A few weeks back, I posed a question: what does the word "portfolio" mean exactly? In that blog post, we learned about a few different definitions for the term "portfolio". One of the main definitions that we learned is that a portfolio can be a cohesive body of work that represents the photographer's specialized genre(s). For example, a photographer may create a set of ten or twenty images that focus on landscapes. To narrow down the "landscape genre" into a "sub-genre": a photographer may focus on tropical landscapes (as opposed to mountainous).
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| Thorne, Courtney, from PH341 Final Portfolio: Couples, 2015. |
Putting a portfolio together that depicts one sub-genre can be a challenge! The hardest part - in my humble opinion - for the photographer is to show his/her intended content (or meaning) of the photograph. Keep in mind: as a photographer, you want to ensure that your story is communicated visually to the viewer. Once an image is printed, published, or hung in a show, a viewer can interpret the content of the image one way or another. The photographer's goal is to provide visual clues are essential for the photographer to express his/her meaning.
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| Thorne, Courtney, from PH341 Final Portfolio: Couples, 2015. |
The images you see in this blog post were
taken by one of my "PH341: Portfolio Exploration" students, Courtney Thorne. These images make up
the portfolio that she put together for PH341 and display one
cohesive sub-genre depicting portraits of "couples in love". Courtney's intended content of these images comes across learly to the viewer when her images are presented as a group of photos: a portfolio. Courtney used visual clues to ensure her content was clear: the couples are holding hands, hugging, kissing, and interacting intimately with one another. With that said, is there another sub-genre of photography that these images could also pass for? For example, assuming the viewer knows nothing about the people in these images - could these images also be seen as "engagement photographs"?
Works Cited:
Thorne, Courtney, from "Final Portfolio: Couples", 2015.
Thorne, Courtney, from "Final Portfolio: Couples", 2015.