How do I work?
When it comes to architectural photography, hospitality photography, interior, or lifestyle photography, I am delighted when clients choose to participate in building our photo shoot together. Some clients prefer to actively brainstorm the vision and plan the day with me, utilizing my expertise as a commercial architectural photographer to determine the best compositions, interior styling, lighting, and other important details. Other clients prefer a more hands-off approach, leaving the majority of the decision-making to me.
I believe it is evident that I love to create well-composed, styled, and lit images. Each image takes approximately 1.5 hours to create, but larger spaces with hundreds of chairs and tables may take 3-5 hours. However, some interiors are less demanding, and we just need to see them first to determine the amount of time required.
When looking for a professional photographer, it's important to be specific about your needs. The information you provide at the beginning will determine the final price of your shoot. Vague details will result in an unclear quote.
So, please provide clear and specific information to ensure you get an accurate price.
First interaction with client
When potential or existing clients want to discuss a photography project, they usually reach out to me via email or phone call to give me a brief explanation of their requirements. As I use CRM tools to track my productivity, I prefer email communication as it is easier to follow up, keep track of contracts, and maintain a record of the interaction.
In my opinion, social media platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, or Tinder (haha, what a joke) should be used for other purposes and not for setting up an important photoshoot.
Meeting
I understand that my clients put in a lot of hard work and dedication towards their projects, and I want to ensure that I understand all the details of the project. Therefore, I always propose either a personal meeting or an online meeting.
I think that it's essential to start any new business relationship by getting to know each other. This helps to quickly identify whether we are a good fit for each other and if we want to work together on your shoot. This is especially important for building lasting business relationships. To prepare an accurate price proposal, I have a series of questions that I would like to ask.
I prefer online meetings because they are convenient, easy to set up, and save us the hassle of traffic. This way, we can spend time with our loved ones. Don't you agree?
Shoot list.
Shoot-list is a very important part of any assignment. It helps to identify all areas that have to be covered during the shoot, helps planning a creation of images based on the direction of natural light, human traffic, and to know how many days the shoot will take.
Recce - Site visit
Once the assignment is agreed by both parties, I like to visit the project beforehand. It gives me an idea about location, direction, surroundings, natural and artificial lighting, potential challenges. In some cases site visit can be avoided, but it is always good to know the place especially for larger multi days assignments. When shooting internationally, I try to obtain as many images as possible before actual travel.
Shoot day.
Finally I have gone through many emails, calls, contract negotiations, site visits, and booking the time to shoot. Creation of images sometimes take up to 3 hours per image. But on average, we can assume 30-60 minutes per image is sufficient. Some clients love to get involved in composition selection and staging. It can be very creative collaboration and it can lead to understanding of workflow and building the trust for future work. I personally like to have clients on the shoot as they see the whole creative process and approve images directly on set. It helps to avoid mistakes and reduces the risk of coming back to re-shoot some images.
Exciting thing about architectural photography is that each image has its own sets of challenges. It can be light, lack of light, small spaces, reflections, clutter, materials and fabric, faults during construction stages,etc. It all has to be solved on set because final post-production can not fix everything further down the process.
It is important to me to cover the whole dynamic range, so I don’t miss any detail lost in highlights or dark shadows.
Proof sheet.
After the shoot, I always put together a small proof sheet of images for clients to select what will be going through post-production and final delivery.
Professional photography is mostly about creating images on site as close as possible to the final image. The days of ultra retouched images are not suitable anymore in the world of architectural photography. Even hospitality has moved towards to more natural look, feel, and honest as possible.
Bear in mind the real and honest ethics of photography, a bit of high-end retouching does sometimes take place. It includes the manual blending of different light exposures to correct larger dynamic range, cloning and removal (blemishes, dust, dirt, objects,…), some dodge and burn, color and color cast correction, color grading for the consistent look of the image set, sharpening and temperature check.
Once images are approved, final images are being delivered to the client.
Final post production and photos delivery.
Image post-processing and retouch
Clients feedback
As it might be emotionally painful to ask for feedback and recommendation, it is a very essential part of being in the creative industry. Photography can be very personal thing, but we have to remember that we still create images for our clients who pay our bills and support our lives. Therefore feedback is very important. It is not always best, but even slight critique helps to identify mistakes and learn from them. This will ensure I stay relative in the business.
