WB4

Photo books

When it comes to being a freelance photographer, having a photo book or multiple photo books can be very handy as they can act as portfolios to show customers and potential customers your range of work and also to people who will go on to give you commissioned work. You can get different sized photo books and have few or many paged ones. You could have a photo book for each genre that you specify your work in like one for portraiture, one for product photography and one for landscape photography. Or, you could have a huge book with all of the genres you specialise in so you only have to take one around with you. You could also have a commercial photo book and a creative photo book. Photo books can range from £15-£150+, the more expensive usually means they are bigger, have more pages and are of a more sturdy, well built quality. As a freelance photographer I would opt for a more expensive one if I was going to start my own business. These can help advertise and promote your business. Especially if you bring them to events with you.

Styles of print based portfolios:
You can opt for a basic photo book or upgrade to a more professional-looking one. You can also choose the type of cover, type of paper and how big your book is. You also get to choose how many pages in the process of making one.

www.blurb.co.uk

If I had my own photography business I would purchase the professional photography portfolio.

When I was choosing my own photobook as a future freelance photographer I went on www.photobox.co.uk

As I was low on funds, this website caught my eye as they had some deals on.

Due to low funds I purchased the Small Softcover including 26 pages. I chose it because although it is small it is still made to a professional quality and you can even have an image on the front cover.

If I had more funds I would have purchased the A3 Lay Flat book as it is much bigger and images are unaffected by the seam so I could have had images across 2 pages and as they are large people would be able to see them a lot more clearly. Also, as a professional photographer you wouldn't want a small photo book as this looks slightly unprofessional.

My forty images

I had to choose 40 images and then discuss them with the class to get feedback so I could choose the best 26 for my photo book.

These were the 40 images that I chose to show to the class:

Some of them I converted to black and white.

When I showed my images to the class for discussion, they told me that my black and white photography was my strongest point throughout so I edited a few images from colour to black and white in photoshop (most images were black and white before hand) and decided that I was going to bass my Photo book on my Black and White photography as after listening to the class' opinions I thought this was the best thing to go for.

Use of print-based albums as a marketing tool:
Using them as a marketing tool is very effective as instead of telling people at events to go to your websites by giving them your business cards you can show them your work straight away and also give them a business card. If you just give them a business card they are likely to forget to go to your website but if you show them your work first and then they go home and see your business card, their memory will be jogged as to what images they saw and if they were interested they will view your website/contact you.

People are also more likely to give an opinion on your work whilst face to face so the more people you listen to saying which images they think are really good or vice versa, you can use this knowledge of your audience to help improve your portfolio by adding/removing images.

As they have something to keep them occupied (the photo book) you can tell them all your details about your services as they look through which gets across more information to potential customers more quickly.

These are the images I put in my Photobook:

I chose black and white photography as many of the images I chose for my photo book to be discussed and narrowed down were in fact black and white. This is because I love the high contrast you get with black and white photography and as colour is not a distraction you appear to get much sharper detail and usually just one area of focus point, again, because you are not distracted by the colours. I think black and white images look a lot sharper than colour imagery which I love. I also feel a lot more confident with black and white photography so that definitely helped with my decision.