PORTFOLIO

My portfolio has arrived!
I am extremely happy with it. It looks pristine and clean and the colours of my portfolio are really going to pop against the white leather.
I am now debating getting an archival presentation box to keep it in so I am able to carry it around. Sadly I cannot afford Plastic Sandwiches £150 presentation box option but I am debating Silverprint as I have bought one of their boxes before and it has lasted me a long time and is still in great condition.
Essentially keeping the portfolio looking in great condition is what is key to me as I do not have alot of money and cannot replace it every year like some photographers do.

Assisting

I have been assisting on more and more shoots recently. I have gathered some feedback on why m friends have asked me and they have all said that compared to some other students they find me very proactive when it comes to moving lights around and taking initiative in helping with direction. I am finding that the more time I spend in the studio with other people, the more I learn about what works and what doesn't work and its really broadening my knowledge of studio based photography.

Background edit.

I thought I should use this shoot as an opportunity to run through the edit process for it as the shoot did not turn out how I wanted to and I turned to photoshop to salvage it. When my fabric backdrop idea malfunctioned, in the heat of the moment I shot on a plain white background to try and save the shoot as we were running out of time. I decided to add a colour to this on photoshop to make the image more interesting. I did this by using a block colour fill layer on the 'soft light' setting which then changed the look of the colour to a more believable gel lighting look. I then masked out her body and face and spent a very long time masking her hair so that the background looked believable .

To do this for the whole shoot took me a VERY long time and I will definitely not be relying on photoshop to do something like this in the future as it is really not convenient. It did however give me an opportunity to practice my skills and refine them for future use.

Alex Prager contact

A few months ago I got in contact with Alex Prager's assistant Lia to ask her a few questions about Alex's photographic process. She was most helpful and linked me to several interviews that alex has done in the past.
One of the more informative and interesting links she sent me was this one.

In this interview Alex describes her process as a snap decision she made when she was 20. Some more interesting parts of her process was when she was figuring out what she liked to create and what her audience liked her to create. She would hang picture in her laundry room in her apartment building, go back a day later and see which images were gone. By doing this she could see which images were received better by the public. I think this is such a fantastic idea for a pop up exhibition as not only does it help figure out which images are more successful but its a simple way to gain exposure.

Alex explains that she uses colour to gain  peoples attention and then has them discover something underneath that is not as cheery. This is extremely relevant to my own work as this is exactly what I try to do. Gain peoples attention with a glamorous aesthetic and then have them discover the melancholy underneath.

Photo Books

I think photo books are a great opportunity to showcase your work in a travel sized way.
For example at an exhibition you could have your prints on the wall and a photo book on the desk next to them with images in that support your exhibited images but aren't quite as important.
This is different to a portfolio as this showcases all of your different images where as I would use a photobook to show case images from the same series as the framed images.

Blurb.co.uk do some fantastic deals on photobooks.

I find it a little bit disappointing that they don't offer a large portrait book but I do like the idea of a square as this would then take both portrait and landscape images. I think their prices are really reasonable for a good quality book to support your main images.

Blurb also offer portfolio quality photo books incase a leather bound or a box portfolio didn't suit yoru brand right. I think its great that they have so many uses for photo books.

Prints.

After hearing back from Karen at Tulle and Candyfloss and how grateful she was to receive her surprise prints, I have decided that I will be gifting prints to the rest of my collaborations too. When I arrange a collaboration we always decide on exchanging time for digital files, so I think it will work in my favour to gift these people a few physical prints for their portfolio's. Not only does this save them the hassle of printing it themselves but it is a nice surprise that will hopefully strengthen our professional relationship.