<p>Well I'm still a sophomore and hasn't begun preparing a portfolio but I have a passion for photography and visual arts and I normally post stuff online. Any art students out there? Can you guys see if this is college-worthy, would college adminstrators consider this as good, because many applicants don't have very developed photography portfolios (i think).</p>
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<p>I have 3.9+ GPA (UW), leadership in photo club, and member of a few other clubs, which I will try to get more leadership.</p>
<p>I don’t believe Yale would even review your portfolio, except that you could show it to an admissions officer (who might or might not know anything about art.) Yale has a very good undergrad art dept, but you don’t get a BFA; you get a BA. You wouldn’t enter as a photo major. You’d be evaluated based on your whole application. </p>
<p>RISD (of course) reviews artwork. I believe they’d want to see some drawing from observation (not from photos), even if your intended major is photography. </p>
<p>To me (i teach in an art school, though don’t teach photo) your photography looks like it’s coming along but also needs to grow. it would probably be good to think more about composition and point of view. Maybe try some subjects that aren’t “pretty” to expand your range.</p>
<p>hope that’s helpful. Good luck!</p>
<p>You need some observational drawings in your portfolio. People that study photography,graphic design, fashion design and film at risd usually still have traditional fine arts foundational skills when they enter. The school really looks for applicants to have tradition drawing and painting skills. There ARE people that get in with photography alone, but I just cant imagine that being the norm. Anything will do, still life set ups, landscapes, perspective drawings, portraits, figure drawing et.</p>
<p>I dont have any idea how it works for Yale, but if their fine arts program is worth anything at all, then I would believe the same overall advice applies.</p>
<p>Yale’s fine art dept is very good and their MFA program is great . . . but an art portfolio, whether of photos or drawings, won’t be a primary qualifier for acceptance.</p>
<p>In general though . . . if you’re interested in photography or anything visual, I fully agree with GraphicA, you should draw, simply because it helps you learn to see.</p>
<p>oops. sorry!
um, nowadays it appears Yale does look at art portfolios. as you no doubt know. I’m wrong about that. i attended Yale and majored in art . . . but . . . it was a long long time ago.</p>
<p>Yale is very hard to get in. My D had: strong portfolio; National merit finalist; President of some school club and many volunteer hours, but she didn’t get in Yale.</p>
<p>She got $22000/year from SAIC, $42000/year (Full Tuition scholarship plus 2000 for merit fnialist) from WashU; and offer from Cooper.</p>
<p>Yale is the only one turned her down, </p>
<p>Sorry for kind of discouraging, but want to let you know Yale is very hard to get in</p>
<p>Wow, love, that is so impressive! You must be very proud of your daughter. She’ll go far! I hope you are enjoying the winter break with her!</p>
<p>thanks colcon
I am enjoying her with me at home but time fly, she is leaving home next Tuesday.
How about your daugher, when her school start?</p>
<p>Hi love, she goes back on Sunday! We are trying to finish her vacation “bucket list” before it’s time to return to college. Back to the Florida sun, lucky girl!</p>
<p>Yeah, Yale does not do portfolio reviews for undergraduate admission. Most Ivies don’t. If you want to try to use a portfolio as leverage to get into an Ivy, I suggest Cornell.
As for your portfolio, (don’t take this personally, I’m trying to offer constructive criticism) there is a lot of room for improvement. Though I don’t specialize in photography, if you’re going to consider your photographs to be art, expanding on the elements and principles of design used in each piece is a must. Right now, there isn’t anything necessarily striking about your photos, which doesn’t mean that there will never be. Think composition and value. </p>
<p>I’ve applied to both RISD and Yale. Should hear back from RISD tomorrow. Yale around April?</p>
<p>In addition, working on basic drawing skills is still imperative. RISD likes to see sketchbook pages.</p>
<p>Like most people who replied already, I agree that your portfolio should consist of more than just photography pieces, and that you still have a lot of room to grow as a photographer. If you can’t broaden your portfolio, you can submit your photos as an art supplement, secondary to whatever major you’ll be focusing on. However, if you want to make fine arts your primary focus, or be competitive in admissions to dual degree art programs like the Brown-RISD one, you definitely need to expand your skill set.</p>
<p>BTW your fruit overdose set was cute 
-it made me smile, but that’s exactly my point about growing as an artist. Your photos are just that-cute and pretty at first glance, not really deep/intricate/subtle. But take heart! You have 1.5 years to take your work to the next level.</p>
<p>Think about the basic elements of art (form, space, texture, line, pattern, etc). I’m not a photographer either but I am highly exposed to the visual arts and design every day all day long. In my opinion, filters should only be used if you have a specific compositional intent derived from basic elements (for beginning photos anyway).</p>
<p>I would say you should start to evolve your work to cover much deeper topics. I think you understand depth of field well at this point, but play with interesting compositions, perspective tools and more conceptual/mature subject matter. You have a while to go yet and your work will change a lot over the next year or so. 
Good luck!</p>
<p>I like your shots!
My advice would be to explore issues that you are passionate about, and as others have said, dive deeper into more conceptual art. If you can, try and get an understanding of visual language, that will help you a lot. Also, be sure to practice plenty of life drawing!</p>
<p>Good luck and keep working hard. I’ll be sure to send you a watch :3</p>
<p>I agree with everyone else, nice photography but you will definitely need observational drawings for RISD. Apart from drawings in the basic portfolio, RISD also requires some supplements specific to their school which need to be drawn in graphite. Usually a bike and one other thing that I think changes yearly. If you haven’t yet and could get access it might be interesting to try some manual photography with a darkroom, though I know that might not be feasible.</p>