Archive for Uncategorized
Digital Portfolio Submissions
Last week the third year students had to submit a digital portfolio by mail. The plan was to identify potential clients and tailor a promotional piece that would attract their attention and get an appointment to show a tangible portfolio, which should (perhaps, maybe) lead to a job.
There were three questions everyone needed to consider:
-
What kind of photography am I good at?
Who will buy these type of pictures (commercial or fine art)?
How do I convince those people to hire me (give me an exhibition, buy my prints, etc.)?
Consequently it takes a bit of honest soul searching to try and figure out what kind of career you want, and what you are good at. The end of your third year of college is a good time to figure this out, but I’d hope people have been thinking about it all along.
So some of the digital portfolios were excellent, some were pretty good, and some needed a lot of work. Generally, the quality is obvious from the moment the prospective client, in this case me, opens the envelope. Some people take great care to present their cd with a nice label, cases with a printed insert, and a few even made their own letterhead. (I seem to remember I covered designing letterhead in the first class last autumn…)
Here are a few examples, good and not so good. The first one came in an A4 envelope, with a plastic folder, cd case with label, business card and letterhead all with the same design. Excellent, except the cd didn’t have a sticker on it.
Christina Ebel
Hand written notes on the sleeve aren’t so impressive.
Handwritten note
Here was an attempt at an insert for the case, but the cd has a label made from plain paper, cut out very badly using scissors or a butter knife. No way would anyone put that into their computer. I tried to take the label off, but the edges are loose and the glue underneath is gooey, so I hardly think anyone will get out the white spirits to clean it off. It will just go in the bin.
Bad labels
Here is a great label, great image selection. Looks great opening the envelope. Could use a better printer, but still looks really nice.
Nice, well designed label.
I suggest creating a portfolio as an Adobe Portable Document Format(PDF). It gives you total control of the layout and will play on virtually every computer. Many people do them as Powerpoint files, but I find that program more difficult to create the appearance I want, and I’ve seen a lot more Powerpoint files fail to open than PDF. With both programs, problems arise when the images are embedded as hi-res files. If your .pdf or .ppt is 100mb, you should realize you have a problem.
File size is important, but so is page size. Some people designed their .pdf for the printed page, A4 vertical, so then the client has to shrink the display so it fits on their screen. It leaves a lot of empty screen space when viewing the portfolio. It is better to design for a 1024×768 pixel size. That is virtually the minimum screen size now. It lets you maximize the size of your images and hopefully create more impact with the audience.
Most important: Show your best work, without any filler shots. Research prospective clients and target the portfolio to the type of work they use. Make every part of your portfolio, from business card to end title page, show your creativity and professionalism
five.minute.fix goes live
Hi ya folks-
The showcase of your work hosted at five.minute.fix is online. I’m still missing some images from people, and some people have themselves gone missing, but it is up there for the world to see. The other lecturers haven’t seen a lot of those images, and they are impressed. It is great to see such a variety of material. That shows that you have a real commitment to making images, to being photographers.
Good work.
Index page up
Hi folks. Progress is happening. I am building the site, and I put up the first page for five.minute.fix.
So, is that a name we can live with? The opening page has nine images that play, and if someone didn’t get their shot in the first batch, for a coffee I might be bribed to drop yours into the mix.
I’ll keep working on the rest of the site, but get your comments and complaints in to me fast because the time for changes is running out fast.
The end of the term is upon us. For this module, you had a number of tasks to complete. Some were done in class, some were files you needed to send me. I checked off your name as each task was completed, but if you have missed tasks your grade will suffer. I can post the chart of everyone, or you can email me if you have questions. I’ll be in Temple Bar tomorrow, normal time, for any questions, but I won’t be running a class.
Your final submission for me are the personal comments that will go in the ‘Stories’ section. So far I only have remarks from five people. Make your comments a few sentences or a couple of paragraphs. Just talk about your response to the year.
File Specifications
Hi yas-
Submit your images from the Flickr selection, and you may add in other shots up to five of your own pics.
Pics must be .jpgs and named ‘lastname-initial-number(01,02, etc).jpg. They must be 600pixels on the longest edge, and make sure they are in the sRGB colour space (in photoshop go to Edit>Convert to Profile>sRGB). Each image must have a 50x50pixel thumbnail to go with it, and just add the word ‘thumb’ to the filename.
Write you little personal stories to add interest and colour to the presentation. Write 2 or 3 sentences about one of the following subjects: Classes, Great Images, Great Books, Student Life. Make it personal and fun, not moany and boring.
Get on it…
Half-way there
Ha, no joke. Class will be in Temple Bar tomorrow.
First task will be to complete your powerpoint portfolio, using at least ten of your own images. I’ve done some preparation this week as expected and we can look at transitions and animations to liven things up a little.
Have a look at the CompLit-Selections group on Flickr. Decide if these are a representative sample, or if we need to fill in some gaps. We will spend the last 30 minutes or so looking through the selections and critiquing the quality of the images.
I plan to bring in two or three web designs after easter, so if you have any ideas or preferences, let me know.
So far we have looked at Word, Powerpoint, Image sizing and scanning. You should be able to plod your way through communication with these tools. If you are comfortable with these tools, hey! that is the goal.
Practice practice practice
St. Patrick’s Day
Huh, is the definition of civilization the ability to blog while laying in the hammock on an unusually sunny March day? Hard to complain, and not that I want to rub it in, but Patrick’s day wasn’t like this in your day…
Week 6
Okay, progress. Only 10 people have sent me abstracts of their academic work. Don’t skip it now; get that in to me. While photographic skills are essential, among photographers they are a given. What makes you a success or failure in photography are all the additional skills you need.
Next step on that trail is to add images to MS Word documents. So for tomorrow you need to bring in an essay as a Word file, plus two or three image files.
We will meet in Temple Bar tomorrow. We seem to have enough space so it works okay for now.
Scanning
In class wednesday we covered how to use the Nikon and Epson scanners. The controls look different, but work more or less the same. For those of you that missed it, you might cajole someone else to help you out, but my position is that everyone now can use the scanners.
Handle the scanners carefully. Remember, they cost more than your cameras do and in these times we won’t get replacements for anything damaged.
Check out this tiny slice from a colour neg scanned at 4000 dpi on the Nikon. It practically shows the molecules of the film…
snorkel close up
rather bloggy today…
Here it is, the bloggo up and running. I’ll try to keep all info up to date here, so should you miss an email or, heaven forbid, skip class, you can find out what you need to do.
Below is yesterday’s email. Besides that, your assignment for this week is to create an abstract of two pieces of your academic work. ‘Abstract’ is the academic world’s term for a short summary. If it is a book or thesis, the abstract might be 1000 words. For your projects, I’m looking for two paragraphs. You should write your abstract in a neutral tone, that is, don’t say “In this essay I chose to examine the documentary photography of Dorothea Lange…” Rather, write in the tone, “This essay examines the documentary photography of Dorothea Lange and compares it to her contemporaries Margaret Bourke-White and…” so on. Summarize what the project/essay is about and your conclusion, as if you were explaining it to your old school principal and wanted to impress them. But keep it short.
You must write an abstract of one of your individual essays, and one of your group projects. These will form the foundation for the academic section of the module project.
***********************************
Everyone with Flickr knicknames: there are four or five I can’t match
up with the real names. Send me your knickname and real name so I won’t
be so confused.
We are up to 20 members in compLitskills group, so we ar getting there.
Spend some time on research. Look at other peoples’ images. Make
comments and make notes for yourself so that when you have to pick the
best 10 or 20 images, you are ready. We need enough images so that we
can make a reasonable survey of what you talented people produce. We
haven’t figured out a way to vote on flickr, so next week we may form a
sub-committee to make the selections.
If you skipped class today, find out what the assignment is. (on the
board in the computer lab at the moment)
I’m checking off each of these tasks as we do them. If you missed our
little workshop on scanning and image sizing, you better get up to
speed.
that is it for the moment. I’m still trying to get this blog thing
working properly, so I’ll let you know.
Hello world!
Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!
