This is a story about my portfolio that went missing for 30 years. I made this collection of photographs while working as a photographer at the Goldstream Gazette, a weekly newspaper on Vancouver Island from 1976 to 1978. Although I have had my portfolio back for sometime now, I thought I would share this story as part of my 40th year of working as a newspaper photographer.

A bit of background, I had made up a portfolio of my best photographs, I was eager to move on and was actively looking for work at a bigger paper. I set my sights on the Vancouver Sun, probably a bit of a big step for a 20-year-old with only two years of experience on a weekly newspaper. My intent was to show it to the photo editor of the Vancouver Sun, who I believe was Charlie Warner.

The portfolio of portfolios: what you need, and why

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Portfolio. Gosh that can be a scary word. When you have to compile a greatest hits of your photography life and future commissions and your career can depend on it, getting it right is a big deal.

There is a lot of advice out there. But which advice should you take and what should you jettison? I’ve read through the books that I own (by authors and photographers including Demetrius Fordham, Haje Jan Kamps, and Lara Jade) and trawled the net and put together a summary. You can think of it as a portfolio of portfolios, if you like.

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