Decision making time - online portfolio

[frownsarefun]

Some background:

I have a Tumblr page directed to a URL (.com) that I registered. The page is minimal and well designed, easy to navigate and for anyone visiting it, it`s a website - not a Tumblr page. So I have the platform from which to show my work.

My style of photography tends to be more fine art. I don`t know if it`s a reflection of my character or what the case may be, but I find myself getting on the train, getting off at a stop I haven`t been before and walking around for 5 hours taking photos of things that catch my eye. It might be on a beat-up, old park bench, maybe a homeless person sleeping on the street, maybe a cool looking building and the way the clouds are reflecting off the windows. I notice it`s not so much people oriented, but more inanimate objects. But when I really start looking at them, they all have a lot of lines, angles, patterns and artsy kind of motives going on.

I have about 1300 photos in the last few months, all edited down. So I want to put them online and have been debating the best way to go about this.

Besides the desire to have my best photos showcase my skills and get me future work based on them - I kind of see myself going the exhibit route or getting commissioned based on a body of work someone likes from me. Though it could also be getting into other areas I never intended, too.

Long story short, I know that dumping 1300 photos on my website is not the smartest way to go about it. I know that people are gonna get bored with it.

What I was thinking of doing, was to go thru the photos on my own, and if for example I had 18 photos of homeless people, I could make an `exhibit page` and just put those 18 photos in that section. And so on from there. Make my own exhibition pages with 20 or less photos that fit that theme.

I guess my main questions are:

does that sound like a good way to go about it?

what should i do with the other photos if they don`t fit into a theme - say if i have 500 more photos that are all totally different?

(for that, I was thinking of adding a diary page link that would open a separate Tumblr diary/page and I could just put anything/everything else on there - it would be similar to how people use their Flickr pages.

Well, any general ideas or comments would be greatly appreciated.

I have looked around at other pro photographers sites that I respect. Even someone like a Terry Richardson - his old website was set up similar with Projects sections and then his Tumblr page is just hundreds and hundreds of random shots of everything under the sun.

[BigFuzzy]

Short answer is that in my opinion is that I cannot imagine the need for 500 images in a portfolio.

I cannot think of a single famous/established/recognized photographer with a 500+ image online portfolio. Do you really think you can't narrow down your 500 to something more manageable, do you really have that many "oh my gawd, amazing, I have to keep this" photographs? If so, great, but I somehow doubt it.

Have you considered flickr to "dump" the "others" and simply keeping a tidy portfolio on your registered domain name?

[dlambert]

You might even give some thought to something like 500px -- post a couple pictures each day and see which ones people respond to. Remove the ones that don't attract any attention, and repeat.

If you do this for a while, you'll start to see what stuff people are drawn to, and you can use this to hone your "main" page.

[mshockley]

I think both the responses above are great advice. 500px/flickr will both generate responses to your work and help you narrow things down. And flickr is a great place to store your stuff and people can still view it all if one were to choose to sit and look at them all.

But I definitely agree with Al on trying to keep your website presence/portfolio clean and neat with only what you consider your best work.