Showing your portfolio to the right person

A photographer’s portfolio can mean two different things. A potential client wants to see the pictures. A company considering a licensing deal wants to know which pictures are available, for what uses, and whether any existing agreement affects the proposal. The work is the same; the questions are different, so the presentation should be too.

Begin with the decision the other person is making

Ask what the meeting is for before you assemble anything. Then match the package to the answer:

• Someone choosing a creative collaborator: a small selection of relevant work and a sentence on your role in each piece.
• Someone evaluating a license or purchase: a defined collection, the uses you can offer, and every limit you already know about. Buyers, investors and lenders check whether you can prove you own what you are offering and whether anyone else holds rights in it 3.
• An adviser reviewing ownership: the underlying agreements and the history of who contributed what.

Open with one sentence that says which kind of package this is: “This selection shows the kind of illustration I can create for a commission,” or “These finished illustrations are the ones on offer for use on packaging.” Do not let the page suggest that every item shown is available on the same terms.

Make the rights description as precise as the creative description

For each item you are offering, give:

1. A title or reference number, the version and the date.
2. The part you created.
3. What you hold: ownership, a permission from someone else, or a question you are still checking.
4. Who else can use it and on what terms, and anyone else with a claim to it, such as an earlier licensee, an investor or a lender 3.

If another person’s material appears in the work, name it and its owner, and check whether you need that owner’s permission before you offer the work 3. Suppose a designer shows a campaign built around photographs the client supplied: the designer presents the layout and typography as their own and says the photographs belong to the client. That keeps the conversation accurate when it moves from “I like this” to “Can we use it?”

Share detail in proportion to the conversation

Keep raw source files, supplier and client lists, formulas, recipes and unpublished contracts out of a first presentation. Information like this can be protected as a trade secret only while it stays known to a limited group and you take reasonable steps to keep it secret; WIPO names confidentiality agreements with business partners and control over who can open important documents as such steps 1.

Work in three layers:

1. Public selection: finished work you are happy for anyone to see.
2. Rights summary: the item-by-item list above, for a serious discussion.
3. Supporting documents: agreements, source files and know-how, sent only after both sides sign a non-disclosure agreement and only to the people who need them 1.

An agreement does not make the information secret if the other side can find it out anyway: a trade secret does not stop someone who develops the same information independently or works it out from your product 1.

If the work includes an invention you have not yet filed a patent application for, file first. Public disclosure before filing can stop you getting a valid patent; some countries allow a grace period, usually 6 to 12 months, but do not count on one. If you must discuss the invention with an investor before filing, do it under a non-disclosure agreement 2. Have a patent attorney or patent agent review what you plan to show before you send it.

Leave room for an honest question

Write only descriptions you can back up. “Permission for the proposed print run is being confirmed” gives the other person a fact they can use. “All rights cleared” is a sweeping promise; use it only when you have checked every item, and never to make a page look finished.

Keep a dated copy of exactly what you sent and to whom. If the conversation turns into a deal, you can see which versions and claims it started from.