For the next few months I will be writing a series on the Portfolio Challenge. It will not be a soapbox harangue or rant about why you should participate, but more about how you might approach your portfolio and considerations for selecting a topic. Please feel free to give me any feedback you might have. If nothing else, it will tell me you’ve at least read it.
Before you select a topic for your portfolio, you might consider the following: instead of just selecting a topic that you feel like, “OK, I can do that,” think about what really interests you and what you would like to know more about. Now, add a commitment to be creative in your approach. Use these three parameters as guidelines in selecting your Portfolio Challenge topic. This will broaden the total scope of your Portfolio Challenge experience and you will feel rewarded with a real sense of accomplishment.
OK, OK, so now you claim you don’t have a creative bone in your body. Not So! I’m not accepting that cop-out. Every time you take a photograph, you are being creative. When you were born, you were 100% creative – that’s all you could be, you knew nothing else so there were no preconceptions to cloud your creativity or direct your thinking. Without having had any teaching and training, you created as conditions and your situation dictated. You need to allow yourself to do this with your portfolio topic selection. I’m not saying it is or will be easy. Over the years we all have built barriers that say you don’t do this, you shouldn’t do that or your teachers, parents, peers, society... said you should do it this way. When being creative, you have to do it your way – it’s