Photography is competitive. Convincing people to engage with your photography, follow you or part with money for images is a tough task. 

To grow a following or create a photography business, you need to create a portfolio of images that can withstand the continuous challenges that come with being a photographer.

Creating your portfolio will be the single most important investment you make in photography. In terms of time, effort and possibly money it will cost more than all of your gear.

It will take you time to put together, and will be something that you are always improving, adapting and building. Over time it will evolve, take different directions and sprout new branches, opening up opportunities along the way.

The last thing you want to happen is for people to realise they can do it themselves. Or for a hundred other photographers to appear overnight doing the same thing.

We need to build something that we will call a bulletproof portfolio.

A bulletproof portfolio is something that can withstand the rigours of competition from other photographers. It will ensure that the time, money and effort that you invest in creating your portfolio is well spent because the end images will be unique and difficult for anyone else to do. It will help you win clients, get published, charge a better price for your work and help you become recognised as an outstanding photographer.

So, what makes a bulletproof portfolio? These 5 things…

Better than your direct competitors

Your direct competitors are those other photographers who are trying to impress the same audience as you. Annoyingly they are also trying to take the best possible photos.

No matter what you do, you cannot become a successful photographer without confronting a whole load of competition. Even the smallest niches have other photographers that your potential audience could favour instead of you.

What to do then?

Ensure you can create something that is superior to anything that anyone else is doing. Or at least in the top 10%. 

Don’t aim for average.

Don’t enter niches where you can’t see a way of creating images that are no better than everyone else’s. There are some types of photography where all that is required is a well lit shot against a white background. Even if you love doing that, it is impossible to create something better than everyone else. Already, hundreds of other photographers and some large businesses are churning out that photography for peanuts. There is nothing wrong with it, but you probably don’t want to go there.

Don’t try to compete in areas where you recognise that other photographers are creating such awesome photos that it will take you a lifetime to create something close, unless you are in it for the very long term.

You need to see a path to creating a portfolio in your niche, that is achievable in terms of time, money and effort which will stand out because it is outstandingly good. That path might take more than a year to follow, but you must be able to see that path.

Remember you are not trying to create the best photos for everyone. You can’t please everyone. You are striving to create the best photos in the eyes of the people who you matter to, your niche audience.

Difficult for other photographers achieve

The portfolio you create needs to be hard for other photographers to achieve. It should be difficult for people to create something of a similar quality, style or breadth. Even if what you do is fantastic, if it’s easy to copy somebody will. And then, what you have created is worth less.

Whether it is your unique connections that get you access to amazing subjects, your approach to portraits that gets you shots people are happy with, your skills in lighting, knowledge of animals, or the fact you are always travelling to amazing locations, there should be something that ensures the images you take create a barrier around you that cannot easily be overcome.

You may find it difficult to create images like this, but that is exactly the point. If it’s easy to do, anyone can do it.

Think of the effort that every wildlife photographer puts into getting the shot. Now imagine the effort to create a whole portfolio like that. The same goes for a big library of stock photography, a meaningful website full of outstanding product photos and an incredible set of architectural images.

There is little point investing time in creating images that are easy to copy. Much better is to carefully craft a portfolio that requires blood, sweat and tears, where each and every image you create strengthens the walls around you and makes it impenetrable to the challenges of competition.

Once you are happy with your portfolio, always seek to improve and make it better. To stay ahead of the competition you need constant improvement. Take your eye off the ball for more than a few weeks and you will notice new photographers appearing that you never even knew about, and you will see the people you thought were behind you overtaking.

Photography has a relatively low barrier to entry, which means it is not hard for anyone with a camera to create images and call themselves a photographer. To be successful you need to create a body of work that only you can create, that is difficult for other photographers to replicate.

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Unique enough to stand out

You need to develop your own exceptional style of photography. Something that is distinctive and ultimately recognisable as yours. 

People notice things that are distinctive. To differentiate yourself in the eyes of your audience, the images you create must be unparalleled in terms of how they look. When you think of the most successful photographers, they have all created their own unique style of photography. This is achieved through the combination of the subjects they shoot and how they shoot them.

So you need to think about how you are going to create a portfolio that is different from all the rest.

This doesn’t mean creating something which is wild or wacky. It means you should aim to make a portfolio of images that is extraordinary, that a subset of your audience will love more than anything created by the other photographers competing for their attention.

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. You just have to create images in your own specific way. It doesn’t have to be a huge departure from the standard, just enough to be a reason to choose you over someone else.

Ensure that the niche you enter gives you the opportunity to do this, otherwise you risk getting into a downward spiral of creating a commodity photography product that anyone can do.

Creating photography that is exclusive to you enables you to carve out your own niche from a much bigger potential audience. 

Take a large genre like family photography for example. This broad audience can be made more specific by focussing on a tight geographical area. Another effective way to claim a section of this audience for yourself is to create photography that is different from all of the other options available to that audience created by your competitors.

If your portfolio contains a style of photography that is common to many other photographers, you won’t stand out. This means there is less of a reason for potential people to engage with you. 

Create a portfolio of images that clients can see exclusively for you, not from anyone else. Make sure that enough people like what you are doing. They are your audience. Don’t stress about the people outside your target audience.

Impossible for people to do without you

Your audience has a very real alternative to seeking out your images. That option is to do the photography themselves. Sometimes they may even do that using their phone! What an affront to the talent, hard working photographer.

Or they may step up from that and ask their photography buff of an uncle to create some shots. Or use an old photo. Or buy a print from Ikea. Or do nothing at all.

Your portfolio must convince people that the only way they are going to get the photos they need to see is by looking at your work.

Either because your images look like something they couldn’t get anyone else to do, or the subject matter you shoot is not something they could ever get access to.

It is of course possible that a homeowner could climb to the top of a mountain 15 times at dawn to create a stunning landscape image to hang on their wall. A newly single person could of course use the photos their friend took on their phone to upload to the dating website. The jewellery maker could ask their fiend with a DSLR to shoot their new jewellery range in exchange for dinner.

But to achieve the result they want, and if they like what they have seen on your website, those people in your niche should see that the best option they have is to look at your work. Your portfolio should prove that consistently, efficiently and effectively you produce images that are unique. And if that’s what your audience is looking for, they will engage with you.

With few photographers trying to do the same thing

The last thing you need is hundreds of other photographers with identical photos chasing after the same audience as you. 

Imagine you have identified a super niche, where you can use your skills and attributes to create an amazing portfolio and invested time and money in creating a fantastic set of photos, only to discover that everyone else is doing exactly the same.

It is likely that there will be other photographers creating work that is similar to yours, and of course they will be trying to get to the same audience. But the less of them there are, the better for you.

Some genres of photography are more attractive than others. Travel photography is one particular example of this. Who doesn’t have a few stunning travel photos? And who doesn’t want to be paid to travel the world shooting in exotic locations. It is therefore super competitive with only a tiny percentage of people actually making a living out of all of those that aspire to do it.

If you decide to enter a niche where you think there will be a huge amount of photographers competing for the same customers you had better be sure that there are a lot of customers and that there is a way that you can stand out.

The ideal niche has a huge audience compared to the number of photographers trying to succeed in that area. Market forces often dictate that these numbers will even out over time. You cannot expect to discover your own niche that no one else knows about, and keep it to yourself forever.

Some areas of photography can support thousands of photographers because there is a huge audiences and many potential styles. That means you can carve out your own subset of followers and be one of only a few other photographers trying to do that.

Some niches require specialist knowledge or skills to get into, so not many photographers try to get into it. Others are just boring, repulsive or unfashionable, but they have less competition for those reasons, despite the fact they contain a huge audience

We call this a Bulletproof Portfolio.

If you think all of that is possible within your niche, then that’s a positive sign.

If you can only create a portfolio that is:

– Worse than your competitors

– Easy for other photographers to replicate

– Difficult to stand out from the crowd

– Easy for people to do without you

– With lots of other photographers trying to do the same thing

Then the niche is less attractive as you will be unable to create something with value, you will face high levels of competition and will not have a bulletproof portfolio.

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Andrew Mason

Andrew is a professional photographer and the founder of the 36exp Photographers School plus the London Photo Show.