The fear of being laughed at makes cowards of us all. – Mignon McLaughlin
On Saturday I participated in a Behance Portfolio review hosted by Chris, Jon-Michael and Breck at The Bindery in southwest Baltimore. Behance is an Adobe program/website for sharing your work and getting feedback. Like many other sites, there are buttons for people to follow you and like your work. The differences are that this site is targeted to creatives that use Adobe products and provides an option for “work in progress” so that you can get feedback as you work. This portfolio review is completely supportive of that concept. It isn’t necessary that you have a Behance account or portfolio to participate, and you can just link to your own website or come just to participate. Participation is free.
There were only five of us and the hosts: Clint, Meagan, Vicky, Rachana and me. It was a pleasant evening (Chris supplied beer, chips and dip — thank you Chris), and a very supportive and positive group. It was also diverse: I did photography, Vicky is the producer for codebass radio, Clint is a junior at MICA and a really excellent illustrator, Rachana is an exceptional Indian artist and Meagan is just getting back into creative work after several years as a care giver. Each of showed some portion of our work or explained what we did and got feedback from the others.
After we talked about our work, Jon-Michael, Breck and (a little reluctantly) Chris shared their work. Jon-Michael does fashion, commercial and portraiture, Breck does retouching, great composites and HDR, portraiture, fashion and fine art. Chris is semi-retired from band photography. All of them had great portfolios, and as the photographer among the guests, I probably benefited the most.
Chris also gifted each of us with his distinctive, high quality Write Notepads and we ended the evening with a really interesting tour of the printing presses, which brought back some memories for me having taken print shop in high school, and surprised me at how much I remembered. This Behance portfolio review was really worthwhile for networking and meeting other creative people in the community and for the feedback and support we received.