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

<p>Brooklyn-based interiors, architecture, and hospitality <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.instagram.com/reganwoodphoto/" target="_blank">photographer</a> <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.reganwood.com/" target="_blank">Regan Wood</a> joins Laurie Laizure and Nile Johnson to talk about the part of the design business that most designers pay for and least understand.</p><p>Regan came to photography as a second career, moving from womenswear design</p><p>to dog photography to interiors, which she has shot since 2013. She sees</p><p>photography as an opaque trade in the same way design is: people work alone</p><p>and learn by trial and error. The most common friction point is cost.</p><p>Because everyone has a camera in their pocket, professional rates surprise</p><p>people, and her advice is to bake photography into the project cost from</p><p>the beginning rather than scrambling for the money at the end. When Nile</p><p>asks about contacting a photographer at project kickoff to get a number for</p><p>the proposal, she says yes, with a buffer for rate increases over a long</p><p>build.</p><p>On permissions, Regan urges designers to put photography in the agreement</p><p>and to raise it with homeowners early, so a no does not arrive eighteen</p><p>months in. Nile describes handling it as a matter-of-fact step repeated</p><p>across the investment guide, welcome guide, and a separate permissions</p><p>sheet. On rights, Regan explains that a photographer can legally license an</p><p>image commercially, but a property release from the homeowner is required,</p><p>and retouching a designer's specified products out of a shot is bad form.</p><p>For designers chasing press, she offers a reality check. Magazines are</p><p>flooded with submissions, and who took the photos may get an email opened</p><p>faster but will not change the answer. Editors decide on the project, the</p><p>homeowner, the designer, the art, and the styling, and the most common</p><p>rejection notes are that a space does not feel lived in or needs better</p><p>art. She points designers toward regional and niche titles where serious</p><p>local homeowners are already looking.</p><p>The practical half covers DIY shots for designers who cannot hire yet</p><p>(natural light only, lights off, tight details and vignettes, skip the wide</p><p>shots), pre-production, shot list discipline at fifteen to twenty shots a</p><p>day, shooting opposite the light with