Glossy and colourful, and completely unapologetic about it. This is issue 01 of Rikki Ward's photography portfolio: an A5 perfect bound book of still life and product work that goes everywhere with the photographer and gets posted out to the people who commission the jobs. It is a cost-effective, easily transported promotional piece, and it punches well above its size.
The work inside is commercial still life at its most playful: fragrance bottles, crushed grooming tubes, spilled drinks, breakfast cereal launched across a blue sky as paper aeroplanes, and a sock puppet that has no business being this charismatic. The subjects change constantly but the lighting language does not, which is what makes it read as one body of work rather than a collection of jobs.
The audience is a specific one: studios, agencies and the art buyers who commission photography. That shapes every decision. A book like this needs to survive a bag, get handed across a desk, and drop through a letterbox without costing a fortune to send. Our portfolio printing service is built for exactly that brief, and this guide to creating a photo portfolio that reflects your style is a good first read if you are starting from scratch.
The paper choices are right on point here. Gloss inside pages and a gloss laminated cover are sometimes treated as the safe option, but for saturated product photography they are the correct one. Gloss holds density in the shadows, keeps the highlights on glass and chrome looking like glass and chrome, and stops big fields of flat colour going chalky. The images reproduce with crisp, pixel perfect clarity, and the products genuinely leap off the page into the reader's retina.
170gsm is the other half of the equation. It is heavy enough that a fully inked page does not show through to the next one, and heavy enough to feel like a portfolio rather than a magazine, while still keeping the book slim at a 4mm spine. If you are torn between silk, gloss and uncoated, order a set of free printed paper samples and compare them under your own lights, or read our showcase of silk, gloss, uncoated and recycled finishes.
That gloss cover. Shiny, shiny. The photographer's name runs full height down the left edge in heavy type, a solid red block carries a huge black "01", and the whole thing sits under lamination that catches the light the moment you pick it up. It also does the quiet job of protecting the cover: a book that lives in a bag needs a finish that shrugs off scuffs.
Inside is an overload of colour, and the sequencing earns it. Deep violets and warm golds sit next to a spread of solid olive and electric blue, then a jump into hot pink and poolside turquoise. Each turn resets your eyes. Because every image is shot with the same confidence, the book never tips into noise.
Here is the detail we always look for, and the one most portfolios get wrong: the key content is well centred within the pages, nowhere near the trim edge or the spine gutter. Cereal aeroplanes fly across the fold with the important shapes either side of it. A bottle sits comfortably inside the margin rather than clinging to the edge. Nothing critical is at risk from the trim or swallowed by the bind. It is a great example, and worth studying before you export.
Then flip it over. The back cover carries a QR code and the photographer's web address, tucked into the corner of a black and gold still life. It costs nothing and it closes the loop: someone holding the book at a studio can be looking at the full body of work seconds later. If you are printing something similar, put a QR code on your back cover so people know how to find you.
Rikki got in touch on a Friday morning and asked for a Zoom the same day. We were on a call within the hour. That conversation did most of the work: we talked through how the book would actually be used, what gloss does to product photography, and where the money is best spent on a book this size.
A free printed paper sample pack went out straight after, so the next decisions were made with paper in hand rather than on screen. Over the following fortnight the spec moved three times, and we requoted each time without fuss: the cover came down from 300gsm to 250gsm silk, the inside pages went from silk to gloss, then from 150gsm up to 170gsm, and the extent settled at 44pp inside plus the 4pp cover.
Each of those changes moves the spine, which matters enormously when you are building a perfect bound cover as a single spread. We recalculated it every time and told Rikki the number before the artwork was drawn: 4mm, then 3mm on the lighter stock, then back to 4mm once 170gsm was confirmed. Our perfect binding set-up guide walks through the same maths for your own cover file.
Artwork and order landed the following week, then a final PDF proof went over for sign-off with clear instructions on what to check and how: trim lines, page order, and a nudge to review it on a proper screen rather than a phone. Approved, printed, and out of the door with a one hour delivery window the next morning.
One thing did go wrong, and not at our end: a box split in transit and damaged some of the copies. Rikki emailed with photos, we replied in two minutes offering a reprint or a refund, and the affected copies were reprinted. No forms, no argument.
Portfolios are deceptively fiddly. The format is simple, so all the risk sits in the paper choice, the spine calculation and the colour. Our team took each of those in turn: a same-day call to set the direction, physical samples to make the paper decision real, three unhurried requotes as the spec firmed up, a fresh spine measurement with every change, and a proof stage with plain instructions instead of jargon.
Ready to plan yours? Get a figure in seconds with our instant printing quote calculator, or browse the portfolio for formats and finishes worth stealing.
