PDN - January 2012

heavily on archival work. “When it comes to something like a lifestyle shoot, a client might see all the right energy [in the portfolio], but then ask if the photographer has any mixed race scenarios, or groups of people in the 60 to 70 age range with a high net worth. And you’re frustrated because that’s just a casting spec,” Hopkins says.

So instead of sending portfolios to convince creatives to hire his photographers, “We’re doing really specific file pulls to put in front of creatives,” Hopkins says. That means photographers must have well organized archives, from which they can pull and send images on short notice (because clients are almost always in too much of a hurry to wait more than a day). The agency sends prints, or at least PDFs, providing clients with what amounts to a custom, one-off portfolio.

When triple bidding a job, clients will often ask for a narrow, customized portfolio so they can compare each photographer’s ability to shoot exactly what the assignment calls for. Lee says creatives who want to compare work by food photographers, for example, might call and say, “‘Only send me chocolate.’ They don’t want to see fruit or soup or drinks, they only want to see chocolate.” So Lee will send PDFs or links to those specific images.

Richards is another rep who sends PDFs made from a photographer’s archival images, but he sometimes takes it a step further, working with photographers to shoot work on spec to match a client’s brief. “Why would you do

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