Displaying a portfolio

[brandofamily]

I have several ways for a visitor to my site to view a portfolio of my work... the frontpage slideshow is made from a gallery of images I have had published in one way or another or otherwise displayed publically, I have a gallery of these "published" images too, and I have a portfolio section with various galleries of different types of images that I display as "portfolio" galleries.
The question is... is this too much? too many options? The biggest question is if I should eliminate the separate galleries of different types of portfolio images and use 1 gallery. Thus leaving one for the "published" images and one for the images I think are my best...
Also... how many would you put in a "best of" type gallery if you did only one? In my current set up I might have a dozen or so in each genre.
Thanks for input...

[brandofamily]

no opinions?:dunno

[Andy]

Anthony: let some folks have some time, OK?
It's Friday night.

[Tim Kamppinen]

I think it's best to have a portfolio for each separate genre of photography that you want to showcase... without knowing what sort of photography you do, a generic example would be having separate weddings, senior portraits, and family portfolios. Or music, fashion, editorial portfolios. Or landscapes, sports, street photography, whatever, etc.

The images will flow together better if they're grouped in a logical manner, and if someone is checking out your website looking to hire you for a particular job, they can go to the relevant portfolio and see examples of the sort of photos they're looking for without having to sift through all sorts of other stuff.

[SamirD]

Your portfolio is your sales tool. It's you saying, "I can do work like this." So naturally your potential client wants to see images close to their subject or close to the style of image they want.

Sometimes this works by just having your strongest image in each genre in one comprehensive slideshow/gallery. This way, they don't have to hunt for the image, it comes to them in a few seconds.

Other times, you may want to break it out into individual slideshows/galleries for each genre. For genres that have a lot of facets, this helps. Your client can see an image in the facet that they are interested in.

You know your clients and how they are finding you and choosing you. Gear it towards them. :thumb