April 21, 2011
We have a guest speaker today, Jerry Blow. He is a well-known, professional architectural photographer. He begins by talking about photography as a business and how it is a “real” design field. Some people don’t take the business route and just take photos and sell them individually: word of mouth, ebay, etc..
He spoke about how competitive the field is in today’s economy, especially as a photographer. It’s harder to get your name out as a photographer and get published while being the best at the lower cost compared to others.
The variety of his work is from one extreme to the other. He can go from a small lake behind an art museum to a large lake of water waste from airplanes.
Jerry Blow’s degree is in Aerospace Engineering from The University of Virginia. He’s worked as a teacher at numerous museums and schools. I find it interesting that he has an engineering degree and is now a professional photographer. He has to “sell” his photography to potential clients and produce bids that convince the client to hire him over others. I think this would be harder in photography than most other fields.
Photography is something that is used all over the place. It is used as art, advertisements, illustrations, etc. Jerry has progressed in his work to the point that he has a team. You must be very ssuccessful as a photographer in order to have people to work with you.
He states that, “The hardest part is that you are trying to render a three dimensional scene that engages you with sounds and smells…the real world. You must transform this into a small two dimension image, this is not easy”.
Listening to him speak you can really get a feel of how passionate he is towards photography and having each one viewed exactly as he intended. It was a nice change to hear about a photographer’s journey and success. I have never really spoke to one or listened to one talk. Photography is important in our design field because you have to be able to portray your thoughts and ideas clearly. This is very important when trying to win a client over. Pictures can make or break a presentation of a design.
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