The Personal Photography Project

A Website to Showcase & Promote Photographers’ Personal Work

I founded The Personal Photography Project with the goal of showcasing and promoting photographers’ personal work to magazine photo editors and ad agency/brand art producers. I feel honored to have shared over 100 projects from 43 talented photographers. It was a good run, and I’m proud of the work that we curated. Thank you to everyone who visited the site and supported us.

I still believe firmly that personal projects help photographers differentiate themselves from their competition / adds to their portfolio offerings / inspires clients to follow a different visual approach / etc.

I encourage photographers to keep up with their personal projects, and I am happy to give them input and feedback — including the selection and sequencing of images for their projects — as I also consult photographers on such things.

I also am a graphic designer by trade, and I would be happy to help out with any print or digital portfolio designs, website template selection and tweaking, video, animation, or other design needs. I have designed numerous portfolios and even photo books for photographers — in addition to having designed tppp.photo and all of the branding and marketing materials for The Personal Photography Project.

If you’re an art producer or photo editor: I also can help you find the right photographer for your next project.

History: Why I FOunded the site

I started The Personal Photography Project because, years after running an award-winning photographer's studio, then co-founding a photographer's agency of 100's of photographers around the world, plus consulting photographers to this day on their portfolios and business — I keep coming back to this idea...

What a photographer shoots as their "personal work" ("portfolio project", etc.) is often what serves them the best in both their career and their artistic exploration.

Over the past 20 years, I would ask a photographer about a certain image or series of photos in their portfolio that stood out to me. Sometimes they'd sheepishly reply, "Oh, it's just for my portfolio."

And yet this work "just" stood out to me, again and again. Not only that, but their personal work was winning them awards in photo annuals, AND often gave creatives a chance to see what this photographer could accomplish without any outside creative direction. It allowed their clients to see them more as a creative partner, instead of just a button pusher.

Being a series of images, these projects show photo editors how this photographer could carry out a longer cover article. It also gives art producers or creative directors the confidence to hire the photographer to create a full campaign. Because seeing a project in its entirety gives creatives the comfort that the work is not just a "lucky", one-off image.

If you've shown your portfolio lately too, it's what creatives are asking for: they WANT to see your personal work. They are literally asking photographers to show this different side of their talents.

Part of this is that it shows your ability to be a creative partner, and another is that creatives are increasingly wanting ideas that are "authentic", show "storytelling", and that are not carbon copies of what they've seen before. A brand or magazine is better served by breathing fresh air into their ad campaign or editorial content. Let's say a city magazine is looking for a new way to show their city: what better way than by tapping into unique stories that they've never considered?

Speaking of which: I originally conceived of The Personal Photography Project out of an actual need of my own: I was being onboarded as the Director of Photography for Philadelphia Magazine, and I was trying to figure out ways of coming up with new perspectives on the city. Having helped photographers edit their websites — including their personal project galleries — I knew that there was a wellspring of interesting projects that photographers were doing about the Philadelphia area, its people and activities.

Their Design Director was excited by the idea that I came up with: to create a database of projects that had already been shot. For one, this would allow the magazine to visually test-drive ideas that were already complete, making it easier to pitch a story to the editors. Editors who are hungry to come up with original stories about the city.

So the work could either be used for stock, OR they could hire the photographer to expand on the project.

Equally important: they could also assign the photographer a completely new assignment, now that they knew their potential. Plus, the database could introduce some photographers to the magazine for the first time, or remind the photo editors of photographers who'd shot for them in the past — and maybe hadn't worked for them in a while.