by Gregory Daniel
My first memory of Lesa having an interior designer help us determine what our home should look like was anything but welcome on my part in the beginning. I was not very helpful or understanding with the entire process. Words like painful, fear, non-trust and expensive come to mind. What I did not realize is that the experience would change the direction of our business and how we would approach all of our clients in the future. I had no idea how much value that an educated, trained professional designer could add. Our interior designer, Liz, had fantastic listening skills and was able to translate our ramblings into concrete design solutions for our home. She quizzed us on styles we liked and asked for any clippings we had collected. Her commissioned focus was on our family room but she trained us in seeing the bigger picture and how the design would flow throughout our home.
Uniquely designed is one of the reasons why our clients trust us in the creation of their most important lasting treasures. Lesa spends a great deal of time prior to the actual camera study skillfully listening, translating and creating a concept design for the portraits. She is able to determine what is important in their lives and special interests they might share as a family. The location where the portraits will hang plays a big part of the color harmony, clothing selections and orientation of the final product. This will also be the time Lesa will decide on which style of portrait that will best fit their lifestyle and living area.
In the case of the Weeks family, Lesa found that this was a very special time in the transformation of their family with one child off to college and the other soon to follow. Their beautiful home, where they spent building their family, is a very special place and was specifically designed by a well known architect. They shared many details of their building experience and how the architect brilliantly brought their dreams to fruition.
Now that we knew the time of day, clothing to wear, location of camera study and what was important, we were ready to create a portrait that would bring them joy everyday of their lives.
Knowing this was to be a vertical composition to fit on the main entrance chest, I chose this direction and angle to accentuate the beautiful design lines of their home. The main source of light was the setting sun behind my back with the trees, house and foliage subtracting the light creating the shadow and form on their faces. I normally like to use the direct sun behind our subject to create a beautiful rim light but this was not going to work in this situation so I elected to use a bare bulb Lumedyne behind the subject for separation from the background.
The Weeks selected our Handcrafted Mixed Media product with embellished acrylics and beautifully enhanced with the perfect frame for their décor. As you can see the final results are just perfect.
Who knew that Liz, our personal interior designer, would have had such a positive impact on our lives in so many ways? I truly enjoy our home each and every day largely due to the value Liz added with her talented designs. As a bonus we have built a business that adds the same type of value for each of our wonderful clients who commission us.
Gregory and Lesa Daniel are from Titusville, Florida, and are regular instructors at the Texas School of Professional Photography. For more information, check out their website at www.gregorydanielportraits.com. For more information on Texas School, go to www.texasschool.org.
