Pirated photoshop and lifted google images, that's how I created my first portfolio. After graduating a long time ago, I had these and about a dozen others in a way-outdated briefcase my grandfather gave me, and I would travel around Vegas trying to get into agencies to show anyone who would look. One person finally did look, and he was very nice about it, but he couldn't help because he wasn't in charge of hiring. It was all quite embarrassing, in retrospect.
