Editing for Your Own Portfolio? Don’t!
Photographers are not the best editors of their own work. The task of choosing which images belong in your portfolio, either online or analog, is often best left to anyone but yourself.
Photographers are not the best editors of their own work. The task of choosing which images belong in your portfolio, either online or analog, is often best left to anyone but yourself.
Guest post by Chicago Photographer Joe Pobereskin.
Copyright Joe Pobereskin
I had a client (now retired) who I met when I was an assistant. When I opened my own business I went to see him with my portfolio and he immediately gave me a smallish job to shoot. He came back with a few more jobs over the next year or so, then dropped off the map. I’d call every once in a while and mail him stuff on a bi-monthly basis (I was doing mass mailings six times a year), and about nine years later, after I’d mailed a reprint of my NY Gold ad (picture of a news http://onhealthy.net/product-category/adhd/ anchor in a red suit) he called me.
“Joe,” he said, “it’s Ernie Blitzer, bet you never expected to hear from me.”
“Ernie,” I replied, “how are you? Of course I expected to hear from you, I’ve been mailing you shit for nine f*&%$#g years! What’s up?”
“Yeah, I got that thing you sent me.”
“Which one,” I asked?
“Oh… I don’t remember,” he replied, “it was something red.”
Next thing I know we’re scouting locations for two annual reports.
“Stalking” may not be the right word for it, but “persistence” does pay-off. I know it does, Ernie proved it.
©Rick McCleary, used with permission
Your post has been stuck in my head for a couple days because it makes me recall the exact same sentiments I felt when I was starting out – all full of myself and feeling like the world owed me something/everything. There are a couple things you need to embrace that will help you get out
of your own way:
1) This is a business, just like any other business. Nothing is given. Learn the basics. Read some business books that stress marketing. Read Seth Godin’s blog.
2) No one owes you anything.
3) Your job is to make your client’s life better. See the world from your client’s perspective. User experience, and all that.
Q: So, let me see if I got this straight: I have to be “persistent”?
RM: Yes, exactly.
groozi.com is a blog about negotiating and web marketing. Weekly posts are written primarily by me, Blake J. Discher, a Detroit people photographer, an SEO
consultant, and speaker. I've presented seminars on SEO and Sales & Negotiating more than 100 times to trade groups of every size around the world. If you are interested in having me speak to your group, detailed overviews of each of my programs are available here.
Networking is the key to getting more clients in order to improve the profitability of your company. 
