What happened is I wound up gifting out a glorified coffee table book, with no further work from my investment.

What happens when people want to keep your book FOREVER? One does not want in insult some of the BEST photographer reps in the field, or Editors, etc. by demanding them back. And yes, I tried the gentle request on several occassions also.

This is my quandary. I put a lot of work into them, but I can’t afford to offer beautiful portfolios (reduced to the status of a customized coffee table book) to the masses at $150.00 each. – that isn’t their intention – the intention was to wow them for photo jobs.

I am highly complimented, but my budget isn’t big enough for a continuation of this. Should I create a book with sleeves? It’s a palatable expense considering my experience.

Alas, despite best efforts, I am not proud to say that I have had books receive minor damage over the years while under my care. Thankfully, nothing major in 25 years, but damage does happen on rare occasion. I can tell you that although careless, it’s not due to maliciousness.

Books can be handled by many people, often while multitasking in an effort to get through the day. Sometimes that means they cram down a sandwich while looking at the book, or sometimes it means that a page creases while trying to close the book. Sometimes the books are poorly crafted.

And as several contributors noted above, the point of showing the book is to get jobs, right? Therefore you will want it to be seen, even if it means the risk of damage. Better to be seen and worn, then not to be seen at all. It also means not considering the portfolio precious. Valuable, yes, precious, no.

Which brings me back to the plastic sleeve issue. To me, plastic sleeves in a portfolio is like covering your furniture and carpets with plastic when showing your home for sale. Sure, it protects things, but it greatly detracts from the house. On the other hand, taking good-sense measures such as putting a scatter rug by the door is widely accepted. This would compare to not covering your portfolio in white silk fabric or printing on a paper that shows fingerprints.

And be patient. There may come a day when physical portfolios disappear as they become entirely digital – another topic of discussion!

A bit of background. I have 14 or 16 portfolios with my Canadian reps, and a similar number for the US, split amongst people, travel / location, corporate and food books. There is no image crossover between books, they are all distinct bodies of work. When a book goes out we try to tailor it to the customer it will be visiting, generally including 2 of the 4 types of work, for example copies of the people and location portfolios for a potential ad job, or the travel and corporate books for an annual report. We are also able to send out individual books if a client has a very focused need.

The portfolios take quite a beating. I am into my 3rd set in about 7 years. They come back in all kinds of condition, everything from greasy fingerprints and coffee rings and spills, to scratches and dents, to food scraps and crumbs crushed inside them, to pages that have been removed “for comping” and then replaced messily, to pages that are gone completely, cut or torn out for God knows what reason. It’s often the same pictures that go missing, a portrait of Scarlett Johannsen is particularly popular — I lose about one a year.

We’ve given up trying to chase after people to figure out who was responsible; particularly in a large agency, it’s next to impossible to determine. It’s just the cost of doing business. We diligently clean, repair or replace the portfolios and prints as needed, and the overall design of the books themselves has evolved to make them as hard to mess with as possible. I use very durable, library grade bookcloth, in a variety of colors (the various types of work are color coded to make it easier for the reps to organize), which quite apart from being rugged, is also reasonably priced, and distinctive. I have a very simple binder design; no nested u-channels, rounded corners where possible (sharp crisp corners quickly get dog-eared and bent), and no spiral bindings, just three screw posts spaced so we can use a standard three hole punch for the pages. I use the most economical paper I can; there are a lot of prints in all those books, and if I was using something that cost me two or three or four bucks a sheet they would cost MUCH more than they already do. And yes, I still use plastic sleeves; extremely clear, extremely hardy polyester sleeves from Brewer-Cantelmo in New York. They were rather expensive but are supposedly archival and “museum quality”, whatever that means; all I know is that they stand up to pretty much anything short of being keyed (fingernails? no problem). In fact, much of the original batch from years ago are still in use, having outlasted the original portfolios themselves.

Their main drawback is that they are quite reflective, but I’ve been able to balance that a bit by using matte paper, the overall effect is more or less that of glossy prints. I would love to have beautiful, naked prints and nothing else but they just wouldn’t stand up to the wear and tear. In fact I know several photographers who put together gorgeous prints-without-sleeves type books only to switch back after a few months when the prints started getting dirty and creased and torn. Have you ever seen the paint around a lightswitch, where dozens of fingers have touched the wall? Or the greasy head shaped stain under the posters next to the doors in a subway car? That’s what starts to happen to the paper. Sad but true.

The books themselves go into padded bags with label pouches integrated into the top covers. The covers themselves snap shut quickly and easily with simple, bulletproof magnetic fasteners (no moving parts); the bags can be machine-washed if necessary. The whole package, complete with 2 books and a handful of promos, is sized to fit perfectly into a large FedEx box, and was designed from the outset to do so. I guess the point I’m trying to make with all this is that I agree with Dana; your portfolio is a tool, and should be looked at as much in that regard as any other. Having a jewel-like work of art as your portfolio calling card is fine and good, but if you spent so much on it that you can only afford one, and having it lost or damaged would set your career and finances back a year, then you’re taking the wrong approach. I think it’s as important to be practical when it comes to designing your book; nobody else will ever take as good care of it as you do, it’s just a fact of life. And last but not least, it’s true, goo gone is a godsend. Still haven’t found anything that will clean off Sharpie ink, though.