PDF Portfolio Advice

Jamie Smith

Jamie Smith

Messages
291
Name
Jamie Smith
Edit My Images
Yes
Hey Guys,

I am a photographer specialising in performance, and I've put together a new PDF portfolio, please can you download it and tell me what you think?

On either work, or the choice of format, load time, quality, anything :)

If you spot spellings, please do point them out, I've done my best.

MY PORTFOLIO DOWNLOAD

Thanks alot guys, you are always so much help!

Regards,
Jamie Smith
 
I think this is a great idea :thumbs:

The one thing I'd change would be to re-author the document at a smaller size (Say A5), simply because you need a pretty large monitor to view the document at 100% magnification (where the rendered text is at it's clearest). I'm alright because I have a 24" monitor but I suspect on a 17" monitor you'd be viewing at 75% or so magnification where the text starts to look jaggy.

I think the document would also benefit from adding bookmarks, so people can navigate to a page that interests them rather than having to thumb through each page.

You can also set a page layout using the 'initial view' option, so perhaps you could have it as 2x portrait pages to view on a 17" screen?

Hope this helps :)
 
Fantastic advice, I am using Adobe Indesign CS4, what do you use?
 
Jamie
First off, I think the general look and feel of your portfolio is pretty decent - better than 95% of stuff put together these days that people then ask for feedback on. Your photos - esp the modeling sets - are of a consistently high standard and worthy of inclusion.

I do think there's a couple of areas that could benefit from reworking, notably a bit more vertical space between elements on your final page (the contact info) and, as a matter of personal taste, lose the asterisks for each section. They're superfluous and in some cases misleading - in most cases you're finishing a sentence rather than drawing the reader's attention to an additional point or footnote.

Also, I don't get your use of the word specialised. My immediate reaction was that you were referring to a past skill or activity. Specialist or specialises would be better; both may need minor reworking of the text that follows.

Whilst scan reading I noticed several typos and grammatical errors. Rehearsal spelt wrong in one place, semi-colon instead of a colon before the bullet-point list on your welcome page. On the contents page, lose the final in from the opening sentence and drop the period marks from the end of each bullet point.

Best I can do at the moment but don't take these picky details to heart- once you've nailed them it's a winner.
 
Chaz Photos said:
Very good on my 24ins screen I can look at it at 144% very good
One point on page 8 man bottom right is his arm meant to be part transparent?
you can see teh guys hand standing behind him.
Click to expand...

Its kind of supposed to happen :)

Its just a mix up of photos, what do you think?
Does it look like a mistake?
 
AndWhyNot said:
Jamie
First off, I think the general look and feel of your portfolio is pretty decent - better than 95% of stuff put together these days that people then ask for feedback on. Your photos - esp the modeling sets - are of a consistently high standard and worthy of inclusion.

I do think there's a couple of areas that could benefit from reworking, notably a bit more vertical space between elements on your final page (the contact info) and, as a matter of personal taste, lose the asterisks for each section. They're superfluous and in some cases misleading - in most cases you're finishing a sentence rather than drawing the reader's attention to an additional point or footnote.

Also, I don't get your use of the word specialised. My immediate reaction was that you were referring to a past skill or activity. Specialist or specialises would be better; both may need minor reworking of the text that follows.

Whilst scan reading I noticed several typos and grammatical errors. Rehearsal spelt wrong in one place, semi-colon instead of a colon before the bullet-point list on your welcome page. On the contents page, lose the final in from the opening sentence and drop the period marks from the end of each bullet point.

Best I can do at the moment but don't take these picky details to heart- once you've nailed them it's a winner.
Click to expand...

Thankyou for your detailed response, I agree that the use of the word specialised is indeed past-tense, so I think I will change it. (any ideas what we could change it too?)

The Camera Never Lies - We are specialised in capturing performance works,

The whole reason I cam here was to get great advise like yours, Thankyou :)

Are there any weak pages?
 
Bump?
 
The specialist in...

Or

Specialises in
___

In terms of weak pages I think the pages with website screenshots are not as strong IMO although part of this is that Mozilla looks like IE3.0 (again IMO). Not sure what you could do about this without a fair bit of work - maybe avoid the look of a screen shot but still have the look of the webpage (just without the browser surround). Then use layout and subtle typeface changes to represent the more technological aspect of your work?
 
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