The Photographer's Portfolio Development Workshop
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I admire the photographs of William Neill. I have enjoyed his writings whenever I have encountered them. My own photography has improved as a result of lessons that he has thought me. And yet, I found this book disappointing.
The author explains how separate the wheat from the chaff in your own photographs to make portfolios and how to learn from your photographs what you need to complete your portfolios. I can understand why he considers this important, if, as he states, he took 1623 photos in a day. (That’s two and one half photographs a minute, without allowing for traveling or lunch breaks; I prefer to spend more time planning my images.) He also provided assignments that were all essentially: take pictures; select the best; take more pictures to better tell your story.
There are useful tips, like how to use the facilities of Lightroom to make such choices. He also suggests sites you can go to for web hosting, or to publish your photos in book form, or enter competitions. I encountered nothing that didn’t seem like common sense or information I easily discovered on my own. At most, Neill’s advice could easily have been contained in an article or two. Instead there is a great deal of repetition of the fundamental ideas.
Neill shows the selections that he made from collections that he assembled. I wish he had provided a deeper analysis to show why some images were selected and others not.
From time to time full-page photographs were provided of pictures he selected, but more often he showed a grid of photographs that he is choose from, or a grid of those he selected. These grids reduced the images to tiny little rectangles that were too small to appreciate for their contents or what distinguished one from another.
I still look forward to looking at Neill’s next collection of pictures.
Note: The publisher provided me with a review copy of this book at no charge.