portfolio books?

[RalphLambrecht]

my experience is that
1. nothing quite beats a darkroom print in quality.
2. a good ink-jet print comes veryclose.
3. a digital print, as in online print services is terrible in B&W (poor blacks).
4. an offset print is close to 2.

What does this mean for the concerning digital photographer who wishes to produce a high-quality portfolio?
Prepare a box with ink-jet prints or have an offset book done?

 

[removed account4]

Hi Ralph
I have hand made, hard bound books with acetate pages to slide photos in and switch them out &c, and slip covers made at portfoliobox.com
they do fantastic work, and lucky for me, they are local. They make books and boxes
for people all over the world and their prices are all custom made and extremely competitive. If you can't find a local maker ( and you want to custom portfolio / press book made ) it might be worth looking into. You can buy replacement pages (when the plastic pages look bad they can be replaced / post binding ) if/when you need them at TalasOnline (Bookbinding Supply) in NYC ( or maybe you can find local suppliers near you ? ).
Hope bindary ( also local ) might be another book maker to look into they do the same sort of custom portfolio/book sort of thing. They also do custom and equally-exteme-high-quality-work. It's not hard to make your own post binding acetate paged post bound book too .. takes a bit of time and effort, but not much.

Good Luck !
J

ps. Don't forget if you send them to Instagramps, they want to see at least 100,000 followers.

 

[jim10219]

I work at a print shop for a living. I'd say you're mostly correct. The only concern is that the equipment, technique and paper make a huge difference and can shuffle those around a bit.

Here's the thing, a good inkjet printer will likely have more than just CMYK for it's ink. The Epson P9000 sitting next to me has 10 inks, and uses a CMYOGVK print scheme, plus has a light black and matte black to go with a gloss black. So it'll blow our offset press out of the water. However, some print shops do run a CMYOGVK color system. It's rare, and expensive, but when done, due to the higher line screens capable on an offset press, you can actually surpass a good inkjet printer.

Now, the term digital printer, or digital press, usually refers to a laser printer. They use toner, which is small plastic balls that are melted onto the paper instead of liquid ink. They typically fall behind both the offset and the inkjet. However, there are higher quality digital presses, like the Kodak Nexfinity or the HP Indigo press, which can come close to a good offset press, and surpass a mediocre one. Once again, they're more expensive and less common, so it's not what your stuff is getting printed on if your going with a low cost online digital printer, like Vistaprint. So "digital" prints don't have to mean bad quality. It's just that cheap "digital" prints are.

And of course the quality of a darkroom print is determined by the skill and technique of the printer, and what all is being done to the print. So if you're printing something super large or needing to do some heavy editing to it, it can actually come out better as an inkjet print than a darkroom print. This is because software has certain advantages that you just can't replicate as well in a darkroom. For instance, there are AI learning softwares that can blow up a scan of a negative well beyond what you can do with an optical enlarger. That's because they can use the AI software to interpret what the missing pixels would be based on what is present. So they can actually give you more detail than what was present in the original film. And unlike the fractal imaging software that preceded them, they are scary good at this! Again, this isn't cheap or common. But it's out there.

So I guess my point is, there's an exception to every rule.

 

[Pieter12]

In my experience as an art director looking at portfolios, prints are better than a book. In black and white or color, the offset process can't cover the same gamut as a photo print or a high-quality inkjet print. Nothing is easier to look at than a nice 11x14 (or slightly larger) print. A book that size can be unwieldy. And it is easy to edit a print portfolio, resequencing, adding or subtracting prints. You can't do that with a book. A book is a great leave-behind, gift and for distribution to a large audience.

 

[Eric Rose]

What does this mean for the concerning digital photographer who wishes to produce a high-quality portfolio?
Prepare a box with ink-jet prints or have an offset book done?

I totally depends on what type of work you are looking for or who you are presenting too. If wanting commercial work ink-jet is just fine and in many cases a good website is even better. Small mini brochures as mail-outs or leave behinds are good too. If you want gallery representation then go by what Pieter12 said.

Check out this guys website for ideas for commercial work -
http://aphotoeditor.com/

 

[jtk]

They want to see tear sheets (i.e. work you've done). But if they want creative work your Project/s on Behance.net may be the reason they want to see you.

 

[Pieter12]

They want to see tear sheets (i.e. work you've done). But if they want creative work your Project/s on Behance.net may be the reason they want to see you.

Funny, I never really cared for tear sheets in a photographer's portfolio. Sure it meant the photographer had worked on real jobs for real clients, not spec "portfolio" work, but they are too many steps removed from the original--modified by retouchers, art director's cropping, engravers and of course, the client. I wanted to see what the photographer would deliver. Of course, today, photographers are usually expected to furnish a color-corrected, retouched (and sometimes composited from different shots), digital file and often the end product is digital--for the internet--and there is no tear sheet.

 

[jtk]

Funny, I never really cared for tear sheets in a photographer's portfolio. Sure it meant the photographer had worked on real jobs for real clients, not spec "portfolio" work, but they are too many steps removed from the original--modified by retouchers, art director's cropping, engravers and of course, the client. I wanted to see what the photographer would deliver. Of course, today, photographers are usually expected to furnish a color-corrected, retouched (and sometimes composited from different shots), digital file and often the end product is digital--for the internet--and there is no tear sheet.

Don't be distracted by my success with tear sheets. I'm still proud of them, but they're antiques.

This being 2019, most "real jobs" are done for for digital marketing even if there's enough money for a print version

For that matter, many of those jobs also entail VIDEO of the same setup/subjects/models. Obviously, most digital cameras shoot video as well as still.

Most personal presentations have been done via iPad or active-online for at least a decade.

I recently saw a successful designer's pitch via iPhone in the comfort of an elegant brewpub. The designer seems to occupy his own bar stool. Everybody gets fat on craft beer unless they spend a lot of time at the gym, which is also filled with clients.

Wedding photographers work that way too. Bride wants videos for her friends.

 

[Pieter12]

Don't be distracted by my success with tear sheets. I'm still proud of them, but they're antiques.

This being 2019, most "real jobs" are done for for digital marketing even if there's enough money for a print version

For that matter, many of those jobs also entail VIDEO of the same setup/subjects/models. Obviously, most digital cameras shoot video as well as still.

Most personal presentations have been done via iPad or active-online for at least a decade.

I recently saw a successful designer's pitch via iPhone in the comfort of an elegant brewpub. The designer seems to occupy his own bar stool. Everybody gets fat on craft beer unless they spend a lot of time at the gym, which is also filled with clients.

Wedding photographers work that way too. Bride wants videos for her friends.

I can't be distracted by something I have no knowledge of.

 

[jtk]

I can't be distracted by something I have no knowledge of.

Not to be excessively argumentative, but you do seem distracted by a dream about the way things may have been, in the distant past, for you personally.

Art directors have ALWAYS had to make bets based on what photographers showed and ALWAYS assumed that they, the art directors, would crop and otherwise tweak, sometimes dramatically, work by the photographers they selected. The classic example and guru was Alexey Brodovich (think Alexey Brodovitch of Penn and Avedon fame).