Kalila Snow Jan: Task 5 Create Own Portfolio

I've done some research of different contemporary's photography portfolio online, I've found a lot of nice and well designed online portfolios, so I am planning to make an online portfolio for this task.

First of all I've found this photography site that can easily help you create your own portfolios. www.500px.com

500px, pronounced five hundred pixels, is an online photography community that was co-founded by Oleg Gutsol and Evgeny Tchebotarev (artistically also known as “Ian Sobolev”). The Toronto based startup launched its Web 2.0 version in 2009 and is aimed at aspiring and professional photographers; encouraging members to upload their best work.

500px is seen as a place to gain exposure, find inspiration and connect photographers with one another. The site currently has 2.5 million registered users and over 10 million monthly active users.

500px also protects the photographer's work very well, there's no way to download images from this site.

Subject Matter

In the task I am going to create an online portfolio as I claimed in the top of the article, the reason why I chose to create an online one instead of a portfolio book because

1 my personal budget,

2 the location of where I study and live, it's very far from the city and a proper printing shop who prints good quality prints and uses good quality materials such as papers and covers, the printing shops on campus don't have service such as printing photo books.

3 Online portfolio has been a main trend for contemporary photographers, it is widely sprayed all over the world, because internet connects people and the world.

4 Online portfolio is a good opportunity to showcase your work to people or clients, and of course it's got its cons when your environment is without internet access, and you want to show your work to people or clients.

5 Online portfolio is environmental friendly.

Process 1: The Portfolio page that I've been developing so far

The subject matter in this page are

- A proper domain of this site: http://kalilasnowjan.500px.com it is my name at the beginning and it's easy and convenient for people to remember the link of my portfolio, especially for friends or people who already know my name.

- Proper sections of my work, I separated my different kinds of works into "Lomography" "B&W Projects" "Color Projects" "B&W Portraits" "Color Portraits" 5 sections. So the content of my portfolio won't be messed up together.

- Choosing the best work, I have chosen the works that I personally think they are good enough to showcase in my portfolio, so it won't be necessary to upload a bunch of images and photos of mine to the site. The audience won't have much time for browsing each photos of yours, it will take the audiences time.

- About and Contact, on the right conner of the site, there are 2 clicks, About and Contact; in about, it is a short CV of myself to tell the audience what I do and an introduction of myself and my work. Contact is a form for the audiences who are interested in working with me or contacting me for projects/purposes, so they can send an email or message to my account.

- Background, the background of this site are not a single picture, it automatically changes the photos in my portfolio in shuffle.

Interrelationship of the Visual Arts

Process 2: I have developed and changed a little in my online portfolio, as in the cover of each sections in the bottom.

The visual arts of this site are decided into 6 parts, first of all, the background of my portfolio site, is a slideshow of my photos that's in my portfolio. It shuffles automatically, and it showcase my photos well. Secondly, the other 5 parts are the square images in the bottom, these are a several photos in 1 square. And I layout them as in order to be black and white lomography - black and white projects - colour projects - black and white portraits - colour portraits, in this order, the colours are separated, as in colour - black and white - colour - black and white - colour. The coloured layouts are well organised in visual arts, it is a good balance for audiences' visions of my portfolio site.

About My Work

I personally love photography, design, art and filming; graphic design and photography is my study major, photography is my passion.

In my photography works, I usually take portraits for my friends around me in my ordinary life, to practise and find more different perspectives from my viewfinder; I own a lomo camera which is a film based camera - Holga 120 using 120 films, I like experimenting with my film camera, so that's in the section of "Lomography" on my portfolio site. I like taking my film camera with me to different places, so I can capture the moments I like or something interesting, also to practise my skills through the viewfinder and develop the way I see the world and things.

In "B&W Portrait" section and "Color Portrait" section, there are the photos of my friends or strangers' portraits that I took for them. Portraits are one of my direction in my work.

I also have worked for many college assignments and different projects, and the direction of my the projects I've shot are mostly conceptual photography. I am also very into fine art photography and conceptual photography.

Finally: Another developed portfolio.

Conceptual photography is a type of photography that illustrates an idea. Conceptual photography - as a part of conceptual art - is a photography genre in which the artist makes a photograph of a concept or idea. In this type of photography, you try to convey a concept or message with a photograph.

I have changed "B&W Projects" and "Color Projects" in to "B&W Conceptual" and "Color Conceptual" so the audience has a clear and precise direction on my portfolio page instead wondering "what projects?" because projects's a very broad word to describe photography; and using "conceptual" is a more proper word to describe my work.

And this won't be final work of my portfolio, of course time moves on, photographers get better and better, more and more amazing work to be done, so I will be updating my portfolio page by time.

Eventually I have found another advantage of online portfolio, that is the photographers are easily able to update their portfolio through the time beings, instead of printing many photo portfolio books through time beings.

Other than this portfolio I have just made, I have been having my own website for showcase all my work, including my design and my film works.