Featured portfolio: danielatrujillo.com

Daniela Trujillo is a well traveled (39 countries!) photographer originally from Colombia. She is currently based in Brooklyn and has been using PortfolioDeck since back when we were in beta.

Daniela’s portfolio web site on danielatrujillo.com is very diverse and contains photos from her work, personal projects and travels. It is well worth taking some time and explore it.

We did a interview with Daniela to get to know her a bit more and to hear her thoughts on having a portfolio website.

JONATHAN RICHMAN, 2009/ CACTUS CAFE, AUSTIN, TX

What are you up to right now, any current projects?

Currently, I am living in Brooklyn working within the music industry. I started years ago when I was a radio dj; photographing bands, interviewing them and from there friendships were established and from there I would join tours as a friend, as a photographer, as a tour mamma and later, as a tour manager.

I am currently working on a lactose intolerant photo series. Inspired by a lactose-intolerant friend I decided I wanted to photograph lactose-intolerant people when they give in and eat the shit out of that ice cream pint anyway, or down a glass of milk with their Oreos, that kind of thing.

Also, I am working on a piece for Vagina: the Zine about pubic hair. It’s such a personal choice but one that you can’t ever really know until… well, you get into someone’s pants. I think that porno-trends and other social stigmas convince men and women to do certain things to hair in all sorts of places and I find that rather interesting. The series will be of the genitalia of both men and women in an anonymous fashion to show the variety and the beauty or maybe what you don’t prefer from a partner’s lower parts?

I would truly like to work on a project in my home country of Colombia about the flowers my country produces and the annual festival known as La Feria de las Flores that celebrates their beauty. I also feel it is important for me to photograph my family - both here and the ones in Colombia.

Clues for upcoming projects include pilots, primordial dwarfs, italians, crying and many others.

I guess I truly want to deliver on so many aspects of photography. Sometimes it feels as if I will explode, I want to do so much, need to and have to but don’t know if I will be able to!

MOHAMMED THE BEDOUIN

What inspires you?

I have always known I have a calling to help people and I am a trained photojournalist. I often find it very hard to work with a blank canvas (like studio and editorial photography) because I am an observer and I document what is going on. Sometimes the subject I want to capture the most is the one I understand the least.

I love to photograph people because I love the exchange. I want to produce a moment in time in which any other person viewing that image can feel the exchange that took place. I also want people to see reality - the world is a contradiction; life is cruel and beautiful. It makes me want to capture it because even I need reminding of hope or despair and maybe then I will be motivated to do something, create something, end something, embrace something.

Humans, existence and this thing we call “life” inspire me.

BASTION CARBONI

I see you have been hanging out quite a bit in sweden, how do you like it here?

Oh Sverige! Yeah, I have been spending some time there, you could say that. I left last year after living in Stockholm for 8 months. While in Sweden I was on a Swedish radio show called SRPP3.

About 8 years ago I was in London and roomed with two Swedish sisters in a hostel, we went out, had a blast and exchanged emails. A few years later I wrote them to say I was going to Sweden, after that they came to visit me in Austin and I went back to Sweden for Christmas and the New Year of 08-09. That’s when I fell in love with Sweden. And as with all things dealing with love, don’t ask my why or how - it just happened. I vowed I would return that summer. And I did.

STEPHEN NGYUEN, 2009/ PHỞ THAI SON, THE DRAG, AUSTIN, TX

Any thoughts on creating and organizing a portfolio website?

I think every photographer has their own design and organizational aesthetic; they might also categorize things differently for reasons unknown. I am fortunate enough to have a large group of photographer peers, mentors and friends who taught me the value in letting others you trust constructively critique and suggest which image they think is stronger over another and why. Hell, that’s what I did throughout journalism school, as a photo editor of a newspaper and in my personal work.

Shortly I am going to be re-working my site here on PortfolioDeck. I need to add new work, redesign, get rid of images I no longer feel are strong enough and essentially move forward. It’s not only going to be work, but challenging. You want your work to be well displayed and so far PortfolioDeck has helped me with that.

I think constant drive, discipline, and updating are important in the world of photo portfolios. Too bad I am the world’s like, number 14th worst procrastinator!

But I will say this, your portfolio should reflect variety, capacity and sometimes it should be tailored according to the audience or client.

Thanks Daniela!

Be sure to checkout Daniela’s portfolio at danielatrujillo.com to see more of her work.

PortfolioDeck is also great for web designers

We just updated our web site at portfoliodeck.com with info on why PortfolioDeck is also great for web designers building portfolio web sites for clients. As a web designer you can focus on creating a unique portfolio design for your client and let PortfolioDeck take care of backend and hosting.

The idea for PortfolioDeck originally came after we had built a couple of portfolio web sites for clients and didn’t find a good tool to reuse for each project. That is one of reasons why we think it is important to give you full access to HTML, CSS and Javascript for your portfolio. Our image handling is also a big time saver – you just need to upload images once and they will automatically be resized when you change the portfolio design.

If you are a web designer interested in using PortfolioDeck for client projects be sure to contact with us, we would love to hear about your project and if we can help you out.

Featured portfolio: Eleonorbostrom.se

One of PortfolioDeck’s earliest users is Eleonor Boström who is a sculpturist currently based in Berlin. She describes her work:

”– I make sculptures with function and sculptural utility goods. Some are meant for use, others are not. It can be a coffee cup with a dog in it or a figurine poodle with a tail that uncovers a toothpick.”

Together with David Kjelkerud Eleonor has used PortfolioDeck to create an excellent custom portfolio showcasing her sculptures and illustrations. Checkout Eleonor’s portfolio at http://eleonorbostrom.se.

We caught up with Eleonor to see what she is up to right now:

I saw that you are doing an internship at Manufactory Berlin, tell us about it

Yes, I had a internship at Manufactory Berlin for Uta Koloczek that has now turned into an assistant job. I am doing varied ceramic work. Right now we’re working on casting ninety landmines and grenades for an artist here in Berlin. I am also working with production at Kühn Keramik and besides that I do my own unique sculptures that can be found at Blås&Knåda in Stockholm.

Any upcoming exhibitions?

I am a member of a gallery cooperative called Blås&Knåda and the next show I am in is a Christmas exhibition that is opening on the 24th of november. 

Thanks Eleonor! 

Launch!

Today we’re really excited to tell you that PortfolioDeck is finally launched for everyone! Starting at €9/month with 30 days free trial.

Create your portfolio right away!

Any questions? Send us an email or tweet.

Refreshed Design Launched!

Yesterday we launched the refreshed design of PortfolioDeck. We hope you like it! If you have any questions or if anything seems broken send us an email at hello@portfoliodeck.com or tweet us.

Waiting for an invite? Sorry for the wait, we’ll start sending out invites soon.

Sneak peek of the refreshed PortfolioDeck interface

We’re soon ready to release a refreshed design of PortfolioDeck! Same concept but with a lot of improvements to make it simpler, more intuitive and more beautiful. Here are some sneak peeks of the refreshed interface:

Cheapo.se

Cheapo is a Swedish accesssory brand that recently needed to create a new web site. One of our friends Victor Moreno was put in charge of this and came up with the excellent idea to use PortfolioDeck to manage the new web site. We helped Victor a bit in turning his designs into a PortfolioDeck website. Check out the result at cheapo.se.

We asked Victor a few questions:

Can you tell us a bit about yourself and Cheapo?

Cheapo is a Swedish accessory brand. I started to work with them about a year ago. The brand restructured at that time, so it was perfect timing to build the a new strategy from scratch. The concept is to develop on-trend accessories that offer the highest value for money. 

Cheapo is a small company and we are a small team. As I do both graphics design and photography I took over the whole creative responsibility, which turned out to be a great convenience for the brand. Founder Johan Graffner is the type of CEO that every creative wants to work with – a marketing wizard with a open-minded approach to all decisions.

What were your main thoughts/goals when designing cheapo.se?

We needed something straight forward and fresh to expose the current collection.

What do you like about PortfolioDeck?

It’s really intuitive. Thanks to PortfolioDeck’s versatility and customizable design creating the new web site turned out easy as pie.

What could PortfolioDeck do better?

It’s hard to say. Perhaps, when you replace images there is no need for old material to be archived?

That’s all! Thanks Victor!

Featured portfolio: Choice Stockholm

Choice Stockholm is a Stockholm based photographers agency. Started by Pia Borg and Helena Karlsson in 2000. The  idea was to handpick photographers and stylists who were not only the foremost in their genre, but also charming, professional and a pleasure to work with.

They have some great photographers and stylists: Bengt O. Pettersson, Carl Dahlstedt, Dennis Blomberg, Frans Hällqvist, Helén Pe, Wolfgang Kleinschmidt, Cilla Göthlinder and Tove Nilsson.

Every photographer and stylist have their own PortfolioDeck account where they can upload and manage their work. They share a custom made theme that tie the different portfolios together.

Have a look at choicestockholm.com.

Tumblr

As part of the preparations to release the next version of PortfolioDeck we have moved this blog to Tumblr, a wonderfully simple and straight-forward blogging tool. We also realigned the design a bit and made it responsive, so it works well on any screen size.

Stay tuned for more on the new release, we think it’s going to be awesome!

New theme: Minimal Black

We’ve got another theme design for you. It’s the same as Minimal White but black. Here are a couple of screenshots.

This is the frontpage, you need to create a set called “Frontpage” and it will show its first image there. If you don’t have any collections the frontpage will show all your sets.

The collection page shows the cover image for each set in that collection:

When you click a set you’ll get to the first image. You can use left/right arrow to navigate through the images.

If you click “thumbs” you’ll see all images in that set.

Would you like to use this theme?

1. Login to your account.
2. Go to “Themes” in the top-right navigation.
3. Go to “Theme Gallery” in the left-side navigation.
4. Click “Use this theme for your portfolio”

Don’t have a PortfolioDeck account? Sign-up for an invite