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.

CEU On Growing Your Business at Decorators Workshoppe

Today I attended a CEU at Decorators Workshoppe in Campbell, CA. The Seminar was a two hour event on business planning and marketing titled “Design Practice Management and Marketing/Today’s Presentation for Tomorrow’s Clients.”

Mike Weddington of Hunter Douglas was the presenter and he did a fantastic job. The information he presented was both timely and relevant to the Interior Designer in these challenging times. One thing he pointed out that had the ring of truth, but was not what we wanted to hear was – I paraphrase “If you’re waiting for the economy to get back to where it was, you’re out of luck because it’s never going to happen.”

Mike is a smart guy. He used to play football for the Green Bay Packers and now manages a multimillion dollar division of a Fortune 100 company, Hunter Douglas. This is what you call a successful man and I always pay attention to what successful people say.

Joseph Hittinger Published using High Dynamic Range Photographs

Joe Hittinger had a project I shot for him published in Palo Alto Online.

It was a great project that I shot using the High Dynamic Range Imaging technique that is making such a hit with all my clients. I like it because I can capture the essence of my clients design with a degree of fidelity to their creative vision never before possible. And since the supplemental lighting I need is either minimized or in most cases unnecessary we no longer have to struggle with reflections and light stands and cables, instead we can focus all of our energies on the creative aspects of styling and composition.

Take a look at the project at Palo Alto Online. com or check it out in my portfolio. I’m actually using photographs from this project of Joe’s in my CEU seminar for ASID.

Nesting Newbies Publishes DIFFA Dining by Design

Nesting Newbies DIFFA Dining by Design

I am proud to announce the publication of the DIFFA (Design Industry Foundation Fight Aids) Dining by Design event at the San Francisco Design Center by Nesting Newbies magazine.

You can view the images I shot in my portfolio by following this link. All but one of the images they published were shot using the High Dynamic Range Imaging technique that is such a hit with all my clients.

Or you can review the entire winter issue of Nesting Newbies by following this link.

It was a pleasure working with Lea McIntosh and Jodi Murphy of Nesting Newbies, they are on the cutting edge of periodical publication. I look forward to working with them as they blaze the trail for others in the publication industry to follow.

Holiday Cooking Event at The Miele Showroom at Sierra Select in San Francisco

Today is the day of the “Deliciously Fun Holiday Event at the Miele Gallery at Sierra Select at 680 Eighth St. in San Francisco.

I’m looking forward to seeing the Miele line and the cooking “competition.”

I wonder if there will be any vegan food for the photographer this time?

Regardless it sounds like a fun evening and I’ll be on hand to photograph the events and the final culinary masterpieces.

I hope to see you there.

Dean

ASID CA Peninsula Design Chronicles Fall 2009

I am very pleased and proud to find that the image I created for Joseph Hittinger of Joseph Hittinger Designs is featured on the cover of the fall issue of ASID CA Peninsula Design Chronicles.

ASID CA Peninsula Design Chronicles Fall 2009 Cover - Joseph Hittinger Designs

It really is a wonderful image and I can see why Joe won the Silver for Kitchens with it. And yes, this is an HDRI photograph.

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.

How I became an Architectural Photographer

There’s an old saying “A man should do what he loves, or what he does best. If they are one and the same, then he truly is blessed.”

Recently I have been asked about how I got started in photography and how I came to choose architecture and interior design photography as my specialty. Here is the short version of the story.

In 1987 in Denver, CO I was in business with my father building custom upholstered and finished wood furniture to the trade. One day while cutting the back panel for an Armoire  on the table saw I almost cut the fingers off of my right hand, twice.

I realized that all the guys who had been doing this work for very long all had severe injuries to their hands, some missing several fingers, or worse. I shut down the saw and never turned it back on.

It was early April and I realized I needed to find a job, but hadn’t interviewed in years. I looked through the classified ads and saw an ad for a photographer with no experience required. I thought this would be an opportunity to refresh my interviewing skills. Much to my surprise I was hired, despite never having picked up a camera before in my life.

The job was to travel around the hinterlands of Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Utah and New Mexico taking pictures of babies in K-mart department stores.

The job was great. I got to drive around the mountain states all summer long  spending a week in medium sized backwater towns. I got paid a decent wage and a reasonable per diem. I had a great summer and realized I loved photography but hated the job of shooting babies. I knew I had found my calling in life and set out to turn this summer job into a lifelong career.

As the seasons changed I realized that making a living driving on back mountain roads during the winter was not a good idea. So I quit, returned to Denver and found employment in a one hour photo labs, which used to be an ubiquitous  feature of every mall, large and small throughout the United States. This particular lab, Moto-Photo, had several photographic manuals for sale. These were books on how to take pictures such as, The Joy of Photography, Fashion & Portrait Photography, etc… The manual that caught my attention was “Photographing Buildings Inside and Out” by Norman McGrath. One look at the photographs Mr. McGrath created and I knew this was what I wanted to do. Before getting half way through the book I had decided I was going to be an architectural photographer and dedicated all my energy and efforts towards achieving that one goal.

I spent the next five years shooting small jobs for realtors and home builders while working in various photo labs both one hour retail labs and large commercial photo labs. I did this to build a strong foundation of experience in the background of the photographic processes and to pay the rent.

I worked as an assistant for another architectural photographer, Thorney Lieberman, for a brief time. My plan was to work with Thorney for a couple of years to gain experience and supplement my income, but one night we were both very tired and Thorney told me I was better at this than he was. I was shocked to hear this. I had a lot of respect for Thorney, he was a good shooter and I felt he knew what he was talking about when it came to photography. I decided that I should strike out on my own right away.

Finally on March 13, 1992 I struck out on my own and became a full time, professional, self employed architectural photographer and have been loving it ever since.

It is surprising that architectural photography is the one field where I can apply all of my past experience as a carpenter, electrician, machinist, upholsterer, cabinet maker and business owner. I tell people I am lucky to have found my calling in life and now you know why.

It’s been twenty-three years and each day I wake up excited and anxious to get to work. There’s nothing I would like to do more than spend every single day of my life creating beautiful images. It’s what I do, it’s what I am all about.

Miller Design Company Ad in Gentry Design

Interiors for Every Taste.

Interiors for Every Taste

A wonderful ad for Miller Design Company that I worked on with Jodi Murphy and Lea McIntosh.

It’s always a pleasure working with these two talented people. The ad looks great and communicates an effective message while maintaining a high profile for the client.

I shot this using the High Dynamic Range Imaging techniques that are proving to be so effective at communicating the atmosphere and emotional context of my clients projects.