I am fortunate to have clients in a variety of sectors. They all of course have different business needs, and for each one I need to “put their hat on” as I go in to shoot. One guild I particularly love working with are (drums rolling)... Interior Designers. Why is that so? Well, as it turns out, them and I have a lot in common:
All interior designers I’ve met have a passion for their craft, and each one of their projects is to them like a unique love story. Each is born through brainstorms, trials and reiterations, sweat and lost sleep until they arrive at a creation that they know will hit the sweet spot with their client.
They arrive at this point by combining a vast experience of what works and what doesn’t with close attention to detail. All textures, shapes and tonality need to mesh, and only experience will bring that together effectively. But there is always that one little detail that will serve as the pivotal visual linchpin. The image of this massive terrace, no matter how well shot and edited, would still have been only another grand terrace if my interior designer client hadn’t come out of the kitchen with that perfectly sliced water melon. For me, the open, red fruit was the dot over the “i” that took this shot from merely great to magnificent.
Interior designers have a highly trained aesthetic eye, and know what works visually. They understand the importance of framing, negative space and leading lines. They see how varying qualities of light will shape the scene and influence the perceived texture of a surface. And they intuitively appreciate the effects different optical focal lengths will have on achieving an effective image – and debate it with me!
Every time I have the opportunity to work with an interior designer, they bring all these qualities to the shoot location, and this invariably gives rise to intense exchanges of ideas that can on occasion make the shoot last for gruelingly long hours, but in the end it always brings the whole team to a perfect result (or at least much closer!). That’s why I love working with interior designers.