One of my personal values is “being human.” That involves living into my personal values and being clear about those values. As I created my data analysis portfolio, it has been important to include that personal element. While I wanted to show the mapping and GIS Analysis work that I’ve done I also want to show that I am human.
Before we go further, I want to clarify one thing: there are no wrong ways to create your GIS portfolio– and this personalization may not be important to you! The goal with a portfolio (in whatever form) is to showcase your work. I’ve heard of people using a Microsoft Word Document as a portfolio– just to have an easy place to highlight exceptional work that was done.
One way that I’ve worked on personalizing my portfolio is by including photos of me “in my element.” I’ve found that images that I create can help me express the value and what I’m trying to say. For example I may not have a lot of visual products to show for “leadership” but I can show images of me in situations where I have led.
So one Saturday morning I did a quick “brand photoshoot” using my phone and a tripod for images for my portfolio and my social media. These weren’t perfect images, but they helped me fill gaps in my portfolio and it was actually really fun! I thought I’d share a few tips.
- Brainstorm: As you work on your portfolio begin brainstorming of places where you’d like to have images of you “working.” Do you talk about being a team leader? How can you show that? What would it mean to show that? How have others shown that?
- Once I had an idea of the gaps I needed to fill I searched on Pinterest for a “brand style shoot” as a way to get ideas for poses and ways to visually communicate.
- Determine the color scheme of your portfolio: My portfolio has blue/ greens. So I wanted to capture images that would fit with that color scheme. I picked out a few outfits that matched that color scheme. To create great flow in your portfolio it makes the most sense to match the color scheme. If this seems a little too “extra” you could also just make all your images in black and white.
- Shoot: This was way more fun than I expected. I purchased a lighting and tripod (yup, that’s an affiliate link and I’d so appreciate it if you bought via my link) which made the process pretty easy. Here are a few things that I learned:
- Shoot on a wall that is a neutral color. My office (for the moment) has deep red walls. That isn’t a neutral color especially as my portfolio colors are blue-green.
- Take a bunch of photos and it’s ok if they don’t all look right. I used a small Bluetooth control for my phone camera. That enabled me to not have to deal with a self-timer and just take photos. Try different angles and light. Make yourself laugh. I put on fun music and that helped! Keep going back to the list of things that you want to demonstrate! You may need to recruit a few people to help fill in the gaps. For example, you could recruit a roommate or spouse for some images of a meeting. I took some images of me in front of my computer. I took some of me talking on the phone.
- Edit them. You can use a simple app like “VSCO” to edit the images if you want.
- Put them in your portfolio!
I will be opening up my portfolio workshop again in the near future! This workshop is geared towards anyone who uses data– data analysts, GIS Analysts, GIS professionals, data scientists etc. You won’t want to miss this! Make sure you’re signed up for our mailing list to get notified of when I open up my Portfolio Challenge again later this year! You can also go there to learn more about the Challenge.