Brooklyn-based interiors, architecture, and hospitality photographer Regan Wood joins Laurie Laizure and Nile Johnson to talk about the part of the design business that most designers pay for and least understand.

Regan came to photography as a second career, moving from womenswear design

to dog photography to interiors, which she has shot since 2013. She sees

photography as an opaque trade in the same way design is: people work alone

and learn by trial and error. The most common friction point is cost.

Because everyone has a camera in their pocket, professional rates surprise

people, and her advice is to bake photography into the project cost from

the beginning rather than scrambling for the money at the end. When Nile

asks about contacting a photographer at project kickoff to get a number for

the proposal, she says yes, with a buffer for rate increases over a long

build.

On permissions, Regan urges designers to put photography in the agreement

and to raise it with homeowners early, so a no does not arrive eighteen

months in. Nile describes handling it as a matter-of-fact step repeated

across the investment guide, welcome guide, and a separate permissions

sheet. On rights, Regan explains that a photographer can legally license an

image commercially, but a property release from the homeowner is required,

and retouching a designer's specified products out of a shot is bad form.

For designers chasing press, she offers a reality check. Magazines are

flooded with submissions, and who took the photos may get an email opened

faster but will not change the answer. Editors decide on the project, the

homeowner, the designer, the art, and the styling, and the most common

rejection notes are that a space does not feel lived in or needs better

art. She points designers toward regional and niche titles where serious

local homeowners are already looking.

The practical half covers DIY shots for designers who cannot hire yet

(natural light only, lights off, tight details and vignettes, skip the wide

shots), pre-production, shot list discipline at fifteen to twenty shots a

day, shooting opposite the light with a compass and an assistant, mixing in

verticals for social and editorial, and bringing five times more florals

than expected. She also shares her shared-shoot rules after one painful day

with an architect and designer both on set, and makes the case that

storytelling, not documentation, is what actually wins designers more work.