Presenting your portfolio digitally

[volleysnap]

I'm in the midst of applying to colleges for next year, and after sending a full-fledged portfolio to my top choice I have come to realize that it is way beyond my budget to do that for every school I want to send a portfolio to. Several of these offer the option of sending your photographs digitally, so I was wondering if anyone has ever done this before since it would be MUCH cheaper. There is always the option of just dropping the pictures on a CD and sending them off, but I would like to do something that looks a little bit nicer. I have access to CS3 and lightroom, so any suggestions on how I can present my photographs would be greatly appreciated.

 

[nikonkev]

Have you any HTML knowledge? Perhaps creating a website and displaying it would look professional, in my opinion. That way, you can forward them a direct link to it.

 

[volleysnap]

I could do that, but they explicitly say that they want them presented as "prints, slides, or in a digital format on a CD"

 

[Sideburns]

seriously...just .jpg them and put them on a CD. It's not asking you to do any special presentation..and I would even find it annoying if I couldn't just look through them as I please.

 

[MACollum]

Sideburns has a point. The people who are going to be reviewing the portfolios probably have a lot to look at, so they would probably prefer to just take a peek at their leisure without messing with anything fancy.

 

[Nickmunstr]

That being said, I don't think it would be beyond you to create a simple interface for them navigate through your photos, and I think that properly framing (not with a literal frame) your work is something you should do and that they expect you to do.

I actually wouldn't mind giving you a hand with this if you'd like to do something simple. I am a web-designer/coder and wouldn't mind taking some time out to give you a hand if you have some ideas and want to go that path.
Basically, I'm suggesting you send a CD with your images in an "images" folder and a webpage that references those images. You've got the best of both worlds there.

My AIM is Nickmunstr if you ever want to discuss it. When do you have to submit everything?