Timing your visual communications to run a better business
~ 4.5 minutes read
In the typical cycles of business, we are now fully in the 100-day sprint, the roughly 100-day period between now and the holidays where businesses are the most productive. People are coming back refreshed from vacation, kids are back in school and summer is gone, so there is no more excuses to play hooky and go hide at the cottage. Lake water is too cold anyway. That is, until the end of the year, before people take off again for the holidays to go skiing in Gstaad.
In the realm of visual communications and specifically architectural photography, not only we are subject to business cycles as described above, but even more so to seasonal conditions. That translates into a shooting season - without guns - that extends from roughly May to November, coinciding with vegetation being in a suitable state and the weather being cooperative to allow for good photographs of your buildings and spaces. In that timespan we get all kinds of colours and textures, from the vivid bright greens and flower blooms of spring to the colourful fall season, without forgetting the deep greens of the mature, midsummer vegetation.
When you superimpose the seasons with the traditional business cycles, it looks something like this: post-christmas coma and hibernation from January to May, spring awakening in May-June, Summer slump (a.k.a. Spending summer at the cottage) in July-August and 100-day sprint from September to Christmas time a.k.a. “Shit! I need to wrap up my projects” period.
Photography seasons
Why should I care?
We are in the last 50 or so days of good, predictable weather and decent vegetation before we are stuck with cold, shitty weather for the following 6 months which makes architectural photography quasi-impossible. Some projects are suitable to be photographed in winter, but these are the exception to the rule. Timing a project with a snowfall is also extremely challenging as winter snow tends to turn into slush in the city after a day or two and believe me when I say you don’t want to shoot in those conditions. If you’re an interior designer you might think “Haha, nice try, but this doesn’t apply to me!” as you’re not subject to weather.
While you’d be correct in thinking so from a technical and logistical perspective, let’s not forget the dreaded award season, from post-christmas to the early summer, where most award submissions are due. Marketing professionals spend most of that time working on submissions, on top of the million other things they usually have to do like managing social media, RFPs, etc. Based on my experience, most of them do not want to deal with managing photoshoots on top of that.
Ok, so all of this is self-serving, but how does it apply to me?
I’m glad you asked. Well, taking into consideration all of the above, what that means to you, is that by and large, you are left with 60 days (90 for interior design projects) to plan, execute and complete your photography projects before everyone in your office switches to holiday mode and slows down to a crawl for about a month, spending more time thinking about that vacation in Gstaad or the dreaded presents they need to get for their incredibly hard to please in-laws.
Considering that it takes easily 3-6 weeks to plan, prepare for and execute a shoot, there isn’t a lot of time left to get that accomplished. With professional pictures in hand before the the season’s end, you will be able to do the following:
Promote your latest 2018 projects to prospects with the goal to sign new clients, and keep feeding new prospects in your pipeline.
Have your images ready for your winter slump, when your marketing people will want to have them handy for the 10 million + 2019 award submissions they’re going to prepare. Believe you me, they will thank you.
Wrap up the current year with completed projects, which should bring a sense of accomplishment to your practice and boost morale before the seasonal affective disorder sets in. Happy employees = productive employees.
Take advantage of the winter slump to plan and prepare your 2019 press submissions and scour the newest editorial calendars, in order to time your media relations accordingly and increase your chances of being published, not to mention that beautiful photographs will help you in the matter.
All of the above, accomplishes one thing: it makes your practice more efficient and more effective on many fronts. Which results in less time spent scrambling to get something done at the last minute, more time to do other important business things (or more time for yourself) as well as a long-term increase in your profitability because you now run a lean, mean business development machine.
After all, who wouldn’t like more time and increased profits?
If you have questions about this article or rvltr, or want to book your fall 2018 shoot, you can reach us at hello@rvltr.studio.
FLASHBACK: Boathouse by Weiss AU
Overall view at dusk
This past fall révélateur was commissioned by Kevin Weiss, principal of Weiss AU, to shoot a pretty exceptional project, if not in size, at least in quality and originality.
Interior of the boathouse
The boathouse, located on a private island in Georgian Bay, near Parry Sound is a beautiful object in and of itself, that also manages to blend in its natural element seamlessly. Unapologetically contemporary, it proudly stands among the trees on the shoreline of this island.
The dock
Though it is decidedly contemporary in form, its materials are a nod to traditional Canadian cottage architecture. The colours are neutral (mainly grey) and the predominant cladding and structural material is wood, which contributes to making this project at home in cottage country.
Sunrise view from path leading to main cottage
From the dock
Detail of outdoor living room
Buckingham arena by WGD architects
Front entrance
Earlier this summer révélateur shot the brand new Buckingham Arena in Downsview Park, Toronto. This was an interesting challenge for us as we had never shot this type of facility before.
WGD Architects designed a four-rink arena for local leagues and events. Based on our scouting shoot, our studio was commissioned to take 10 images of the project. We had our eyes open for the money shots and luckily, the cool, somewhat industrial and utilitarian aesthetic of the building lent itself well to getting great shots.
Main Lobby
We set out to shoot at the end of the day as we knew this was when the arena was going to be the busiest, giving us plenty of opportunities to introduce the human element in our images. Without people, such a large building would end up looking very empty and cavernous.
Lucky for us, there were hockey games going on during our shoot so we seized the opportunity to include some motion to the rink photographs by shooting additional frames a slow speeds so we would get the proverbial motion blur that makes architectural shots much more dynamic and is particularly fitting to shooting a hockey arena.
Main Entrance
We learned a lot from this shoot as we were given minimal instructions from the client and had the opportunity to explore some more creative angles, some of which ended up being picked by the architect.
We later on shot another arena for the same client that will be featured here in the coming weeks.
Typical rink (1 of 4)