Another Function of a Portfolio

In the "How I Practiced Portraiture" post, Steve Caddy wrote:

So many of these problems boil down to a difference between what the customer thinks they're buying and what the photographer thinks they're selling.

Amen, and my experience was a vivid illustration of that.

Steve was probably talking mainly about the business dealings between the photographer and the customer, but it applies equally well to the aesthetic side of the transaction as well. When I started doing portraiture, in Washington D.C. in the late '80s, I took out a text-only ad in the Yellow Pages. I got a number of jobs from it, but a certain peculiar problem popped up—I had a difficult time determining what people wanted. I quickly realized that, when they say "portrait," everyone has a different thing in mind.

Sometimes the differences were subtle, but sometimes they were flagrant. For instance, one woman, it turned out, had in mind a romanticized, idealized, hand-colored B&W picture of her beribboned and well-coiffed pair of poodles, whereas another woman wanted what amounted to a softcore "boudoir" photo of himself as a gift for her husband (their marriage later failed, sadly). Neither one of those things is quite what "portrait" means to me.

Another rather vain gentleman of late middle age had a pile of example photos of himself that supposedly illustrated what he wanted. The only trouble was, the photos he showed me were a complete motley—I was mystified as to what they had in common (and I'm pretty good at that sort of thing). After considerable discussion and a lot of thought, it finally dawned on me—in all the various pictures he showed me, he had a certain "boyish" look. What he wanted was a picture of himself looking younger! (I was not able to satisfy that client, I'm afraid. In all my pictures of him, he looked about the age he, well, looked. He rejected all the proofs. Now you could satisfy a guy like that, but that was before Photoshop.)

So the first task with every client I got from the Yellow Pages was to interrogate them as to what "portrait" meant to them so I could figure out how to come up with what they wanted. In some cases this was easy, but in others it was not. Some people are remarkably inarticulate about all things aesthetic—all they could tell me was something along the lines of, "you know, a portrait." In many cases it was simply that people had a set idea of the style they preferred, and they were picturing it in their mind's eye, thinking that's what "portrait" meant—without realizing that their idea of "portrait" was only one kind of portrait.

Portrait

Portrait

Portrait

The solution to the problem worked extremely well. My friend who owned the frame shop in Georgetown invited me to exhibit about 14 of my portraits in her store. I was able to show not only exactly what I did best, but the kind of work I wanted to do—which turned out to be a great boon for my marketing. People would see my portraits, and if they wanted that kind of portrait I did, they would call me.

Those clients knew exactly what they wanted—they wanted exactly what I did. And, apropos Steve's comment, when either of us said "portrait" we both had the same thing in mind.

So I went from chasing a hodgepodge of wildly different ideas, never quite knowing if I was going to get what the client really wanted, to getting just exactly the sort of work I wanted to do.

It was a powerful demonstration of the purpose of a portfolio. Ever since then, I've been careful to explain to students that there are two purposes for your portfolio—one is to show what you can do and how good you are, of course, but the other is to attract the kind of work you want to do in the future. 

Mike
(Portrait 1: Henry VIII by Hans Holbein the Younger, oil painting; Portrait 2: Audrey Hepburn by Yosuf Karsh, B&W film photograph; Portrait 3: Kevin Rollins, Former CEO of Dell by Kirk Tuck, color digital image)

Original contents copyright 2017 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

bt: "I am in a somewhat unrelated field, architecture. One thing is for sure in the 'creative' professions. The work that you have previously done well is what leads to new work, usually of a similar character. Quite literally one thing tends to leads to the next. The old saying about this is: 'Be careful about what you get good at.' Because that's what you're going to be doing. You can try to change tracks, if you want, but it can take a lot of effort and, as you point out, there's a lot of motion and energy spent trying to define or even understand the (new) client and how you might deal with their needs, which you may not relate to or be a good fit with at all."

Bob Curtis: "'A good portraitist would be unlikely to admit it, but on a very basic level one might say that a portrait is a battle between two wills for the control of the sitter’s soul. The best portraits, then, would not be those where the artist wins too easy a battle (as with John Sargent) but the contests that end in hard-won ties: and the greatest of those would be between two champions, e.g,. Velazquez vs. Innocent X, or Rembrandt vs. himself.' —John Szarkowski, from the Introduction to Still Life by Irving Penn."

Ed Hawco: "All this talk of commercial portraits reminds me of my own short and horrific career shooting high school grad portraits. I will spare you the sordid details. But the mention of 'boudoir' reminds me of a friend who doesn't own a camera, has never owned a camera, and doesn't have a scrap of interest in photography. Yet he spent the better part of a year touring the Australian outback doing 'boudoir portraits' under contract from some Sydney-based studio that spent about 15 minutes showing him how to set up and focus the camera and trip the shutter. All else was up to him to figure out. When we get together and lament the woes of our lives he always trumps my short-lived and disastrous portrait career story with his own."

Comments

[Chris Kern]

“I desire you would use all your skill to paint my picture truly like me, and not flatter me at all; but remark all these roughnesses, pimples, warts, and everything as you see me, otherwise I will never pay a farthing for it.”

— attributed to Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658)

[Lovely quote, isn't it? And, as you know, the origin of the phrase "warts and all," which makes it important, too. Still, it's likely Cromwell never said it, but that Horace Walpole made it up a hundred years later. Walpole's insight is interesting, though, which is that Cromwell allowed the inclusion of his warts in his official portrait as a sort of comon-man antidote to the mannerism of idealizing royals in their portraits. So, sort of an Ur-version of a reaction against Photoshop-style enhancements, you might say. --Mike]

[T. Edwards]

I'm reminded of a truism from law school many years ago - "No contract exists unless there was a 'meeting of the minds.'"

It's not surprising that there is so much vituperation arising from wedding photography "contracts." It seems the parties enter the agreements with completely different notions of what is supposed to happen.

I wonder if these problems could be cured, in part, by better contracts at the outset.

[Jim Meeks]

I was listening to a podcast recently that featured a wedding photographer as the guest. His site is set up in such a way that you get the gist of his style, so if you don't like it, better move on.

[BERND REINHARDT]

My mentor Ben Lifson shared with me a definition he had received from a curator at the Musee d'Orsay: "A portrait is about the shape of a person's head and the lines of their face." While there are other definitions, I believe that this is a very good one. It isn't talking about what else can be included in the photograph, but it defines where the emphasis should be.

[Michael Perini]

@ bt,
Thats certainly true, I had a cousin who was an architect for the government who ended up doing bathrooms and stairwells because he had early on pointed out efficiencies and safety and security concerns and had proposed excellent solutions.
In his case, he didn't mind, I think I would.

[Michael Perini]

Re Vanity in Portrait sitters, If people are paying to be photographed, it's a safe bet that most would be happiest with a somewhat idealized version of themselves. Most folks are uncomfortable in front of a camera anyway. They worry about looking 'Worse; than their self image. If you have an optimistic, compassionate approach, you will end up with more business.
I'm talking here about 'retail' portraits of non famous people who are paying for the portrait themselves.
A little reassurance really helps," You are going to look great and look like you, but not an over processed or fake version of you".
As soon as you tell them that, they usually relax and look better.
Half your job is done.
But now everyone has heard about the 'wonders' of Photoshop, and some folks will come in with a list of fixes they expect.
Here is how we handle that. We say "You are paying me to make a photograph of you, I goes without saying that I want you to be pleased with the result. We want you and everyone who knows you to think it is a beautiful picture of you. But one of the things I don't do is 'over the top changes, because everyone who knows you will see Processing, before they see you. It will be obvious, I'm sure you don't want that.
It usually works well.

[Mani Sitaraman]

The portraits of Henry the VIII and Kevin Rollins are similar, in that their subjects are similar. Both are/were CEOs, and I think it shows.