When you pitch your photography portfolio to potential clients, it is extremely important to show only what they are looking for.

But how do you know what an Art Director actually wants to see?

It is very difficult to self-critique your own work, and even harder to put together a comprehensive portfolio – so when I started going through the process of updating my own portfolio, instead of agonizing over what to include myself, I asked an experienced Art Director for a portfolio review.

Her insight was extremely interesting and helpful – keep reading if you want to know what an Art Director really wants to see!

Corissa Bagan is a Berlin based art director and designer working with a number of fashion, media and lifestyle brands. She is currently the Senior Designer at Carry-On Publishing with previous experience at ELLE.

I asked Corissa to take a look through my Stocksy Profile and pick out 10 or 20 images that she though best represented a comprehensive style and would be interesting to her as a designer.

Here is how she described what she was looking for:

I find that when I’m looking for photos, the most important factor is authentic emotion. I’m usually looking for something as an opening image for a story, so I need a photo that the reader can connect with in the millisecond that they spend deciding whether or not to read on. The photo has to spark some kind of emotion in the reader.

The other two major factors I look for when picking photos are that it has a clear, committed movement as well as a clean composition. I think it’s important to be able to tell what is happening in a photo from far away. Also, this helps with layout by allowing room for text and directing the reader’s eye through the story. It’s also helpful from a design perspective to have space around the image, rather than a tight crop, to allow flexibility in image placement and size.

I really love photos that show depth of field, such as the moose beer! For landscapes, I want to see photos where the human is actually secondary to the landscape. Again, the key there is composition.

And Corissa’s final thoughts on the state of photography – and I would say photographers in general…

I hope this helps! The world needs better quality shit!

What Do You Think?

Does knowing what an art director is actually looking for help you to better prepare your own portfolio?

What features do you think are important to present in a portfolio?

With the vast numbers of photographers out there and the sheer volume of images captured every day – how is it that the world could possibly need “better quality shit!”?