It is now two weeks before I leave for New York for the portfolio review. As you can see by the lack of blog posts I've been really busy preparing (yeah, that's what we'll go with).
I've been working a lot with Matt on cookbook projects, Fabio projects, and various other food shoots. I've also been working diligently on my own shoots including a small cookbook I'm planning on taking with me to New York.
I'm going to self publish the cookbook and use them as my leave behind for my portfolio reviewers. If there's any interest I'll make them available as an e-book or even a made-to-order book. The last shot was done yesterday and the text is being edited this weekend. Final layout will be designed and the books will go to press on Monday in order to be completed in time for the review.
After checking out options for printing my portfolio, I decided to buy a printer and do it myself. Not only does it cost far less to print myself, I'll still have the printer after the portfolio review. After doing some research I decided on using the Pina Zangaro presentation books. I also knew that I didn't want the photos in plastic slipsheets so I bought some pre-drilled and scored paper made especially for the presentation books.
Over the next week I'll be going over all of my photos again and again to try and weed down the 30 to 40 best ones for the portfolio. I've done an initial weeding out process on the computer, then I am going to print out 4 x 5 copies of the remaining photos and pin them up on the wall. I'm also going to ask colleagues and friends to look through the images to pick out the favorites. Once the images have been selected I will start working on the flow and pairing what images will go together as a spread. When that is complete I will then optimize all the images and prepare them for printing.
During that time I also have a couple more shoots that I'd like to get in while I still have time. Unfortunately, I was so concentrating on food shoots, that I didn't get to do the portraits that I had wanted to include in the portfolio. The difficult part is always been finding chefs to take portraits of. They are either too camera shy or too busy and it's hard to explain to them the promotional benefit of having great images for their business.
I also need to find the time in the next two weeks to redesign my portfolio website and also to launch the Shoot What You Eat blog (which this blog will be converted into). I pretty much decided that the iPad version of my portfolio will be done on the plane ride to New York.
I have so much work to do it's a wonder I'm taking time to write this post. But truth be told, I am actually dictating this post into my new iPhone while walking my dog. Yay for no typing and multi-tasking.
