The job title"model" has become too narrow, and we’re all struggling to keep up. This is why movement, personality and being comfortable across multiple formats matters more than your book.
For a long time the path into modelling was pretty simple. You got signed, you built a book, and your agency sent you out to test with photographers until you'd worked out what you were good at: how to move, which angles worked, how to take direction and what sort of clients might book you. Eventually, hopefully, the work followed.
The investment could be rough. When we shot on film, every shot mattered; the economics were incredibly important, because every shot was training, and every shot cost us money.
The portfolio was everything, because the job was about great photographs to sell products, a lifestyle and a fantasy to a large consumer audience.
That's changed very quickly. A model walking onto a campaign in 2027 might have a photographer making the stills, a cinematographer shooting motion, and a content creator standing next to them filming vertical video, behind-the-scenes and social assets, all at once. The client might need fifteen photographs. They might also need six Reels, three TikToks, a piece to camera, a couple of product demos, website video and enough extra material to feed their channels for the next month.
Looking incredible in a photograph is now only one part of the job.
So when I say your portfolio is bad, I don't mean the photos are bad. I mean it's answering last decade's brief.
What a book was built to prove
It's worth being clear about what the traditional portfolio was actually for, because it was built for a different brief.
The comp card. A handful of images, your measurements and your agency's details. A business card that said "this is my look".
The book. Usually somewhere between ten and twenty of your strongest images, tests and tear sheets, showing range and that you can make clothes, jewellery or swimwear look good.
Digitals, or polas. Plain, unretouched photos against a wall, so clients can see what you actually look like right now. Agencies still want these updated regularly; some ask for new ones every few months. (Backstage).
Every one of those is a still image. Every one answers the same question: how do you look in a photograph? That was the right question when the deliverable was a photograph.
What the brief asks for now
The deliverables list on a commercial job looks very different now. A brand might need hero campaign stills, ecomm, vertical video, short-form organic social, paid social, behind-the-scenes, Stories, motion for the website, creator-style content, product demos, pieces to camera and cutdowns in four different formats. Often from the same day, and often from the same person.
And the numbers say this isn't slowing down.
In Adobe's research, 71% of marketers expect demand for content to grow more than fivefold by 2027. Social content is the fastest-growing demand, followed by short-form video (Adobe). Here in Australia, 63% of marketers expect the same fivefold jump (AMI).
According to Meta, Reels now make up more than half of the time people spend on Instagram, up from about a fifth in 2022 (The Keyword).
In the US, brand spend on creators was projected to hit $37 billion in 2025, up 26% in a year and growing about four times faster than the media industry overall. Almost half of advertisers now call creators a "must buy" (IAB).
In Australia, 61% of online shoppers say they find brands through creators, rising to 84% of 18 to 29-year-olds. And one in five Australian shoppers describe themselves as a creator (IAB Australia, via PPC Land).
Put the old book next to the new brief and the gap is pretty obvious.
How you look in a still → How you move on camera
Your best angle → Every angle, often in one take
Range across tests → Range across stills, motion and social, on the same day
A face → A person: voice, humour, energy
Retouched, finished images → Loose, natural content that doesn't look like an ad
The book still matters. It's just answering a smaller question than it used to.
Your book shows a fraction of a second
A strong portfolio still matters, and I'll keep saying that. A client needs to know how you photograph, they need to see your look and your range, and they need to know you can sell what they're selling.
But a portfolio is a collection of fractions of a second. It shows me how you look in a frame. It doesn't show me what happens between the frames: how you got there, how you move from one to the next, or what happens when someone points a video camera at you and asks you to walk towards it. It doesn't tell me whether you can talk to camera naturally, or whether you're funny, quiet, dry, warm, chaotic or completely magnetic once you get going.
More and more, those are the things that get someone booked. Sometimes more than another beautiful test in the book.
Clients are casting a person now
I think this is the biggest shift. Clients aren't only casting a face. They're casting a person who might have to work across a whole campaign in a single day: moving for motion while the photographer shoots alongside, turning around to film something for social, working naturally with another model, delivering a line to camera, making something loose and spontaneous for TikTok, and then going straight back to being precise for the hero still.
Those are different skills, and the person who can do all of them becomes incredibly useful on set. It's why I think we're going to hear the word talent a lot more, because that's increasingly what the job is.
What your socials tell a client
This is also why socials matter, and not entirely for the reason people think.
Yes, an audience can have commercial value. If two people are equally right for a campaign and one of them brings another 100,000 people with them, a client is going to notice. But I think the bigger reason agencies and clients look at someone's account is what it tells them. Can they talk to camera? Do they understand framing? Can they move? Are they comfortable being watched? Do they have taste? Do they know what looks natural on social, rather than turning everything into an ad?
A following can be evidence that someone has spent hundreds of hours media training themselves without calling it that. They've filmed themselves, watched it back, cringed, worked out what looks awkward and what holds attention, and found their own voice. That's valuable, whatever the follower count says.
You don't need 100,000 followers
This is where the conversation gets silly, so I want to be clear. I'm not saying every model needs to become an influencer, and I definitely don't think follower count should replace good casting. There are extraordinary models with tiny audiences, and people with enormous ones who'd be completely wrong for a campaign.
Even the creator economy itself is mostly small. In 2023, Goldman Sachs estimated there were around 50 million creators worldwide, and only about 4% of them earn more than US$100,000 a year (Goldman Sachs). The number on your profile isn't the point.
A model with 2,000 followers who can speak well, move naturally, understand a brief and give you ten different versions of something is worth far more on set than someone with 200,000 followers who freezes the moment they're given direction. So the useful question isn't "how many followers do you have?" It's "what can you do when the camera starts rolling?"
Moving well is the skill a book can't show
This is one of the first things I notice now when I work with someone. The strongest models don't hit a pose and stop. Something is happening between the frames. They know where the camera is without getting trapped by it. They can repeat something when the cinematographer needs another take without it feeling mechanical, slow it down, make it bigger or quieter, make it commercial, and then make the same movement feel editorial.
I wrote about this in Face or Body, Never Both: the best frames tend to come once someone stops concentrating on the pose and gets lost in the moment. Video shows that immediately, and a book of stills barely shows it at all. If I were a new model developing now, I'd want good motion in my portfolio just as much as good stills.
Agencies need to develop talent differently
A lot of model development has traditionally been: sign them, get digitals, send them out to test, wait. The model works with enough photographers and eventually starts figuring herself out.
Testing still matters. I spend a lot of time telling new models to work with good photographers, make-up artists and stylists, because the right team can speed someone's development up enormously (Your Portfolio Isn't a Campaign). But I don't think ten photoshoots is enough anymore. Development should include motion, talking to camera, social, working alongside other talent, what actually happens on a commercial set, and why the client is making the content in the first place.
A model should probably know how to do a self-tape. She should know what she looks like walking towards a camera, and what to do when someone says, "Same thing, but make it feel less like an ad." She should be able to introduce herself on camera without turning into a completely different person. Those aren't influencer skills. They're just talent skills now.
And more content means more usage. If you're appearing in Reels, paid ads and website video as well as the campaign, it matters even more that you, or your agency, know where every piece is going and for how long (Photographed and Hate the Images?).
Your vibe is part of the casting
This one is harder to teach. Clients remember people, crews remember people, photographers recommend people, and producers remember who made a long day easier. Sometimes the person who isn't the most experienced model in the room is the one everyone wants to keep photographing, because they're curious, funny, engaged, they understand what you're trying to make, they have ideas without taking over, and they can switch on when it's needed and switch off when it isn't.
Your personality isn't something you have to manufacture for a client. The more comfortable you get bringing your actual self into the work, the more useful it becomes.
Stop trying to look like a model all the time
I see this trap constantly with new models. They build an Instagram full of professional photos, every image retouched, every pose looks like modelling, and after thirty seconds of scrolling I still have no idea who they are.
Show me some life. Show me how you dress, somewhere you've been, your sense of humour, a terrible little video of you trying to learn something, how you move, how you sound. Your agency's portfolio already exists to show clients your professional images. Your socials can show them everything the portfolio can't.
That doesn't mean turning your whole life into content. You don't need to post three times a day or document every meal, relationship and thought. There's still a lot of value in privacy. But there's a difference between privacy and having no public personality at all, and if clients are hiring you, giving them some idea of who that is helps. You decide where the line sits.
What I'd work on if I were starting now
I'd still build a great book. But I wouldn't spend two years collecting tests because I thought one more set of beautiful photos was what was holding me back.
I'd work with photographers who make me better, and I'd shoot motion as often as stills. I'd practise walking on camera and record myself talking until it stopped feeling strange. I'd learn how I naturally move instead of memorising poses, and understand the difference between fashion, beauty, commercial, ecomm and social. I'd practise taking direction, learn how campaigns actually get produced, and pay attention to the photographers, stylists, directors and brands whose work I love, so I'd have some taste of my own. And I'd build a social presence that felt like me, not an imitation of what I thought a model's Instagram was supposed to look like.
The industry doesn't need another person who can stand in front of a camera and look beautiful. There are thousands of people who can do that. The ones who become useful bring something else.
Five models already doing this
All five of these women are signed, working internationally, and using their accounts to show a client how they move and who they are, not just another polished frame.
Sienna Traino, signed with Icon Management. I shot Sienna at sunrise at Bushrangers Bay, and her account does exactly what I'm talking about: highlights sorted by year, a bit of life, a bit of work, and she's on TikTok too.
Megumi McKenna, signed with Viviens (Australia), The Squad (London), Nomad (Los Angeles) and One Management (New York). We shot at Little Bay before she moved overseas. Megumi is the best proof that this isn't about follower count. She has around 4,500 followers and four agencies across three continents, and her highlights read like a working diary: London, Paris, Italy, Portugal, work.
Roberta George, signed with IMG Models (Sydney, London and Milan) and Mirrr's (Germany). Roberta's socials have their own management, separate to her modelling agency, which tells you how seriously the industry already takes the creator side of a model's career.
Jayde Pollard, signed with Icon Management (Australia), Select (Los Angeles) and Iconic (Germany). I photographed Jayde at sunrise in Little Manly. Her highlights are sorted by year of work, so a client can see what she's been booked for, in order, in about thirty seconds.
Yasmin Christian, signed with 62 Management (New Zealand, her mother agency), Chadwick (Australia), Wilhelmina (London) and Next (Los Angeles and Miami). Her highlights split work and life, Work25 and Work26 sitting right next to London, LA and New York, so you see the model and the person at the same time.
Models have becoming talent
I don't think the portfolio is dying. I think its job is changing. Your book still gets you considered, but more and more, everything around it is what gets you remembered: how you move, how you speak, how you behave on set, how you take direction, your taste, your personality and your point of view.
For a long time, models could wait for enough photographers to teach them how to be a model. I don't think that's enough anymore. By 2027, the people who understand they aren't just being hired to appear in a photograph will have a huge head start.
Because the job isn't just "model" anymore. You're talent.
Oliver Minnett is a Sydney photographer, creative producer and scout. He also oversees events and partnerships for Georges Cameras.
Keep reading:
Signed Isn’t the Same as Represented: what new models should know before signing with an agency.
Why You’re Not Getting Booked in 2026, and What to Do About It
