Presentation Matters

This post is a cross post from another blog I am writing. I will explain why at the end...


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In the past couple days, I was looking into how one presents their photographs.


It is followed by a discussion on the OCA blog about assessment. I have very strong opinion about it, but then I step back and wonder how this is done in the real world. After all, I can rant all day, but ranting alone does not solve my problem.


Why presentation? When you go to job interview, you won't wear pyjamas, right? Even if you are smartest, most hard-working, most beautiful and friendliest person in the world, you still have to dress for the occasion to get the job. If you wear pyjamas, people won't take you seriously in the first place, regardless on how good you are. I guess, good presentation open the doors for future opportunities. Bad presentation just shuts it right down. 


Of course, this is not new to me. The re-work for assignment 3 (The churches in the city) was done in inDesign (https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B9vxityaDZ2WVmpIbm1ibjhieFE). I felt that I need to put my work together to strengthen the message. I used open office word and power point in the first version of assignment 3 (Urban Landscape), but the presentation is not clean enough. 


Now I have to think one step further. How about if I have to create a portfolio of my work? I think, the assessment has a similar accent to this. I was looking around online and try to find what other people have done, and what the rules are. The most relevant I find seems to be commercial photographers or fashion photographers putting together a portfolio of their work to present to client. There are a lot of details on how to pick the images, even on which box you should use. One example is Martin Bailey's portfolio:


http://blog.martinbaileyphotography.com/2012/04/11/podcast-330-creating-a-photography-portfolio/

In general, I notice there is a big emphasis on consistency. It seems to me that there is an effort to present your work as one piece. For example, it is bad to use different colour of frames, or frames of different sizes. However, it will be a tough call in TAoP because we have five assignments, and each assignment is about something different. Not to mention that, assignment 1 is likely to be my weakest shots (assuming that I am improving). Why do I want to put it in front? Should I put the best shot at the beginning and at the end?


I think everything I have seen in an art gallery is mounted. So let's look at mounting image. The tutorial is here:


http://www.reframingphotography.com/content/mounting-matting-and-framing

So far so good. But think about this: each assignments requires roughly 16 images in this course. Forget about the re-work for a moment, so we are talking about dry mounting 80 images, and sending out a box of 80 images to the assessment. How much weight are we talking about here? Forget about cost at the moment, is this the best way to present my work? The images in assignment 1 is not so good anyway, does it look a little bit moronic to dry mount them. Wait, but those in assignment 3 probably worth dry mounting. Ok, then where is the consistency?


I need to think a little bit about what message I am trying to send and how to present it. I will definitely go for dry mounting if I am submitting my portfolio of a set of coherent work. For assessment on five separate topics for 80 images, I am not sure the traditional way of presenting photography portfolio works.


I seems to sign myself up for putting them in a book format, so I should investigate on how to layout a book. I only layout a 8 double spreads in the last assignment. This time I will have chapters and what not. Hmm...




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I got a comment from Catherine about the visibility of putting white letter on black background. To be honest, I have not thought about it. It is probably I see black letter on white paper all the time at work, so I wanted to pick something different when I pick the layout of this blog.


Well, the question is: does it make it difficult for people to read my blog? Should black letter on white background better? What is the general atmosphere I am creating?


I am not sure, but I think the best is to try it another layout and compare them side by side. Therefore, this post is cross-posted with the DFP blog, which I have not started the course yet :P