I’ve currently got 3 hours recorded for my intended portfolio development class.
I thought the best way to illustrate how I put a portfolio of images together, was to work on a set of images that I have never edited before. So in this class you will see me select, edit and review images from shot on my 2019 Bolivia tour.
I’ve just been watching some of the recorded sessions in ‘fast forward’ mode, or if you like - time lapse and it’s fascinating to get a much clearer idea of how my work tends to evolve and surface. Starting with around forty rolls of film and whittling it down to around ten images to select and edit, how the portfolio takes shape.
There is just one more hour I wish to record, and this is more intended to look at personal style, how to figure out if we have one, and how portfolio development can help us recognise and shape our own style. I think many of us believe we need to find our style and then that will inform how we choose to edit and develop our work, but I think certainly for the first while (perhaps many years) it is the other way around - we ‘discover’ our style while attempting to put portfolio’s together.
There are no rules. Just an empty canvas of possibilities. I hope that by showing you how work tends to ‘surface’ and a picture of how it all fits together isn’t obvious to start with, and only becomes more obvious as the work itself directs me, rather than my trying to direct the work - will be useful.
With anything that is creatively involved, there has to be a willingness to ‘let go’, and ‘go with the flow’. I often do not know where the work I am editing is going when I start. I give myself permission to screw up, to get it wrong, to experiment, and to back track if I feel something isn’ t working.
Often the work tells us how it wants to be edited. It gives us clues, and I think that there is often an internal battle between what we wish it to be, and what it is.
Letting go, is vital in allowing work to surface, but I think in this modern age of schedules, and expected outcomes, we are always looking for guarantees or proven results. That is not how creativity works, and it is a long challenge for many of us to stop trying to control things too much.