Maine-based photographer Erin Little got in touch with us a few months back looking for some help putting together a new print portfolio. She had been busy shooting editorial work for regional magazines, and with the Palm Springs Photo Festival Portfolio Reviews rapidly approaching, she was in need of someone to help her consolidate her style and vision into print. Luckily, when we had our preliminary phone call to discuss the project and tight deadline, Erin had already researched the printing company she wanted to construct her book. Since she knew she wanted something customizable, where she’d be able to print softcover multiple editions, she decided to go with Edition One Books. And since she had a lot of work that covered quite a few specialties, we decided it would be best for her to have her book split in two: one part with an editorial focus, and one with a more commercial appeal. This would also help give her more flexibility at the reviews and allow her to show only the most applicable work to the wide variety of national clients she’d be meeting with.
The edit started with Erin sending over around 500 images from the last 4 years of shooting projects for clients, along with self-assigned and personal work. We then organized the work into separate folders for each book. After the images were partitioned, we went about carefully selecting her strongest, most commercially viable images, focusing on those that best exemplified her unique style and point of view. As with any edit, it was important for us to be decisive with our selections, avoid repetition, and show images that clients could easily see being theirs.
Since the printer that Erin decided to use offered completely customizable sizes, we thought it would be a great opportunity to do something a bit larger than a typical softcover book, but still comfortably manageable. After realizing that one of the books would consist of primarily horizontal images and the other vertical, we felt the square format was going to be the most logical way to unify them both. This would also allow us to emphasize one image per page and create a book with more of a fine art/catalog essence to it – something we thought would work nicely with the overall style of Erin’s work. The final books were printed at 12”x12” and had around 50 pages each. The crisp white cover and Erin’s compelling logo all worked perfectly together.
Erin was great to work with on this project and communicated her thoughts, concerns, and ideas without any hesitation. I appreciated that she did her research ahead of time and knew what kind of book she wanted and where she wanted to get it printed. Going into this project, we realized that we had a limited time frame to work with in order to get her ready for the reviews, but with careful planning and focus, we were able to get everything done relatively stress-free.
Within a few weeks Erin sent us two copies of the portfolio for us to keep in-house for upcoming portfolio events, with a thank you note on her lovely letterhead voicing how happy she was:
Stacy. I think these books came out great! Thank you so much for your help! I’m excited for our next project.
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