Over the year I have engaged in a number of formal and informal portfolio reviews. Working alongside my boss, Sam Brown, he has helped me put together my portfolio constantly giving advice and constructive criticism. Whenever we had a visiting professional in, I made sure to ask if they were able to look over my work. I spoke about in an earlier blog about how I spoke with Sophie Traynor, Tom Duffield, and Oliva from the Hot mess. In additional to these more portfolio reviews I engaged in more formal portfolio reviews. The course organised several portfolio reviews with Mahtab Hussain, Sophie Traynor, Dan Commands, josh wild and Roz Doherty.



Josh Wild:



I Showed Josh wild a set of five portfolios containing 4 images per set, which are my intended hand ins for the professional practice portfolio. He said that I was competent in both studio and location lighting i a result of my Salt beer portfolio. Both for product and partiture, he pointed out to be more one of my shots some of the label was not completely in focus and to be careful of that going forward as some clients will really want the whole product to be in focus. Wild complimented my retouch skills, he could tell that a lot of work went into the retouch but said it did not look over retouched, which was a good thing. One point that he pointed out was to shoot wider than I needed so that the imaged would work better for social media. For my Students Union portfolio for the Hudd Crawl, he mentioned that I it was good to see that I am comfortable in many situations being able to capture a range of different photographic practices. As part of the review, he mentioned that it was good to see my drive and that I was not interested in just one area of photography while I am studding at university. As a whole he said that my understanding of lighting was really strong. About one of my images Wild said it was strong, but I should pay more attention to the colour. He applauded my use of analogue film with added flash as it was so difficult to incorporate with one another. Wild said because I knew how to both use film and digital with flash, I was hitting the ground running and could make a space for myself in the industry. In addition, he said it was nice that I had a varied portfolio that showed off a range of skill sets, not just in one area of industry but others as well. Wild said he was impressed with the fact that I was producing the level of work I was and engaging in university activity as well.





Sophie Traynor:



As discuses in a previous blog post she noted on how it was much better considering how I selected a smaller amount of work to show. She also noted how some of the shots could have done with more styling however didn’t bother her as it looked more real. She noticed one of my images from the editorial partiture as she saw it in Shot Up North awards. She suggested that I recrate one of my shots with additional lighting as it it would make it more viable to show to commercial brands as to not re curate it with natural light as you can not rely on natural ligh. With the work I made for the Students union on the Hudd crawl Traynor suggested that even though all good shots some of them were funny over practical. Traynor noted that a lot of my images was landscape ven though it was social media driven and told me to take that more into consideration when putting together my portfolio. Regarding feedback she gave some really useful advice regarding feedback, if you are getting work from it and getting good feedback it dose not matter what other people say. Overall Traynor gave really helpful feedback challenging me on certain decisions I made in addition to recreating certain lighting conditions.





Dan commons:



I showed Dan my work “The house is on fire” a personal project about my coming out. Overall, he had he had positive things to say about the work. He wished that the work was longer but thought that considering that my commercial practice that it was impressive that I was able to a personal body of work. In addition, he said that my editorial portraiture was a lot more compelling than my commercial work. He said that I was interested in publishing the work I could publish and sell with village books, witch dan owns. In addition to this, dan was impressed with the commercial work I was creating.





Roz Doherty:



I showed Roz my work “The house is on fire” a personal project about my coming out. She made the same point as dan saying that the work had very much protentional and she would like to see the project extended into a larger project. Even though admitted she did not have perspective on the commercial wok because it was not what she was involved in. Roz was impressed with the work I was creating.





Mahtab Hussain:



In an earlier blog post I mentioned a talk I attended from Mahtab Hussain where he talked about his professional art practice. Before the talk Hussain kindly gave up some of his time to carry out a number of portfolio reviews, I was lucky enough to sign up early to one of the slots and was able to get feedback on my work. Going into the review I knew I wanted to show him my editorial portraiture work. Hussain commented on how strong and evoking this work was, picking up on the fact that a lot of these images included one model. Hussain’s suggestion was to make a series of work based on this person. This is not something I have considered but thought it was a good idea and is something that I am currently looking into.