Create a Photography Portfolio with Blurb
If you want to establish yourself as a photographer, you'll need a portfolio to show your work. While a website, blog or photo-sharing site is great for showcasing the bulk of your photos, printing your photographs and presenting them in a bound portfolio is often necessary when pursuing a photography job, assignment or client. Blurb lets you create and print professionally bound, four-color portfolios. To design your portfolio, Blurb provides free software that allows you to lay out photographs in a professional manner.
Instructions
1. Decide on your career goal. Your goal will impact your photography portfolio. Are you interested in becoming a commercial photographer, wedding photographer, a fine artist or some other type of photographer? Once you have a clear idea of what you want to achieve professionally, you can create a photography portfolio that supports your goal.
2. Select your photos. A portfolio is more than a scrapbook of your 10 to 30 favorite photos. It should contain your best 10 to 30 images that directly relate to your professional goals. (An example of this would be, if you want to become a children's portrait photographer, don't fill your portfolio with shots of zebras you took on safari. Feature your best portraits of kids.)
3. Make sure that each photograph has consistent image quality and color balance. Also, make sure that all black and white photographs share the same gray scale attributes.
4. Prepare your text. Creating a portfolio with Blurb is a lot like making a real book. Blurb allows you the option to add a portfolio cover and title, table of contents, a biography, photo captions and contact information. Writing out your text before creating your portfolio saves time and helps you stay organized. You can then cut and paste this text into pages throughout your portfolio.
5. Register at Blurb and download Blurb BookSmart(tm), the free bookmaking software you'll use to easily layout your photography portfolio.
6. Open Blurb BookSmart and decide on a book size for your portfolio.
7. Add your photos and text to the BookSmart page templates that best showcase your work. For portfolios, it looks more professional to use the same layout for all of your photos. It also helps to choose one font for all of your text and to select a font size that is not too large.
8. Have someone else edit your work. Once you've designed your portfolio, print out a preview and ask a friend, teacher or colleague to review it. Have them check for spelling, effectiveness, clarity and quality. Ask them to be honest and be prepared to adjust your photography portfolio as necessary.
9. Make your final edits if you have any and order your printed portfolio. You do this by clicking Preview Book, then Order Book in Blurb BookSmart. It should only take a few minutes to upload your portfolio's file to Blurb. If you have the time, Blurb recommends that you start by ordering one portfolio as a test proof to ensure that your photographs print well.
