Building a Portfolio

A question for both the professionals and the novices - how did you go about building a kick-ass portfolio? Did you recruit mostly friends and family and then network from there? Any tips? Anything I should avoid saying, doing or promising?

I'm sure this conversation has been regurgitated a trillion times. And it gets old and people get defensive about what they did to get started - just trying to gain a little insight from this business-savvy, talented Canon community.

Here is what I'm thinking- I started blogging (innovative! I know ) and am considering posting about some upcoming mini-sessions. 25 minutes with a handful of pics on CD. My 3 year old daughter is a type 1 diabetic so I thought of asking people to make a donation to the JDRF in exchange for letting me show off their shots to potential clients. Does this make sense?

I'm pretty OCD about this. I don't want to put crap/mediocre photos out there. I've signed up for a couple workshops/safaris and am hoping to make improvements everyday. Thanks for listening! - Marisa
http://mi-dulce.blogspot.com/

The best thing you can do to build your portfolio is practice, have a camera in your hand all of the time and take pictures of anything you can to learn how to use it in different settings. After that get someone who will let you shoot them endlessly until you are start producing the quality of images you are happy with and are portfolio worthy (spouse, significant other, dog). That is when you start asking friends and people you know to let you take pics of them. No sense in wasting their time or yours if you're not producing portfolio quality work right?

When I did it by the time I got to my friends I was already producing work better than most of them had ever seen so they were eager to show people the photos of themselves, which obviously led to business for me..

It helps to find new models who want to build a portfolio of their own. You get a model for free and they get shots for free. A fair exchange. You can usually find some on MM who will make this deal with you.

That's good advice. That's how most people start out. It's also worth while to offer some shoots to people at a special price. Don't do too many free shoots otherwise its very difficult to charge later when you want to start your business

Portfolio of what? Different genres of photography will have very different ways of establishing a portfolio.

Firstly you take pictures. Lots of them. Portfolios are all about the images and not about a blog or business cards.

Secondly concentrate your efforts. If you have a portrait portfolio don't put random pictures of a sunset or cat in there.

I'm also in the building a portfolio stage.
Friends/family when it comes to portraits.

Remember, 10 stunning images are better than 100 almost there images from a clients view.

Goodluck! (I need some too! lol)