Photo Editing: Dana Hoff’s New Portfolio

I recently completed editing a new print portfolio for Miami-based photographer Dana Hoff. Dana shoots primarily architecture and food and decided his old books were no longer up to snuff. To get a sense of where he was coming from, I browsed through his old portfolios and let him know I thought a new book was a good idea—his old ones seemed, as I put it to him, “a little wacky.” They were longer than they needed to be and a bit scattered.

Often, I find that photographers approach portfolio editing as they would their blogs, just continually adding new work without removing the old stuff. He let me know his books, as they stood, were actually “a lot wacky” and sent me a disc of 250 of his most recent architecture photos.  Dana shoots a broad range of interior and exterior architecture, as well as food, but for the sake of space and consistency, I edited his work down to 39 shots focusing on homes, hotels, and public spaces. When working on a book like this, the goal is always to show as much variety as possible; in terms of location, lighting, and type of space, while maintaining a coherent style and voice.

Dana and I discussed our binding options at the beginning of the process, and he opted out of his old screw post style in favor of my recommendation, the easy, breezy Adorama book. The 12×9″ portrait book was an ideal choice for Dana, needing virtually no cropping for verticals or horizontals.

The Adorama printing method is pretty unique. The whole book is printed as one long C-print, and then the accordion is folded and adhered to, making seamless pages that lie perfectly flat. The prices are also very reasonable, so we printed two books, one for Dana and one for us, for about $200 total. Since Dana is a busy guy, he asked me to handle the production of the book. Adorama’s template is completely online and geared towards consumer use, so it’s pretty easy to use. Sometimes, however, the template wants to be a bit too helpful. There are several pre-designed book styles that you have to sift through to take full manual control, but this can all be done in one or two hours if you know what your goal is.

Dana is very pleased with the result.

It truly looks fantastic! The printing is really sweet and I love the way the pages lay flat open. I think the layout and image selection works well

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