We shot a lot more locations than the ones illustrated here, but I think that a tight portfolio of images should be a distillation, a quantisation of what you saw. I suppose, since most folks have labeled me a ‘minimalist’ (although this is now how I see it myself), you could argue that the minimalism approach is worked on, not just on a per image basis, but also in a collection basis: less is more. The message becomes stronger if you use a few key words to convey your point, rather than being verbose.

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Working on portfolios is a process of discovery. Well, everything is. The assumption that I know what I’m doing in my work is wrong. I am pretty much following a process of peeling back one layer to discover another as I work along.

I have made the point many times on this blog, that too many of us are looking for answers before we’ve begun. We wish to hit the finish line sooner than we should, and actually being a bit lost, is not only a good thing: it’s part of the process. I seldom know where the work is going to end up, but I do get a hunch as the work progresses as to how its ‘personality’ is forming. Each time I add another edited image to the collection, the collection takes on a new shape. Its mood and what it’s saying becomes either more complex or more distilled. It is in the distilled areas of the collection that I see a pattern emerge.

Emergence, of things surfacing as you continue to sculpt your work is perhaps the best indication you have that the work is progressing to a natural conclusion. If the work continually feels fraught and unsure of itself, then this is an indication that things are not going well. Good work tends to surface, as if it’s got it’s own momentum. Like a good song tends to write itself, you should be acting as a conduit, letting the work flow through you, not from you.

Too many photographers stop at the individual image, and do not see the connections and themes within a collection, or perhaps all of their past work. I’d really love to start to offer my Digital Darkroom class again, as this is where this work on portfolios would be achieved, but I have had to shelve it through lack of interest since Covid.

If you think you’d like to come on my digital darkroom class - it is a mostly ‘editing / review / portfolio technique class’ with some shooting added to break up the class time, perhaps you could let me know.

Right now, I am busy working on a few more portfolios of work to add to this very website. I feel I need to complete them all, and also ensure that they sit well as a group of portfolios on a new web page.

I have been, and I think I always will be, in love with making images into a cohesive set. I think building portfolios is where it’s at, and the best form of action anyone can take up, to see if they have a ‘style’. Because ‘style’ only surfaces once you are able to join the dots, and see relationships in all of your work.