To-The Trade S3E29 Regan Wood on What It Really Takes to Get a Project Published

Brooklyn-based interiors, architecture, and hospitality photographer ReganWood joins Laurie Laizure and Nile Johnson to talk about the part of thedesign business that most designers pay for and least understand.Regan came to photography as a second career, moving from womenswear designto dog photography to interiors, which she has shot since 2013. She seesphotography as an opaque trade in the same way design is: people work aloneand learn by trial and error. The most common friction point is cost.Because everyone has a camera in their pocket, professional rates surprisepeople, and her advice is to bake photography into the project cost fromthe beginning rather than scrambling for the money at the end. When Nileasks about contacting a photographer at project kickoff to get a number forthe proposal, she says yes, with a buffer for rate increases over a longbuild.On permissions, Regan urges designers to put photography in the agreementand to raise it with homeowners early, so a no does not arrive eighteenmonths in. Nile describes handling it as a matter-of-fact step repeatedacross the investment guide, welcome guide, and a separate permissionssheet. On rights, Regan explains that a photographer can legally license animage commercially, but a property release from the homeowner is required,and retouching a designer's specified products out of a shot is bad form.For designers chasing press, she offers a reality check. Magazines areflooded with submissions, and who took the photos may get an email openedfaster but will not change the answer. Editors decide on the project, thehomeowner, the designer, the art, and the styling, and the most commonrejection notes are that a space does not feel lived in or needs betterart. She points designers toward regional and niche titles where seriouslocal homeowners are already looking.The practical half covers DIY shots for designers who cannot hire yet(natural light only, lights off, tight details and vignettes, skip the wideshots), pre-production, shot list discipline at fifteen to twenty shots aday, shooting opposite the light with a compass and an assistant, mixing inverticals for social and editorial, and bringing five times more floralsthan expected. She also shares her shared-shoot rules after one painful daywith an architect and designer both on set, and makes the case thatstorytelling, not documentation, is what actually wins designers more work.