IPAD V PRINT PORTFOLIO
Written by Meg Moss, Content and Photographer Management at ImageBrief
Are the days of individualized printed portfolios gone? There are plenty of new IPad apps on the market today for artists and agents to explore for showing images. IPads are certainly a convenient way to share images, but does that mean death to printed portfolios? We put this question out to a collective group of bookers, art buyers and photographers and had an overwhelming (and quite emotional) response - both for and against.
The Photographers’ Perspective:
The pros are the same pros that apply to all digital media. It is easily shared, quickly edited and updated, transportable and less-expensive. However, it seems size (and quality) does matter and this is where opinion varied the most. While the IPad is small and portable, maybe it’s too small.
Here’s what one of my colleagues had to say:
“If I’m going to see a magazine or an advertising client, (people who are interested in the ‘quality’ of my work) then I would definitely take a printed portfolio….and for me that’s about quality of printed work, the detail (which is important to me for beauty), and also just the feeling of actually looking at a book, turning pages etc, its more professional, and it feels like I am showing someone a little more respect if I give them an actual book. Its like I care about them enough to have carried this heavy book (that’s taken years of work and lots of money to create), so for me it would seem a little disrespectful to go to see Vogue or someone like that, and hand them a 10 inch screen. Often I will have 3 or 4 Art Directors from an ad agency present during a meeting, and the size and format of a real portfolio allows them to easily look at the book together as a group…” - Gavin O’Neill (www.gavinoneill.com)
And this from members of our Linkedin Group (Photo Editor, Art Director and Creative Buyer Network):
“Looking at my book on the iPad is a great experience, but it doesn’t have the wow-factor that my printed book does. On the other hand, I can re-organize it while sitting on an airplane, it is much cheaper to replace, and I carry it everywhere! The last Photo Editor I met with met me in her crowded office. Her desk was covered with work, and there wasn’t a clear place to open-up my printed book… When I took out my iPad instead of a printed book, she looked really relieved to receive something small and manageable. When she saw a few photos she really loved, I opened my printed book on my lap, just so she could see the true quality of the work. I think it worked really well to have both!” – Andrew Stiles via LinkedIn
“The best possible argument for “print” is that it leaves a psychological “imprint” that electronic media may never match. Strategically and economically speaking: “Share” the IPad. “Leave” the promo. “Pray” for phone call!” - David Casteel via LinkedIn
The ability to edit your images within your portfolio to perfectly tailor it for each client is an undeniable advantage. Your ad agency client looking to book you for product photography has no interest in your landscape work or what you can do with skin tones and vice versa. Those images can be easily removed from your iPad portfolio. Of course you can take pages in and out of your portfolio but each edit causes a little more wear and tear to your book, and the prints.
Keeping printed portfolios up to date is costly – in both time and finances. Prints are expensive and as each shoot is your best ever (until the next one), you always want your latest work to be shown to your new clients. Tailoring your portfolio on the iPad is simple and can be saved for future, similar clients, essentially giving you a range of ready-to-show portfolios. Gavin does, however, raise a valid point in talking about ‘the quality of printed work’.
If the client is booking you for a job that will be finalized in print, there is no better way to show them what their end product will be, and the quality that you can offer than to provide them with a printed piece of work. There is a difference in how your work looks on a monitor versus how it looks in print. There are also many factors that can interfere with how your work appears, such as varying colour calibrations from screen to screen.
The flipside is that many clients are now booking you for work that will appear in a digital format. In that case, surely showing how your work looks in a backlit device is more relevant.
The Buyer’s Perspective:
As with the photographers, responses from the buyers varied.
“I vote for an iPad when an agent comes to see me and wants to show me books of multiple photographers and/or artists. However, I still prefer a big, beautiful printed book for presentation. I know our Creative Directors still want to see a well-put-together printed portfolio when they’re deciding on shooters for upcoming projects” - Clair Carter-Ginn (Buyer) via LinkedIn
“I would have to say having a photographer hand me an iPad over a traditional portfolio would be disappointing as I could get the same experience sitting at my desk going through the photographer’s website.
Gadgets are cool but hey its the images that count right?” - Tom McGhee, via LinkedIn
And this from ImageSource:
‘Art directors and art buyers make a choice based on what they have seen on a website, before you ever get to present the work,’ said one noted agent who preferred to remain anonymous. ‘They rarely have time to see portfolios, and they will pretty much make their mind up from the website so that’s really where you need to put the attention.’ - ImageSource 10 May 2011 http://blog.imagesource.com/the-end-of-the-portfolio/
No Conclusion
Perhaps the bigger question here is tactile or digital? E-Books can be downloaded in the thousands and are cheaper than buying a physical copy, in your reach immediately, and portable. And yet there are still die-hard (physical) book lovers (myself included) who want to feel the pages, smell the paper and dog-ear where you are up to for next time.
This isn’t a new argument. It is a branch of the whole argument for the digital age. The entire publishing industry is having this same debate – do we still need to print our magazines?
Some of the words used by the people in our survey to describe printed portfolios were ‘magical’, ‘memorable’, ‘special’, ‘respectful’ and ‘treasures’. The words used to describe the iPad portfolios were ‘portable’, ‘light’ ‘easy-to-edit’, ‘convenient’ and ‘quick’. Harsh adjectives in comparison to the warm, emotional used to describe the print version.
It seems that the printed portfolio is becoming the fine china while the iPad steps into the everyday crockery equivalent. There is a luxury associated with the print portfolio. Perhaps it’s the money that has been spent, the physical maneuvering often required to actually get your printed portfolio to the office of the client. Perhaps it’s the feeling of belonging to an old-school, elite club that hits you as the smell of prints waft out of a newly opened portfolio.
The one and only conclusion here is that there is no conclusion – it is all about personal choice both on the photographers’ part of how they would like to present their work, and from the buyers’ part of what they need to see in order to book you for the job!
My personal thoughts are that this will go the way of all mediums where there is a digital and physical option. It will be discussed, delayed, debated, agonized over and then one day it will just be that the digital option is the standard. Pulling out your big, albeit beautiful, printed portfolio will be like offering to pay somebody by cheque or sending some transparencies by courier… Old-fashioned, inconvenient and expensive. Even the tactile folk among us (myself included), have to acknowledge when there is a simpler and better way.
Resources:
Some of the portfolio applications recommended within our LinkedIn group are:
http://www.apple.com/iwork/keynote/
http://aphotofolio.com/designs/
Meg Moss is a Director of www.imagebrief.com.
