Portfolio Research

In order to get a better idea of how I wanted to design my portfolio in the end, I knew I'd have to research some portfolios that fell in similar areas that I was interested in; photography and writing/screenwriting. Thankfully, there are a gigantic amount of freelance photography portfolios floating around on the internet, so it wasn't hard at all to find plenty to take some inspiration from.

Aralani Photography

Aralani Photography, from what I've gathered, is a freelance photography business run by a woman calling herself 'Ara'. According to her 'About Me' page, she specializes in wedding photography but also enjoys doing photography of couples in more daring and exciting landscapes, such as exploring mountains or hiking. Of course, this doesn't mean she strays away from the more typical wedding photography either; there are plenty of pictures dotted around her website that take place in a simple wedding hall or next to the altar.

To the left is the first thing you'll see upon entering the website (apart from the specific image, as it had scrolled a bit when I took the screenshot!). I'm personally a huge fan of the minimalist style that was taken up by Ara for her website - just a simple logo with a beautiful font and stand-out design and some navigation buttons. This portfolio hasn't fallen into the trap of becoming overly complex like some other portfolios I've seen.

On the right is the rest of the home page, which has a small gallery of examples of past photography as well as a quote proclaiming adventure (which I believe takes itself a bit too seriously, but that's my opinion). There's also a small welcome and some info about the photographer as well as some reviews from past clients. I quite like this idea, as it'll keep potential clients feeling positive thanks to the glowing reviews and some information about the photographer to familiarize themselves.

Apart from the home page, there's the actual portfolio separated into several different categories: Weddings, Engagements, Elopements and Landscapes. This is something to definitely consider for my own portfolio, as it'll make browsing far easier when a client is looking through my work (assuming I decide to go for the photography route). There's also an 'About' section with information about the photographer, prices, recommendations from Ara and some travel dates. Again, it's good to consider including a lot of information so that potential clients know as much about what I'll be offering as possible, preventing them from needing to contact me for information - the less time spent troubleshooting, the more time spent working with a client.

All things considered, I quite like Aralani's website design wise, and feel that a lot of her inclusions are quite handy for a portfolio and are therefore something to be considered when I design my final portfolio. However, I feel that some of her introductions take themselves a little too seriously, almost like poetry. Whilst it looks very nice and is quite interesting to read, it's not something I'm wanting to replicate in my own portfolio. I want to appear warm and welcoming rather than musing and mysterious.

Ara's portfolio can be accessed from the following link - https://www.aralani.com/

Cale Anthony Boudreau

Whilst the last portfolio examined was focused more on photography, this one is focused solely on creative writing, as that's another venture I was potentially interested in pursuing for my creative enterprise. After a bit of research, I found a portfolio by a Canada-based creative writer known as Cale Anthony Boudreau, who has his portfolio set up on Clippings. While this is quite a departure from Wix, I believe I can still take a stab at learning something from his work.

Whilst the last portfolio had quite a few pages and a lot of design put into it, Cale's portfolio is much more simple (although I wouldn't call it minimalist, as I believe it's following a template). The top of the portfolio has a simple 'about' section, showing a picture of the author, his name and some information about him along with some social media links. Below this are all of his example works, sorted into different categories: Comics, Press Release, Copywriting and COGConnected Features.

In general, the portfolio is very functional and does quite a good job at showing us all the work that has been produced by Cale, and is something to consider taking inspiration from assuming that I do my creative enterprise around creative writing. However, I feel that his portfolio suffers from the opposite problem of Aralani's; while it doesn't take itself overly seriously and uses casual language, it isn't as nice to look at. Therefore, I'm thinking of trying to get a mix of Aralani's design and Cale's 'style' in any portfolio I may create.

Boudreau's portfolio can be accessed from the following link - https://www.clippings.me/users/caleboudreau

North Landscapes

Considering my history with photography during my time at EN, I knew that one of my portfolios that I examined would absolutely have to be related to landscape photography. A photography portfolio is all well and good, but it'd be even better if it related to my preferred brand of photography; landscape/nature photography. Therefore, I managed to find a portfolio of landscape photography by a photographer called Ian Erik Waider. He's branded his portfolio as North Landscapes. Whilst his portfolio is similarly minimalist when compared to Ara's, there's definitely more detail and more complex design notes used within this portfolio.

When first entering the portfolio, we're greeted with a homepage similar to the homepage of Aralani Photography, albeit much more single-minded. As far as I scrolled, it was merely examples of his photography from a range of different topics/locations (example shown on the right). At the very bottom of the homepage was a few links to social media pages. This is a fairly simple and effective way to go about doing my portfolio's homepage, albeit a little boring. I think I'll be going for a middle-ground between Aralani's and Ian's (assuming that I actually do a photography-based creative enterprise)

When it comes to navigating the rest of his portfolio, he's used a slightly unique way to navigate the website; there are two seperate navigation bars. There's one at the top for the galleries, seperated into different categories (Landscapes, Fine Art, Subjects and Commercial) and one beneath that for all the other less important details such as the about page, contact details and information specifically for clients or photographers.

While this does work, I feel that it'd be far easier to navigate if it simply had one navigation bar, with the galleries being seperated into a dropdown menu similar to the Clients and Photographers sections of the navigation.

In terms of the rest of the pages, Waider has included the usual staples of a photography portfolio: About page with backstory and some social media links, Contact page for learning how to contact the photographer, etc. However, there's also a few pages that I haven't seen quite as often on other portfolios. In the clients section, there's information about what photography he'll do, how to license his images, his newsletter and a list of his past clients. This is all very effective information for clients to learn about, and I feel that this is something that I could take inspiration from for my portfolio, potentially in a more clear and concise way however. For instance, I feel that my portfolio could have a single page with all the information on it rather than a whole category of different pages. Nonetheless, it's something to consider.

Similarly, for the photographers section of the navigation bar, there's a collection of information that's useful for up-and-coming photographers. 

Things such as potential coaching on how to get better at photography, some articles and tutorials that he's collated for new photographers, presets that he uses within Lightroom (a prominent editing software amongst most photographers), a collection of styles used within Lightroom, a wallpaper for your smartphone, some potential inspiration and his newsletter once again. Whilst I feel that this is all very useful information for new photographers, I don't see it helping much with the portfolio and pulling in new clients. I don't doubt that someone should help out someone aspiring to become like them, but believe that it should take a backfoot compared to the main purpose of a portfolio - selling your skills. Therefore, I won't be considering this for inspiration.

Naturally, the Lightroom Presets and NFTs sections of the navigation bar are exactly what they say. Notably, I've never seen another portfolio focusing on providing things such as potential presets to use within Lightroom or especially a website for NFTs (clicking on the navigation for the NFTs page brings you to an entirely different website for purchasing the rights to some of his photos). I'll not be doing either of these things on my portfolio, as I've not got much experience within Lightroom and don't see the use in selling NFTs (especially at my experience level).

The final page, the Contact page, is something I'll obviously be including on my portfolio.  On Waider's contact page, he's included his phone number, links to a variety of his social media pages, his address and his email address. Additionally, he's included a section for representation which I can only assume is for potential legal issues. At the bottom of the page, slightly cut off on the screenshot provided, is a map showing his exact location. I absolutely don't feel comfortable divulging this sort of information on a contact page, and therefore will be attempting to be more vague in how I describe my 'base of operations', only writing England or East Anglia for instance. With that in mind, however, I do feel that the set-up of his contact page is quite efficient but not anything new compared to the other portfolios that I've visited.

In conclusion, whilst I do like the way that Waider has set up his portfolio, I definitely find it less visually pleasing when compared to Aralani's portfolio. Furthermore, I feel that Aralani has done a better job 'selling' me on her potential skills. Despite all this, Waider has given me some very unique ideas for potential things to include on my portfolio, such as a page about potential coaching (with the correct experience) and lots of information to help aspiring photographers.

Waider's portfolio can be accessed from the following link - https://www.northlandscapes.com/

Conclusion

After looking at the three portfolios listed above, I feel that I've gotten quite a range of inspirations for my portfolio, ranging from a Wedding Photographer to a creative writer to a Landscape photographer. All of these portfolios essentially hit the sort of interests I have when it comes to my creative enterprise (not including the wedding photography specifically, but instead photography as a whole). With everything I've looked at, I believe that designing my portfolio to have a minimalist design would be quite efficient and pretty to look at, assuming that I do it correctly. Having seen Waider's portfolio, I'll need to be careful to not stretch my portfolio from minimalist to bland and boring (the main saving grace for Aralani's portfolio having been the interesting logo and unique usage of fonts and line breaks).