jvx said:
I think you may have missed one important detail, it's a photojournalism website and not a photography website. I don't want categories for buildings, landscape, street, etc. 95% of my photojournalistic work is either a portrait or a "story", a longer documentary. Only a very small amount of pictures are something else: a meeting, a happening, an event, ... Those can go in "assorted". I don't want to showcase anything else (like street photographs, taken just for my own pleasure) and this should be the least important category anyway since it's not really the work I want to do.
It shouldn't be called assorted I think. My desk drawer is "assorted." A bag of M&Ms are "assorted." Assorted has connotations of random and disorder (duh). Don't know what to call it, seeing how there's only one photo in it.
Why not put some street shots in? It's a portfolio pretty much, right? Clients like to see the scope of your capabilites. When I apply for jobs, I always throw in the off portrait or macro shot, just to show what I am capable of, and it has served me well.
Another thing I noticed: Everything is black and white. Do no clients want color? Just remember, it doesn't honestly matter too much what you want, but what the client wants, unless you have enough potential clients to pick and choose what you want to do.
Also, you told us (as in the people reading this thread) who the people in your portraits are. That's nice, but what about someone who goes to your site and doesn't belong to this forum (like, umm, a client)? As a photojournalist, you need cutlines to tell people why I should care what is in a given photo. It might be the best photo in history, but if I don't know who, what, where, when, why, how, and why I should care, it's just a piece of artwork and not telling a story. Very, very, very few photos have the power to communicate all that, to whoever looks at it (be they from Alaska or India), without a cutline. For example, who is Luc Tuymans? Why is a photo of him newsworthy (basically I want to know why should I care who he is)? Sure, I could read the story about him, but I don't always have access to the story (as in right now on your website). And also, a lot of people don't read all the stories in a paper or magazine, they browse the headlines and photos until they find something interesting to them. Reading a cutline helps a reader decide if they want to read the story or not. Cutlines are vital tools to the reader that so few photographers know how to create (inlcuding most on every newspaper staff I've ever worked on). Knowing cutlines, and how to make the most use of them gives you a valuable advantage over someone else who can shoot, but can't write to save their life.
Sorry if I possibly come off as blunt, but that's who I am when it comes to helping people out. Also, photographers who can't (or don't) write cutlines are one of my pet peeves, like people not cleaning fingerprints off lenses we have to share and not recharging batteries at the office.
All this talk reminds me, I need to get a website up, too
🙂.
Have a nice day,
Bob Clark
