Portfolio Reviews

I've never had a portfolio review in my life, and find myself remarkably uninterested in having one. I am going to say some stuff anyways! What, are you new here?

It strikes me that these things come in a bunch of flavors. You can sign up for a meat-market thing where one of a panel of "experts" will be randomly selected to opinionate about your portfolio. At something like the other end, I guess you get a meeting with the perfect person to make sense of your work, and that person likewise opinionates.

In the land of inventions and business ideas, there are any number of analogs, to both ends of this. There are hundreds of organizations that are completely generic, but will absolutely help you patent your invention, evaluate your idea, and help you get funding to start your business. These generic operations are a grift, they sift through 1000s of awful ideas very quickly, taking a fee for every one, and every so often then find something viable. When they do find something viable, they arrange to screw the principal.

Never, ever, ever get involved with these people. These people have a business model in which they take as much profit as possible as early as possible. The entire point is to leave you with as little as possible.

At the other end of the spectrum there are venture capital firms, private equity firms, even (maybe?) departments in banks, that actually exist to help you succeed. Their business model is to generate a lot of success for you, and take their profit as a smaller percentage off the back end. They make a lot more money than the first gang, but they have to do a lot more work and they have a lot of expertise.

The photo portfolio review seems to me to be similar.

My photographs are maybe more idiosyncratic than most, but I think it's true of almost anyone's work that there are some people who are going to get it, who are going to be able to make some sense of it, and others who won't. It's not at all clear to me what value there is in having the former look at your work. This seems a lot like the guys who collect fees on the front end and, hey, look at that, this is precisely the model.

They take your $50 fee, flip through your pictures of whatever, and tell you about how when they were the photo editor at <Failed Magazine> they wanted pictures that were more like <whatever> but great effort we think your work is strong come back next year with your $50.

On the up side, it's easy. You spend your $50 and some geezer will actually talk to you for a few minutes about your stupid pictures. If mainly you're into paying for social interactions, great. You should take some workshops, which are much more expensive but otherwise pretty much the same deal.

The other side of the spectrum places the work on you. To get a useful portfolio review you have to figure out who the right people are. Then you have to get a meeting. Neither of these is easy. Maybe there is some royal road here, but I suspect that any fixer who promises for a modest fee to introduce you to those right people is in fact a grifter. You've got to do the work yourself.

The right people are the ones who are equipped to make sense of your work, to see what you're trying to do, obviously. They should also, ideally, be in a position to do something about it if your work isn't shit, above and beyond advising you how to un-shit your photos.

I send my pictures around to people who I think will "get it" and so far they seem to like 'em. Mission accomplished.

So have you had a portfolio review? How'd it go?! Tell me I'm all wet!