In the previous post, I introduced PDF as a mean to publish your own photo portfolio. In this post, I will look at the structure of a PDF portfolio.

How to structure the PDF for a portfolio

PDF files can be browsed freely using the navigation tools of the PDF reader (such as Adobe Reader). However it is important that a sequential browsing could give the best presentation of your work.

Essential pages

The structure of the file may be simple or very elaborated. But I think that some page types are essential:

• opening page: the title and an image the best represent the portfolio

• photo pages: a page for every image with the image information

• thumbnail pages: a page to aid the navigation with thumbnails of the images that act as links to the photo page

• colophon: informations about the portofolio such as statement, copyright notice, edition informations

You can add specific pages with bios information, promotions for buying printed portfolio or books, links to your web sites etc.

Portfolio navigation

A PDF portfolio created with the intention to be viewed on screen must adapt to the orientation of the computer screen: landscape. There is no good reason trying to imitate printed media creating a two page views.

The images of the portfolio could be better appreciated when the PDF is viewed in full screen mode. In this mode, the navigation controls of the PDF reader are usually not visible. So it is preferable to give an aid to the navigation with a personalized toolbar present in every page. It is important that the toolbar were designed coherently with the design of the pages, so that you can give a coherent experience to the viewer. This toolbar can contains buttons to go to the next/previous page, to the next/previous view (such as the back/forward button of your web browser), to the thumbnails page and permitting to activate/disactivate full screen mode.

In the next and last post on PDF publishing, I will explain how to create a PDF portfolio.

Publish your own work as PDF: what it’s all about?

Every photographer dreams of publishing a portfolio or a book of his work. Until some years ago, this dream was possible only for professionals with a large audience, given the technical problems and the expenses needed by the task.

Nowadays the publishing of portfolios and books is made easier given:

• the high quality reached by ink jet printing, which made affordable even to amateur photographer to create a portfolio of archival quality
• the diffusion of self-publishing sites like Lulu and blurb that permit to publish your own book even in a single copy; the quality is no match for traditional photographic books, but is probably enough even for advanced amateur

But these new possibilities don’t solve the major problems of printed books and portfolio: promotion and distribution.

As for promotion, the web is now the way to go. Starting with photo sharing site like flickr, creating a blog with news on your works and a web site with your portfolios permit the photographer to reach a global audience. It not easy: if you don’t want professional aid, to be effective you must have some notions of web design, css, seo and other buzzwords like these. But it can be done without great expenses.

Distribution is another story. It’s expensive and time consuming…

Here enters PDF publishing. By creating a PDF file with your photos you can control how they are displayed and the distribution is as easier as putting the file on your web sites. This type of publishing is strongly favored by Brook Jensen of Lenswork: he used it for the extended edition of Lenswork and for his personal portfolios. He advocates PDF publishing in many podcasts and now in an online workshop.

I won’t enter in the details of his argumentation, you can refer to the links above. But here is a short list the advantages that Jensen sees in PDF publishing:

• PDF could go full screen to use all the available screen real estate
• you could give to PDF a guided navigation, but still permit for personalized navigation
• PDF is distributable on the web or in cd/dvd
• PDF could be used as a simple slide show or for something original and new (for example adding music or comments)

I was very interested in these arguments and so I gave it a try. I recently created and printed two folios (even there following the Brook Jensen lead, but that’s another story): At the end of a fishing day and Cantiere Escavazione Porti. So I decided to make a PDF of these folios: here and here. In the next posts I will give some indications on how to structure and create a PDF, with examples from my folios.