Today I had a group tutorial with Daniel regarding portfolios. I am currently in the process of remaking my physical portfolio so I only showed the group my website. There were a couple points made that I could improve on:
1. The slideshow of images on the first page should go slower
2. 'Travel' and 'Nature' aren't my strongest images
3. Put more emphasis on my 'projects' as they are much more interesting
4. Add text to my projects, so people know what they are about
5. Embed the time lapse video instead of adding a link
6. Remove contact form and just add contact details
Daniel mentioned that he wasn't the biggest fan of my travel and nature images and they are very over done and anyone could do them. I found this a bit offensive and wasn't really happy as Travel photography is the direction I want to go into. After the group tutorial I went up to Daniel and told him I wanted to be a travel photographer and asked how I could change my website in order to still show off the images. He told me that there are two routes I can take with travel photography. Either advertising or national geographic. I've always wanted to be a national geographic photographer, but Daniel and I both concluded that my current work is more in the genre of advertising. In order to further develop the national geographic side I need to give myself projects when abroad. I should approach them in a similar way as my project work at the moment. Travel photography is really just taking photos in a different country. He explained that if an American came to England they could do the project I'm currently working on and call it Travel photography.
Basically, what I'm taking away from this tutorial is that instead of just trying to idealise the countries, I should set a project for myself. One example of this is my shopping centre series (currently on my website under projects). I did this project last year and I looked at Christmas shopping and how busy shops get around Christmas time. The project kind of evolved into looking just at shopping centres at all times of the year. This is a project I've always wanted to continue. I loved the images that I ended up with. If I were to take similar photos at shopping centres all over the world (eg. Dubai, Singapore and Australia) it would be considered travel photography.
All this doesn't mean I'm getting rid of some of my favourite images, it just means I have to try and make a series or a project. There has to be more depth to the images, rather than just taking a pretty picture of a place.
No comments:
Post a Comment