How to Make Portfolio of Backyard Landscape Designs
You are a landscaping genius, but it’s hard for you to prove it when you show up everywhere with dirty fingernails and muddy boots. You can instead show up with a showcase that pleasantly displays your work if you make a portfolio of backyard landscape designs. A few simple tips will have you on your way to creating proof of your very green thumb.
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Instructions
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Choose a portfolio. Since you are going to be amassing a collection of landscape designs, you’ll want to pick a portfolio that can hold at least 8 x 10 photos. Picking a three-ring type is best, that way you can add pages as you add more work. Leather makes for a durable and classy cover for your portfolio. Art supply stores usually have a fine variety.
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Get a digital camera. It need not be top of the line with expensive functions like being able to photograph under water, but one that can simply snap photos of your landscaping. You can get a digital camera for as little as $100 these days, but make sure it’s at least 6 or more megapixels for better quality photos. Electronic stores will have a selection of cameras.
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Take photos of all your work. For each backyard you create, take several overall shots that give folks the idea of the scope and overall design of the work plus several close ups of special areas of the yard. You’ll definitely want a close up of the waterfall in the Japanese garden you created, the raised deck above the duck pond for the hunting couple and the cactus fence for the Arizona natives.
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Choose the shots that best represent your work and arrange in your portfolio. You may want to start a section with a full 8 x 10 of the overall shot of a backyard next to a page containing several smaller shots of the close up on one 8 x 10 sheet. You can put each yard in its own section and also make special sections where you showcase all the waterfalls, all the rock gardens and all the gazebos you designed.
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Add any extras to your portfolio. This may include before shots of yards before you applied your magic landscaping touch, tabs to separate the sections, any blueprints you drew that are especially informative, testimonials from happy customers or price ranges for your work.
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Tips & Warnings
Setting up an online portfolio is also a wise idea. We live in an electronic age where people love to browse the internet. Save a little of your income to finance a Web site and then set up a portfolio that people can browse with the click of a mouse.
If you don’t have enough time, energy or patience to get your own Web site, take advantage of free sites that let you post photos, such as MySpace, Facebook and all those other sites that people are crazy about these days.
You can easily produce the portfolio photo layout in a word processing program, such as Microsoft Word, that lets you insert photos onto a page. You can then resize and move photos around the page, even adding captions.
Don’t get too carried away. You don’t need 500 shots of each yard you designed, just the photos that best showcase your work. You can always put extra photos online so you don’t have lug so many around.
Resources
- Photo Credit Photo by Ryn Gargulinski
