No time like face time

Brett Stanley takes the leap into having his portfolio examined by industry professionals in Los Angeles

One of the hurdles of moving to a new country, or even city, is getting your work in front of the right people, the people who will be hiring you. Sometimes it’s as simple as making a phone call or sending an email to your prospective client, but if you’re looking to get work with a design or advertising agency, this can be a bit trickier than it seems.

A lot of the time a creative director or art buyer won’t have their contact details publicly available, or, if they do, your email will be lumped in with all the others from aspiring photographers wanting their portfolios viewed. You can buy lists of contacts from reputable companies like Agency Access, which get permission from the industry professionals to publish their details, but, even so, it’s fairly frowned upon to cold call or email these people without some kind of introduction.

A great way to get some face time with these potential creative clients is a referral from someone who knows them, like an agent, another client, or even a mutual friend — but failing that there’s an additional avenue open to you: the Portfolio Review.

I recently attended a Portfolio Review here in Los Angeles, and I have to say it was a nerve-racking but educational and motivating experience.

Events like these are organized by NYCFotoWorks in the States as a way to get creatives, such as photographers, in the same room as the people who are likely to hire them. They are usually held over one or two days, and the organizers invite a mix of people from marketing agencies, magazines, photographer’s reps, and design studios to come for a few hours each day and meet with the creatives, reviewing their portfolios and networking.

As a photographer, I was very interested in being part of the day, so I submitted my work to the organizers, who made sure it was of a quality they would accept. Thankfully it was, and I could now choose how many meetings I wanted to buy. It wasn’t cheap, but you have to invest in your business to make it work, right? I booked in five meetings, and was able to choose from a list. There were quite a variety of companies listed, but as I booked rather close to the date, there wasn’t a lot left. Many of them — such as a vegetarian magazine — were not my target clients, but I managed to get a good cross section of advertising agencies and photographer’s reps.

Leading up to the event, I started to panic — was my work good enough to show? Did I believe in it enough? Was I wasting my money?

I started to cull my portfolio, add new work, and take out the old. I had to get it down to fewer than 25 shots to keep it interesting, but I was having trouble choosing between shots. These were my children, and I was being asked to sacrifice them. I needed help, so I reached out to Christina Force, a photographer’s mentor of sorts. Having been a rep for many years, she had a good idea of what clients want to see, and helped me narrow down my pool of work to about 50 good images and around 20 top images. She talked me through her choices and gave me some much-needed direction, not just for the portfolio but for future work, which was perfect. I’d recommend her if you’re looking for an independent set of eyes.

As I sat in the waiting room, I was sweating bullets. I hadn’t felt this way for many years — not since my last job interview, which was probably the previous decade. As I looked around at the other photographers, with their beautiful portfolios, I had some serious misgivings about my final image choices. Was it a good body of work? Would they see something in there that they liked? Was I trying to cover too many bases? I was killing myself with the unknown.

Then something snapped. I realized I was not totally prepared for this: I didn’t believe in what I was about to show them. I looked at my book and realized it could be much better. I decided to treat this less like a job interview and more of a fact-finding mission, to talk to these industry professionals about my work and see what they thought I should be doing. What did they see in my work? Should I do more of this or that? What would they like to see next time we met?

Relief flooded my body, and I relaxed. I walked into my meetings not as someone trying to sell them something, but as someone wanting their feedback. It was amazing. The opinions I got about my work were great and varied, but with enough overlap to give me some definite direction. I spoke with some of Los Angeles’ respected agencies, and they liked what they saw. It needed work, of course, but to speak candidly with them made a world of difference.

The moral of all of this, for me at least, is that our art is subjective and opinions are only as good as the context in which they are given. We like our work because we created it — we can see the technique and skill that went in to it; others will like it for their own reasons, but at the end of the day that may not be enough. The opinion that matters the most in this context is that of the client, the one who is going to hire you based on your hard work, and they need to connect with it.

I walked out of there a better man, with some honest directions from the people who are dealing with it every day — and I have some work to do.