A Little News

Putting together a portfolio is tricky enough. To make it just a little tougher, there are traps and pitfalls along the way. One of those traps is Santa Claus. I remember having a picture of Santa with a set of quadruplets in a portfolio I showed to an AP shooter. He just shook his head and said, “Never put Santa in your portfolio!” He added a couple of colorful adjectives which I have deleted here to help make his point.

Another, much more common trap, is putting a photo in your portfolio of an important person or a big event. Now, if the photo rocks, of course put it in. I had a nice photo of Bishop Desmond Tutu in my portfolio as a student. He was speaking at Duke University and I photographed him as he spoke. What a great, emotional speaker and I had a really nice image of him. Another editor panned it just saying he didn’t like to see famous people in a student’s portfolio just because they were famous. He asked me if I would have the picture in my portfolio if the person were not famous. Of course not because it would be just a picture of a guy gesturing in a pulpit. Point made.

The other trap I wanted to let you know about is putting photos in your portfolio from big events just because you were there. I have covered exactly one hurricane in my career. Ivan hit the Alabama Gulf coast a few years ago and I was sent down to shoot it. I had very little lead time and very little time actually on the ground before they brought me home. I believe my actual shooting time was about six hours spread over two days and it was far and away the most stressful two days of my career. I came back with several nice images, one which I have included here. The problem is, none of the images will ever go in my portfolio because they are just not good enough. Yeah, I was there but that is about all in portfolio terms. Editors have seen so many great images from hurricanes around the world that to include one that is sub-par in my portfolio would just sink it visually.

The other photo from the soldier’s funeral is another example of a good photo that simply doesn’t rise to the level of a portfolio. The temptation to include it is strong because I was there and felt the emotion and was moved by the moment. The problem is that there have been thousands of excellent photos that editors have seen of the effects of the war and to include this one would bring down my portfolio. Yes it is important for an editor to know you can handle the big jobs but it is not so important that you want to drag down your portfolio. As the old saying goes, your portfolio is only as strong as your weakest picture so edit with that in mind.

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