Windows and Beyond Seminar with Sally Morse

Sally Morse & Doreen Yun at the Windows and Beyond Showroom

“Where do you want to be on one year?” was the title of the presentation I attended. I found it to be inspiring and informative. Doreen hosted a second event that evening titled “10 steps to a Perfect Room” again presented by Sally Morse that was focused more on helping her retail customers.

Doreen Yun owner of Windows and Beyond hosted the event at her Fremont showroom. Her showroom is fantastic with many little vignettes spread throughout the vast space showing the amazing variety of items and materials she has to offer. Any designer would be well served to tour the facility and bring their clients by to see the variety of styles and effects that can be created with good quality, creative window coverings.

Sally Morse Director of Creative Services for Hunter Douglas spoke on many subjects. She discussed color trends for the coming year, fundamentals of customer service, sales technique before during and after the job has been completed, intended to help us secure the clients business over the long term, not just to get a check today. She also discussed lifestyle issues.

This seminar was more about tactics than strategy, not focused just on sales but on satisfaction. The satisfaction of the customer as well as our own satisfaction with our lives and businesses.

Overall I am glad I attended. I walked away with a new perspective on quite a few things a few more nuggets of wisdom and was reminded of a few things that I had forgotten, such as the importance of making the customer feel good about spending the money it takes to do the job. Not just for the customer to feel good about the quality, timeliness and result of the job we do, but for them to be glad they spent their hard earned money to achieve whatever goal they set out to achieve or solve whatever problem they were faced with. It’s a big difference and requires much more energy and effort than just doing what you get paid for, but the return on your investment in the happiness and well-being of the customer will be immense over the years.

You can review the photographs I took of the event in my gallery by following this link.

Pauline Hsu Said My Photographs Made a Difference

Pei-Lan Pauline Hsu is the Professional Development Director for ASID CA Peninsula. We were talking at the Miele Event at Sierra Select in December and she was telling me that the high quality of my photographs of past ASID events made the difference in getting a special room rate for the members at the Gaia Hotel located in American Canyon here in the San Francisco Bay Area.

I’m glad I could help provide this benefit for the members and very proud to know that I helped Pauline chalk up another success as Professional Development Director for ASID CA Peninsula.

As I always say “Helping you is why I am here”  and now I’ve helped every single member of the ASID CA Peninsula Chapter and they didn’t even have to hire me.

Photograph of the Month January 2010 Dawn of a New Day

This month’s photograph is titled “Dawn of a New Day.” I hope you like it.

I found this tree while hiking with my wife in the Sunol Regional Wilderness Area. I saw the placement of the foreground elements, structure of the tree and the open meadow and knew it would be a good photograph.

To create this photograph I had to hike two and a half miles and down hill a thousand vertical feet in the dark. It took longer to reach the tree than I had planned and I was concerned I would loose the light. As I arrived these clouds, lit by the glow of the rising sun drifted through and made the shot. I had to set up my camera quickly to capture the moment and as I clicked the shutter I knew all my efforts were paying off.

You can view and download both the Wide Screen and the narrow Scree versions from my portfolio galleries or simply click on the image above and a full size image will open in the same widow.

All images in my “Photograph of the Month” series are sized and formatted as a screen saver or computer desktop wallpaper. Please, share it with your family and friends, with my compliments.

Thanks and Have a Happy New Year,
Dean

ASID CA Pen IP Event Pictures Miele December 3 2009

Miele San Francisco Staff preparing Chocolate Bread Pudding at the 2009 ASID Holiday Event

Sierra Select hosted the ASID CA Peninsula the monthly meeting/event at their Miele showroom in San Francisco. This month the event was held in conjunction with ASID CA North, the San Francisco Chapter.

Sierra Select provided food and wine and gave interactive demonstrations of a few of their cook tops, stoves and ovens. Members from both chapters had the opportunity to cook Lamb Meatballs, Bacon wrapped Winter Squash, Chicken and Chocolate Bread Pudding. And those who did not attend this month, we thank you because that meant there was more chocolate for us.

We all had fun cooking and enjoying the hospitality of the management and staff of Sierra Select. The liberal quantities of good food and wine show they really know how to host a monthly meeting.

You can find photographs of the event in my portfolio gallery by following this link.

As always the photographs I shoot at the ASID events are available for ASID Members, Industry Partners and Staff as well as Press to download and use as needed at no charge. Photo credit is always appreciated.

Photograph of the Month “Daisy”

This month’s photograph is titled “Daisy.” I shot this in a local park recently, I like it because it’s simple and sweet. I hope it brightens your day through the coming winter months.

You will notice there are two versions of the photograph. This is due to the recent industry wide adoption of the “wide screen” format for laptops and desktop computers, as well as high end cell phones. I realized that at least thirty-three percent  of the visitors to my site are using the wide screen format and wanted to ensure they had the option of enjoying the screen savers I work so hard to produce each month.

One version is for the wide screen and one version is for the “narrow” screen us geriatric cases are accustomed to. Select whichever fits your need, I will continue to produce both wide and narrow screen versions until the new format becomes universal. You can view and download both versions from my portfolio galleries as well.

The wide screen format has a long history in the movie industry, most of us have seen Panavision movies at one time or another. The computer industry has adopted the wide screen format because it is the defined format of HDTV and the motion picture industry has adopted the wide screen as a standard format for movies.

It also forces all of us to buy new computers lest we be seen as being out of date dinosaurs. If you have twenty minutes you might want to take a look at this video called “The Story of Stuff.” It’s really quite enlightening and aggravating but it’s well written, thoroughly researched and very well produced.

Oh, well… as with any computer technology what is available today really is much better than what was available last month. I just wish it wouldn’t cost quite so much.

All images in my “Photograph of the Month” series are sized and formatted as a screen saver or computer desktop wallpaper. You can click on the image to open in a new window or download; please, share it with your family and friends, with my compliments.

Dean

ASID Lunch & Learn at Emser Tile

Wednesday was the first meeting in the ASID CA Peninsula Lunch & Learn Series and of course I was on hand to photograph the event.You can view the photographs by following this link

The Lunch & Learn events are no cost to members so we get a nice snack and become better educated about the materials and supplies common to the spaces we work in.

Industry Partners provide lunchtime seminars to showcase new products, teach product specification and/or application techniques at their facilities.

Lunch is provided, and designers gain in-depth information about a particular product, service or showroom.

This first meeting was hosted by Emser Tile. The presentation was by Daybreak Stoneworks. We learned a bout the damage improper care can cause to stone tiles, counters and tables, we saw a demonstration of the refinishing process and how effective it can be even on severely damaged stone, and we learned abot the proper way to care for stone.

I am glad to know the best way to clean the stone because so often I need to throw a quick shine on stone for the photographs without causing damage. It is surprising how easy it is to damage stone and the cost of repairs is rather steep.

Lunch was provided – sandwiches, sodas, water and cookies… no Vegan fare though. Oh, well, It won’t hurt me to miss a meal or two every now and then.

Off to the Races

Shooting Lunch & Learn for ASID CA Peninsula today then it’s up to the city to shoot tables at Dining by Design in the Galleria at the SF Design Center.

Fun times ahead. Look for the Lunch & Learn shots tomorrow afternoon. The Dining by Design shots must await publication before I can show them.

The Reviews Are In on “Photography for Interior Designers”

The CEU I did for ASID CA Peninsula on Thursday was a rousing success. The attendees rated my performance and here’s what they had to say

(Yes, it’s shameless self promotion, but if I didn’t do it who would?)

The overall score for the CEU is 4.5 out of 5.

The score for quality of content is 4.88 out of 5.

Presentation skills ranked 4.5 out of 5.

Comments included

*         “excellent!,”

*         “practical and helpful” and

*         “this helped me look at photography in a different way, ”

*         “great content and visuals” and

*         “best presentation in years!”

I’m rather happy about this.

Photography for Interior Designers CEU Lecture An Overwheling Success

Last night at the Hunter Douglas Showroom in Milpitas, CA I gave a CEU lecture to the members of ASID CA Peninsula titled Photography for Interior Designers. The overwhelming positive response of the members who attended tells me I did a good job. I found that I enjoyed speaking to a room filled with eighty people.

I discussed subjects such as Photographic Composition, Styling for Photography and HDRI photography. These subjects are of importance to interiors designers because the quality of their photographs are important to the advancement of their careers .

At the encouragement of Marie Chan of Inter-Space Design, President of ASID CA Peninsula, I worked hard to ensure that all who attended left with a deeper insight to photography or a greater capability to either shoot better photographs for themselves or do a better job of collaborating with and directing their photographer on their next photo shoot.

After four months of work on the presentation actually giving the lecture seems anticlimactic. Regardless today I will begin the next phase of the project which is to decide if, where, when and how to arrange the next lecture on the subject; before the lecture even began there were requests to give another in San Francisco.

After all the work I did I want to make the most of it. So next week I will see what the future hold, right now. I have photographs of another prison to process and a residential walk through in Los Gatos, CA this afternoon.

Neo-Gothic Period Art

I am making a reference to Neo-Gothic Period art in the CEU I am giving for ASID CA Peninsula on Thursday. Since this is not a well known or understood movement I wanted to have some information about it available for the attendees.

Stephanie Evans - All Locked Up

http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/gothic/arthistory_gothicart.html

Neo-Gothic Art

Art movement that started in the early 1980s as part of the punk movement and later associated with Fantasy Art.

During the late 1990s it became recognized as a new artistic style. The term “Neo-Gothic Art” was coined by Charles Alexander Moffat, who wrote “The Neo-Gothic Art Manifesto“. Moffat remains one of the driving forces behind the style as an artistic movement.

Other artists include: Marilyn Manson, Victoria Van Dyke, Caroline Folkenroth, Stefanie Lynn Evans, Judith Weratschnig, Eliza Bathory, Floria Sigismondi, and Jeff Lowe.

The style is very popular in Canada, Europe, Japan, Russia and the United States.

Movement emphasizes the bizarre, obscene, sexual, blasphemous, mysterious, horrific and gender-confusion/androgyny.

The thing that I have always found surprising is the choice of Neo_Gothic as the description of the movement because the Neo-Goths, or Goths as they prefer to be called, are more inclined to revere the darker aspects of the human condition, and they seek out the night, shadows and darkness.

This is the polar opposite of the Gothic Period which revered light and the higher aspirations of humanity. Gothic cathedrals are not dark places, the architecture was developed in response for the desire to have many large windows to let light in.

I believe the attraction of the Gothic lifestyle for young people is the romance of sexual allegories that so many of the myths of Western Europe are built upon. The darkness of the mood and characterization of the movement, I believe, is an artifact of the entertainment industries tendency to revise history in pursuit of a compelling story line.