Philadelphia photographer Jeffrey Totaro specializes in all things architecture. When he expressed interest in creating a PDF portfolio so that he could quickly send work over to potential clients, we decided creating one for his commercial architecture work and a second for his residential architecture work would be the best route.
Because Jeffrey is pretty diligent about adding content to his website, we opted to work only from what he was showing there, but that still left us with hundreds of photos to narrow down to around twenty for each PDF. Herein lies the challenge of creating a PDF portfolio – it’s surprisingly difficult to cull down a body of work to that few images when you’re working with a talented photographer who has an extensive body of work, like Jeffrey. You can see a couple of our selections below:
We started with his commercial PDF, as that was the majority of what his work covered. One of our favorite things about Jeffrey’s commercial architecture work is that he’s covered all grounds – interiors, exteriors, people, vacant – along with a variety of buildings. We wanted to make sure this was showcased in the PDF, so we chose a variety of images that touched on all of these different elements. From there it was a matter of picking out the strongest images and sequencing them. Both color and content were important when organizing the images, as having anything too similar next to each other can get a little boring. Tying together images that were showing different spaces through color made for a visually dynamic collection of photos that flowed well. Check out his full Commercial PDF below.
[Editor note: the full Commercial pdf is missing and is being retrieved/added for the final update of this article]
We took this same approach to his residential PDF. There’s a great combination of interiors and exteriors in a variety of environments, so we focused on creating a variety of scale and framing with a consistency through color. Then we sent it over to one of our designers to add Jeffrey’s custom branding and contact information to each page. The end result was a PDF that was both diverse and cohesive.
This is what Jeffrey had to say about the process:
In the past year I have been working with WM to expand my marketing efforts. Part of that process was to develop PDF portfolios to be used as follow-ups to phone calls or meetings, and to also send along as another form of presenting my work. My client base can be broken down into two categories, those working with residential projects and those working with commerical/institutional projects, so Morgan at WM came up with two different portfolios so each type of client could be addressed separately. It was a real benefit to me to work with a photo editor. Any artist will tell you editing your own work is neither easy nor recommended. Trusting in Morgan’s selections was not difficult. She selected images that work well together and communicate my skills to the viewer. Samantha brought it all together with the graphic design elements. I look forward to further collaboration with the WM team!
See the rest of Jeffrey’s portfolio on his website.