How to Email a Photography Portfolio

When you finally start to get serious jobs as a professional photographer, agents, editors and clients are going to want you to email your portfolio to them. If you are like most photographers, your portfolio is in high resolution and takes up huge quantities of memory, so emailing a portfolio is not necessarily an easy task. It’s never a good idea to send a full-resolution copy of your book unless you have a very specific and good reason to do so -- like your client has asked to see full-resolution photos. Once you make lower-resolution copies of your images, you can create a ZIP file to email your photography portfolio. Using ZIP format ensures that the person who receives the images will be able to open and view them, regardless of the operating system he uses.

Create low-resolution copies of the images in your portfolio, such as a maximum of 1,200 pixels for the longest edge. Create a folder on your Desktop, give it your name as the title and then move the low-resolution images to the folder.

Rename your images with your name followed by a number. For example, use names like “johnsmith001," "johnsmith 002," "johnsmith003” and so on. Use the numbers to control the order of how you want your images to be viewed. Make the opening image “001,” the following image “002,” and so on. This ensures that the person viewing your portfolio will view your images in the order you want.

Create a ZIP archive of your folder. For Windows, right-click the folder. Select “Send To” and then “Compressed Folder.” For Mac OS X, hold the “Option” key, and click the folder. Choose “Archive” from the Actions menu. Rename your ZIP file with your first and last name.

Open your email program or navigate to your Web mail and create a new message. Click the “Attach” button or link and select your ZIP file as the attachment.