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18 | Kitchen & Bath Design News | November 2015 A s kitchen and bath designers, we sell eye candy to our cli- ents. How you capture that eye candy and share it is very impor- tant. While you may have a stunning kitchen, a poor photo can ruin the ex- perience for anyone looking at it. No matter where you advertise yourself, good pictures are a must. In my opinion, nothing can replace a professional photographer with years of experience. However, I know all too well that budgets and time don't allow for a professional shoot of every kitchen. The result is a gap in photography that a lot of designers struggle with. Typical portfolios that I see include beautiful professional shots along with sheepishly shared cell phone camera photos. My personal goal several years ago was to fx this problem. I took my own advice that I gave to "ama- teur" kitchen designers years ago and decided to accept the fact that I won't become a professional photographer just because I own the expensive equipment. Instead, I focused on the more attainable goal: How can I docu- ment day-to-day projects in a much better way using tools I had, or that could be purchased for a reasonable amount of money? CAMERAS First, let's talk about cameras. When I frst started on this ven- ture, I decided right away that I needed a camera. At the time, all I had was the camera in my smartphone. I foolishly decided that I needed something bet- ter than that. In the long run, I'm glad I got a better camera, but I should have started with my smart phone. One of the frst things I did was head on down to Best Buy, ready to buy a camera. As a connoisseur of tech, I figured this would be easy. Boy, was I wrong! There were cases flled with cameras. Some looked like they belonged on safari, some were small enough to lose in your pocket, and others had more buttons on them than a server at TGI Fridays. On top of that, some of the cameras were just bodies; you had to buy your lenses separately. This was a whole other level of confusion. So, several borrowed cameras and hundreds of camera reviews later, I fnally fgured out how to buy a cam- era. To put this simply, there are three categories of cameras that we need to be concerned about: Smartphones: Smartphones these days have fantastic cameras. iPhones typically take the cake when it comes to mobile photography, but a lot of the Android counterparts aren't far behind. Pros here are that you likely already own one of these cameras and carry it around with you all the time. There are myriad apps available to edit your photos, and you can share them easily. Cons: Like myself, the ma- jority of smartphone photographers are ham fsted users who think 17 Instagram flters make a photo look good. I was absolutely one of these people. Only after learning on a more advanced camera did I get better at my smartphone. Pro/Semi pro cameras: This is where things can get interesting for photography. The more light you can capture, the better your photos will be. Smartphones have tiny little light sensors that are about the size of a piece of corn. Any semi pro or profes- sional camera will have a sensor about the size of a Ritz cracker. This means that they can gather a lot more light, which means way better pictures. There are two types of cameras: DSLR and Mirrorless. So why do they call it a mirrorless? Well, you know those big cameras that pro photographers carry around and squint through? They are squint- ing through the viewfnder that hits a mirror and actually give the viewer a look through the lens itself. This allows the photographer to know ex- actly what the picture will look like. When they press the shutter button, a mirror fips over and shoots the im- age on the sensor. From there, digital sorcery takes place and the photo is saved in the camera. Mirrorless cameras don't have the mirror. This makes them more compact. They also don't have a view- fnder; that's often replaced by a large screen. They still do sport the same sized sensors, so they take fantastic pictures. These cameras are aimed at people stepping into photography. They typically have a lot of automatic modes, and manual modes for the more experienced shooters. Like the DSLR cameras, these cameras often have interchangeable lenses. The lenses and accessories are also more limited in this category, which is a great thing as it makes your choices a lot easier. So after all that, I decided to get a mirrorless Samsung NX300 camera. It cost about $500 dollars and I couldn't be happier with the performance. My learning experience was just starting, though; I had to practice a lot to get the pictures I wanted. I took a lot of pictures with this new camera. I fooled with all of the settings, watched videos and I got a little better, but most of my pictures were pretty bad. I started noticing that if I looked at professional photos (like the ones in this magazine), there's a lot to learn. Below are some examples. The kitchen I used for this example was remodeled a few years ago. I de- cided to set a typical scenario: I had limited time to photograph it, and in not the most ideal conditions. Image 1 is an overall shot of the kitchen you'll see in the following examples: I had a lot of things to contend with here: » » Unpredictable sunlight » » A white refrigerator » » A 20-year-old dishwasher » » People, pets and unsightly clutter in the background Immediately I knew that I wouldn't be able to photograph this kitchen as While photos you take yourself won't replace professional shots, improving your skills with a camera will allow you to document day-to-day projects more efectively, adding another tool to your arsenal. Taking Great Digital Photos Design Technology { Eric Schimelpfenig, AKBD } 1 2 3