A Little News

The conventional wisdom in composing a photojournalism portfolio for newspapers is to include about twenty pictures. I work for what most people consider an entry level paper with a circulation of 25,000 and we mostly see portfolios from students looking for their first job. What we consistently see is too many mediocre to bad photos. Here is the problem with the twenty picture rule of thumb, many people compose a portfolio just to fill the picture limit and that means they are putting in a bunch of photos that shouldn’t be there. The question of how many photos should be in the portfolio should be answered with another question, “How many photos do you have?”

Don’t try to include too many pictures just to say you sent twenty. If you only have ten bell ringers then only send ten. If an editor wants to see more he will call you and ask to see more. Most places advertising entry level jobs understand you probably haven’t been able to accumulate a huge portfolio so only show your strengths. If you don’t have too much spot news then don’t include a spot news photo just to show you have one. If you are really good at sports action, go ahead and go a little heavy there but don’t over do it.

Let me give you an example of a borderline photo. This picture was from an apartment fire that really didn’t have a lot of visual promise when I arrived. I hung out for a while and made a nice image which shows solid visual reporting. Is it a portfolio image? Not for me. This is a good daily photo but doesn’t rise to the level of the church fires I showed you earlier. If you are a student with limited spot news, would you include this in a portfolio? All things are relative so, if I were a student, I might include this. There was certainly a time in my photo j life when this would have been in my book for sure. Your portfolio will change and evolve over time so don’t be afraid to include solid images like this one as a student or early in your career. You will definitely get better images but spot news is also about luck and timing.

The next most common mistake we see is portfolios with too much of a good thing. I have looked at portfolios that had more than 50 percent of the pictures coming from sporting events. That is okay if you are applying for a sports job but for a general assignment job we want to see more diversity. I made this mistake applying for an internship once and got my rear end handed to me on a platter by the photo editor. Ouch!

A good balance for a newspaper portfolio might be something like 25 percent sports, action, feature and portrait, 25 percent lifestyles like food and fashion, 35 percent news both spot and general and the remainder in enterprise work such as stand alone photos or photo stories. Now that the new media movement is rocking, you will also want to include at least one slide show with sound and a video piece would also be a bonus. Full disclosure here, I don’t have any video pieces. Fortunately, we have not started playing that game.

The total portfolio, assuming you have something from everything, should not include more than about 20 singles and a couple of picture stories. The picture stories can be slide shows are print versions. I don’t think it matters either way. I think the thing to remember is a portfolio is something that whets the editor’s appetite and leaves him looking for more. The number of pictures is not nearly as important as the quality.

The next post will deal with crafting a portfolio that will take you from that entry level job to the next step.

Photo copyright The Decatur Daily. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.