Ep. 67 - Brandon Barré on Hospitality Photography. Road to PMRE 2024 #8

The presenting sponsor of Upmarket is ARIO. The best place to grow and manage your real estate media business online at ARIO.com. That's A-R-Y-E-O-D-O.com. Coming to you from the Upmarket Studio at Gas Works in beautiful San Buone of Inter, California, this is Upmarket a podcast about the business of real estate photography and media. My name is Reed Fish. I am the CEO and co-founder of Upmarket Media. I'm sitting here all alone by myself at Gas Works, no Mark, no Chelsea, you know how it goes sometimes. But you know what? I'm excited and happy because I'm here and I'm going to we're going to talk about PMRE, the photography and media for real estate conference, which is coming up November 13th through 15th in beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada. PMRE, as we all know, is the pre-eminent gathering for our industry. It is where you want to be. It is where you can meet like-minded professionals in our industry who will help you grow your business. There's a ton of great programming. There's so much great stuff. And you know, we're doing these road to PMRE episodes and we're so excited because we've partnered with iGuide to bring you the special series of episodes and not only that, but iGuide is doing this as you probably know by now an amazing giveaway. They're giving away two free all expenses paid trips to PMRE this November. All you have to do is go to go iGuide.com/PMRE and you put in your email address and then you go to Instagram and you follow, go underscore iGuide and you follow upmarket pod. You do those two things and you are going to be injured to win one of these two fabulous prizes. I mean, these are amazing. And don't fret, if you already have your ticket for PMRE, if you already have your travel booked, you're going to get reimbursed by iGuide for these things. So even if you've already bought your ticket, please get in there and get into this drawing. It's your odds of winning are so good. I mean, we've had a lot of people enter, I know, but still it's like you have really good odds for those such a huge value. Go iGuide.com/PMRE and you know, the thing about PMRE this year, there's so many great things is going to be changed up with the new venue at the Palms, but then also we have this optional third day, which is focused on commercial and architecture and some hospitality. And so look, everyone that I've talked to about PMRE is excited about this optional day three. And you know, and I'm really even extra excited because one of the kind of marquee speakers and I don't want to pump this guy's head too big, but you know, I Brandon's really excited to have him here. I'm excited. Everyone is excited. And he's on the podcast today to talk with us. Brandon Barre, who is kind of well, look, let's face it, a world renowned hospitality photographer. And Brandon, you know, we're speaking to our real estate photography photographer audience, but and the reason I know you're going to be at the conferences, there is crossover between these two industries. I mean, I know you really haven't done day-to-day real estate photography, but like how does a typical like shoot at like say a five star resort? How is that different than our one hour long real estate photography shoots that we do every single day? For sure. Well, there's probably a little bit more research that has to go into it. You know, we have to look at, we have to look at scout shots, we have to look at rendering. So we usually do a full scout at the very beginning for ourselves as well for a very large project. That can be an entire day. We've set aside for the scout alone of we're shooting an entire resort, for example. You know, is that a separate trip or you just do it at the, say you're going to be there for a week, you do it on the front end of that or do you make two do fly out twice? No, we basically front-end it. It's just, it's not, it doesn't work out really well for a bunch of it otherwise to start adding in extra trips about type of things. So we do it right at the beginning and we just hit the ground running, you know, then we just plan it out from there. We make all the notes that we have to. At that point, we're shooting guest rooms, for example, linens aren't perfect enough for our purposes that we, you know, ask for that to happen. We need props brought in, if it doesn't feel like they've done the correct arrangement for that type of thing that we need to, you know, talk about that moving forward. So hopefully those things are addressed before we even arrive on property. So we like to have a pre-production call, you know, there's about a one to two hour call that we're going to go on Zoom and we're going to talk to client beforehand, try to iron out all those questions first of all. All right. So you're doing a lot of pre-production Brandon, but when you go, I mean, are you having assistance with you as well? I mean, are you coming in with a whole team? I wouldn't say it's a team, it's really just myself and my one assistant. We do it all for the most part with the help of on-site staff. So we're working quite closely with, for hotels, for example, you're working, our main point of contact is one of the marketing managers. So we're working with the director of sales and marketing for the most part or depending on the size of the property or one of their managers that work for them and then we communicate with housekeeping staff and we're communicating with engineering staff and that type of thing to help us work out what we need on property. And so it's a slow, it's a slower process. So if you're comparing this to real estate, you know, where it's a lot quicker in and out, I mean, we're slowing the whole thing right down. You know, there's a lot of similarity in that it's architectural photography, but the attention to detail, we're taking an hour per shot or sometimes two hours for the setup and the shooting and the lighting and plate after plate, different lighting setups within the same frame, that type of thing. If people can't decide what the flower arrangement should be, are you kind of shooting the same shot with like, say, three different options for the flowers, or are you going that crazy? Or just like, oh, yeah, that would literally do, I mean, crazy, no, it happens. It has happened, believe me, but no, that would be insane. No, we tried to, we tried to establish it right off the bat, you know, we'll do the setup. We'll hopefully have the marketing person right there, if they have to somehow send it in, then we'll just WhatsApp from the laptop itself, so we just text right from the MacBook on WhatsApp or something like that to their manager, to whoever has to make the final call on something, you know, and hopefully it's not bad high maintenance. You know, we try to, you know, are in these things out right off the bat. Yeah. Well, you know, it's funny. We have in my town, we actually have a five star resort, and I've done a little work for them. I mean, I think if they're getting, they're, you know, they're, they're major photos. They're bringing in someone like you, you to do it, but of course, you know, I just live two minutes away. So, um, and, and know a few people over there, but what I've liked about when I ever I work over there is they just have a whole, you know, the whole staff is at your service. They're, you're like, oh, you know, we could use this and a few all of a sudden someone shows up and they, you know, they have a shovel or they have, you know, whatever it is. And it's like, oh, my God, it's so luxurious. So. Yeah. Yeah. It is great to have that support for sure. Because I would imagine that most of the time when you're doing these, that the people on site, or at least the marketing manager there knows, you know, they know how much money is going into this, how much time and how much effort and they're going to make every single consideration for you on how to achieve the results that they're looking for, whereas I think in a real estate shoot, a lot of times the realtors know that, but, you know, the homeowner isn't always on board, you know, there's not always everyone on board. So, it can become a very difficult situation. The average set of real estate photos is going to have a shorter life. It's going to be out there basically until the product, the product is sold, whereas a hotel imagery. This is going to sit there for 5, 10, 15, sometimes even 20 years if it's a historic hotel or something like that. They're not going to be rushing to change those photos because it's going to remain the same. We shot a couple of places in Venice and they're, they are, you know, the photos that I took are literally the same thing that was shot in 1965, you know, it looks the same, you know, the flowers have changed. That's it. So, they're not going to be rushing to change some of those photos. So you know that these things just have to be so fine-tuned because the life of these things is crazy and they know that as well. So, that's why so many people are partied to these images and have a lot to say, sometimes a lot of input from different sources. Right. Typically, what does a day look like for you out on a resort and then how many days often are you spending on these projects? Right. So it, well, it depends entirely on the number of images. So like I said before, we're doing one to two hours per shot so that really breaks down into about a seven, eight, maybe sometimes depending on the type of shot, sometimes a ten image day, but that even tends to be quite rare because there's usually hiccups here and there and a lot of the time we're shooting new properties. So we're walking into spaces and the clients with us and they're like, "Oh, okay, this isn't quite done as we predicted, you know, it's like that we recover that all the time." And it's like, "Okay, pivot and regroup, pivot and regroup, okay, we're not shooting this today. We'll be ready by the end of the week. We're here for one week only, that type of thing." So there's a lot of flexibility necessary for that. But yeah, I'd say about eight shots per day, typically on a resort, for example, you want to catch the most beautiful times of the day. So we're up at sunrise capturing that. That'll generally be some form of exterior, maybe it's the pool, maybe it's the exterior of the building itself. Maybe it's just a room where you just want to have a really aspirational view of looking and to some sort of sunrise situation. So we're shooting from sunrise and we probably need the sunset as well that day. So it's not a short day because we're capturing all of that daily, you know, there's only so many sunsets you can capture at a resort. So we need to be present and ready to capture them all over there because we're only there for like five days a week. You know, there's the odd exception over there for, you know, two, three or more weeks at a time. But those are very, very large properties and those are really rare. And I know you mentioned that you're shooting often shooting brand new properties. But so are you going in before guests have started using the facility or are you basically whenever you're shooting, are you shooting around the guests? Yeah, that's a good question because I would say it's 50, 50, how the time we are shooting preconds are pre-opening. So it is a bit of a shell. That's where we run into these issues of, you know, something still under construction that was predicted to be ready and we get delays all the time. You know, we're ready to leave. We've got our flights booked. Our bags are back. We're ready to go. And we get like this email, like three days prior to leaving. It's like, we're not quite ready yet, you know? But that generally can't even happen because they put all their pre-opening marketing into place. Like they have date set. They have release dates and and grand openings and all this sort of thing. So construction is not quite ready on a certain part of the hotel. Oh well, we have to make it look ready. So we're in there shooting a piece of the room, meanwhile there's like scaffolding and, you know, all kinds of crap happening behind us. Right. We're shooting this one little piece that looks great, you know? It's like, that happened to us recently in Boston, we were shooting a ballroom and we set up some tables and the rest of the place was just like literally a construction site. We set up some beautiful tables of flowers overlooking the view and, you know, you make the most of it. That wasn't the shot that we were originally looking for, but it was like, okay, how do we make this work? How do we get them the shot of this space or at least to communicate the space even though we, by no means, can shoot an overall of the space, there's no way. Right. Well, I know and I would imagine that happens often. Like they have 100 rooms and, you know, okay, it's almost like when they have the model house in a subdivision, you're like, well, there's no houses built, these are what they're going to look like. So, you know, because if you think about it, and I'm just now thinking about it, of course, is that if you're trying to open a new hotel, you need to have those rooms booked on opening. And if, you know, you got a people are booking months ahead of time. So you need that imagery like, I mean, they need the form, you know, they can open. Most hotels don't like to open with renderings. They have a collection of them, they almost always do, but they really don't like that. They want to open their doors with images of the space. So there's that catch 22. So we're in there before it's complete, trying to make it look complete and there's inevitably something missing. There's light fixtures of these rugs or something. So we're trying to shoot around this place that's not quite complete, supply chain issues. You know, we hear that all the time, you know, it's at the night on the supply chain. And we encounter that a lot. So now, are you, is there a push for you to insert in post production, to say, you know, the light fixtures aren't there? Can you, are they asking you to say, oh, hey, by the way, can you just kind of insert this light fixture in? Or are you, is that really a foul of like marketing norms or laws and, I mean, you know, what's your experience? Everything goes, everything goes for marketing because like they said, they're using renderings that they're not using actual images. So, you know, they'll go out there with a realistic drawing if they have to, but, but they prefer to have something that more closely resembles an actual photograph. So generally speaking, I'm not a render artist, so I'm not going to be putting in light fixtures per se and, and think that I can sell that look, you know, that's not really my skill set. Hey, I can switch out art here and there, of course. Right, of course. Yeah. I can't just subtract other things, views can change slightly, you know, there's construction site happening at one window, while we can shoot a view from another part of the hotel and insert it into another room, that type of thing, you know? So that there's definitely a little bit of stick handling that has to happen with that type of thing. And just as much for an open hotel, really, as a pre-opening, there are just as many of those similar type of obstacles with an open hotel because we're shooting at that means it's probably undergone renovations, so it's the same issues. Right. Right. What's the trend? Are you having to, because we never do this in real estate, but I think you do see it in hotels sometimes. Are you having to put like images on the TV screens in the, when you're shooting guestrooms or they just leave in the black? What's the trend right now? Luckily, no. The trend is leaving them black for the most part with a bit of a grad, you know, a little bit of realism of light, of the light source. Once in a while for meeting rooms, if it's, if we're suggesting a TV screen or a screen, some of the hotels do want their logos put up there still. I find that pretty dated myself, but there are a few hotels that want that. And so I just asked them to send me the J-Paker, what not, and we just drop it in as subtly and tastefully as we can, but it's still not, it's not the best. Yeah, yeah, yeah, well, I mean, ultimately they're paying the bill, right? So if it's what they want, that's what they get, right? Exactly. When you're at a resort for a week, I mean, are you just like, I mean, you mentioned it's sunrise, it's sunset. I mean, are you just working all day? I mean, is it just like an epic, like, exhaust, just bone, crushingly exhausting week? Or do you have other, do you have time to not work? Occasionally, we have time to not work, but generally speaking, it's pretty intense, because they're often, if it's pre-opening, there's often short turn rounds as well. So sometimes we're not actually shooting, I'm back in the hotel room, scrambling and editing, literally editing images on properties. So that does happen, too. Not too often, thank God, but yeah, it's not quite the, it's not quite the vacation that one might want to somehow build into the situation. Right. But, you know, we're in some very, very beautiful places and, you know, there are times, you know, at certain points of the day when you're waiting for something where we can't go out and explore the property or explore around the hotel to some extent, but, you know, it's not that much of a walk in the park. Yeah, oh no, I wouldn't think so. Well, and then, but you are, so you don't have like an editing team or you're not outsourcing anything. You're kind of hand editing everything up, you personally? I do with one retoucher. There's two of us that do it all. Yeah. I have tried outsourcing, but it's like, for me, so far, that hasn't worked out. You have to have a really close relationship, I think, with your retoucher in order to come together to be of the same mind with your aesthetic. And that's something that I just haven't gotten there. I haven't had that develop that kind of relationship with an outside retoucher as yet. But I do have any in-house retoucher in the two of us work together. Right. Well, yeah, and that's one of the differences with RealStays. We're just producing so many, so many images, and it's, you know, we all try to have our styles, but ultimately, you know, it's kind of the RealState style. And, you know, so I think the, yeah, the volume and then just, you know, and then just the resources that are available to us in terms of editors are, you know, vast, whereas, you know, on the very high end, I think it's, like you're doing, it's, it's, it's, it's more limited. How often are you shooting? Well, that depends. It comes and goes, you know, you make a lot of the sense shines in our business, as you know. You know, we have, uh, Evan flow with the nature of the business. Um, I've been very fortunate for the past 15 years. It's been pretty steady state. Um, I've just gotten off a really long, uh, hall where we've had about 15 shoots back to back, and they've been pretty intense, so they've been between two to four days, all in different, uh, different locations. So, and all back to back. So now I've got this lovely, um, stack of, uh, of shoots to edit on, which is like, uh, rather daunting as well when it all happens that way. So it was, it was just one of those things. Every now and again, you know, there's a bit of a crash where, where everything, like, loads up. Fred loads a little bit too much and then you're scrambling with the editing process, but it's the nature of the business is not it's the freelance part of the business. You know, you take, you take the, the, the work when it's available and do some tell us, they can't, you know, they can't custom, they can only move their dates around so much, you know, to secure a schedule, you have to be available when they, they do, right? Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Well, and then I, and I imagine in a way, um, like real estate potentially, there, maybe there is, I'm sure it slows down at certain points, but, you know, in the winter time, you can shoot winter resorts or you can still shoot in the tropics or, I mean, you know, there's always like, if you, if you are kind of have a more global business, you know, you can be shooting all your round in a way. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. It doesn't change at all. December can be the business month or January or February. Yeah. It literally doesn't, doesn't affect it that way. Oh, man. Well, I, you know, that, that just makes me tired thinking about it. And so I think I'm, I, I, I think I need to, I need to take a break. I don't know about you. Well, let's, let's take a break and then let's come back and let's talk some social media. And then I want to, in the last half of the show, I want to get into kind of what you're going to be talking about at PMRE. And then at the end, oh man, we got a hospitality photographer action item. I mean, this is, this is exciting stuff for this podcast. So make sure you please stick around and we'll be here talking some more stuff with Brandon. Oh, what's Coy little area doing right now? Oh, they are just redesigning things they are making the site better and better every single day. And so still without a doubt, it's getting better. But it's still the best place area is to grow and manage your real estate media business. That's what a market uses. We're in there every single day. We invoice through there. We deliver all our photos. We make our property websites. We do our scheduling. We do so much stuff. And I think there's still more stuff that we could do that we're not doing. Why are we so stupid? We should just use everything that Ario offers. We love Ario. So many people love Ario. It's, I say it all the time and I say it because it's true. Ario. Such a wonderful place to grow your business. So go to ario.com. That's A-R-Y-E-O.com and use the code upmarket and you're going to get 15 free bonus listings. Find goodness, what a great deal, what a great way to get in there and try Ario. Do you remember NFTs? No one really understood them, but yet everyone was investing money in them and now they're from what I can tell effectively worthless in most cases. Wow. What a craze that fizzled. But you know what? I want to tell you about a craze that I predict is not going to fizzle. And I would say it's even bigger than NFTs. It's even hotter than NFTs ever were. It is floor plans. Everyone everywhere be talking about floor plans. Do you think they're going to stop talking about floor plans? Two years from now, three years from now, four years from now? No. I don't think so. And one of the floor plans that they are going to be talking about are the second floor app floor plans. Because the second floor app you can go into any space and in just minutes scan that space and get a GLA floor plan spit out immediately that you can deliver to your client. This is going to take you on an average size house five to seven minutes and then you are going to have a floor plan that is deliverable to your client that you can upcharge them for. So it's super accurate. It's super fast. Why wouldn't you give second floor app a try? This is so many people have been using it. So many people are making money from floor plans. So get in on the game. That second floor app.com/upmarket and second floor app is all spelled out seco and d floor app.com/upmarket. And you're going to get a free month of service in which you can do a ton of floor plans. And you know what? Maybe I will bring back NFTs. Maybe I'll do an NFT of a floor plan or better yet. I think we should just make a new cryptocurrency. Adam, let's make a cryptocurrency based on second floor app floor plans. You know, what a brilliant idea. God, this podcast is making me so much money. Oh, social media sidebar time. Okay, look, we are upmarket pod across all social media. And you know what? If you're listening to this right now, you should be subscribed. I know Brandon Barrett probably subscribed to the show and if he's not, he's going to right now. And you know what he's going to do after he's subscribed to the show because he's now experienced it firsthand. He's going to rate it five stars. We love five star ratings. Please get in there. Subscribe, listen, download rate. It really helps us out. We really appreciate it. And then check us out on Instagram. We're doing a lot more content upmarket pod and then Brandon, I'm assuming you have an Instagram. Where can we find you? So at Brandon underscore bar bar, I'm saying bar because you can't add a little acute accent to Instagram. But it's the RRE. But that is my Instagram handle and yeah, come on, check out what I've been doing. A lot of things that I do do end up on Instagram that don't necessarily end up on my website. So I do like to be able to share what we've been up to. Yeah. Well, and are you managing your Instagram yourself or do you have one of your team or your assistant do it for you? Yeah, I've been asked that a lot and interestingly, I like to do it myself. So that's why it's really sporadic because when I visit, I think don't get updated. But I enjoy it, right? So and for me, it's a way of communicating a lot of the time with other photographers, with designers, we do a lot of our clientele is not just the marketing teams at hotels. It's the hospitality designers of these properties as well. We work for too. So I really like connecting in that way and I like to and so it's the closest, you know, one can get to personally connecting, especially as you know with photographers, we really work with one another. So we know of one another, but that's sort of where it stops a lot of the time, right? So it is nice to be able to share ideas and, you know, connect and congratulate each other on various things that we've been able to achieve, you know? Yeah. Well, and that's, you know, we go back to a talk about all the time. That's the great thing about PMRE is you are going to be with all those people and that's you know, and yeah, no, it's super fun. And so you are, so it does sound like you are able to, you might be even like kind of getting leads and work from your Instagram and because of the hospitality designers and such. But that did spark another question, which isn't really social media related. But are you able to kind of double charge on any of these things and what I mean by that is your licensing photos to the hotel, but then are you also able to license them to, you know, the builders or the, the hospitality designers? I mean, is it, can you double dip on this stuff? Or is it really just, oh, I do this and then that's just for them. Sometimes third party licensing is available. It depends entirely on the contract you've signed with the hotel, but sometimes it's available. Typically with hospitality designers, they are more than happy to have their work being licensed by the property or by vendors of theirs, using lighting, manufacturing websites or social media, you know, the more the merrier when it comes to getting the word out, right? So it's a win, win for everybody. So everybody's happy with third party licensing. So yes, absolutely when it's available, we really try to. And that's another thing about Instagram too, because then that way people can see what you've done as well. And I have had this design first contact me and say, hey, we saw you thought something. And, you know, let's can are these images available. Well, look, let's, let's, let's break again for just a second. We'll come back and let's, let's talk PMRE and action items. Hey, what would these road to PMRE episodes be without? A guide? Oh, they wouldn't be anything. And so that's one of the reasons we love a guide and you know, a guide they're doing their tour to PMRE and they have to give away that we've talked about already at the beginning of the show. But you know, a guide is an amazing company in and of itself, even if they weren't giving all this stuff away to our listeners. Look, they've got their quick capture system, the Planix Pro that delivers incredible accuracy. And one of the things that I love about a guide is its pay as you go. There are no subscription fees and you can get eye guide instant, which is a 3D tour and interactive floor plan, all done in minutes for only $7.99 each one. So I love this page. You go thing. And I think you can save a lot of money doing that and not only do their 3D tours look amazing, work well, available so quickly, but one of the things that I've loved and I hear over and over again from people is working with the people at eye guide. Our customer support is second to none. I know working with their team on these episodes has been a dream. I love everyone at eye guide. Eye guide has been such a great partner and they have a great product and I would implore everyone to give it a try. So go to goiguide.com and you can check out all that eye guide has to offer. And of course, go to goiguide.com/PMRE and get yourself in those giveaways to get free trips out to PMRE and I forgot to say in the beginning, but you get also everyone will get a $50 discount code to PMRE they can use to buy a ticket. And like I said, if you buy a ticket and then you win the sweepstakes, you are still going to get reimbursed by eye guide. Thank you, eye guide. Alright, we are back with Brandon Barre, the internationally famous hospitality photographer. Brandon, we're all pretty stoked that you're going to be speaking at PMRE. What are you going to be doing at PMRE and then what are you going to be speaking about? Well, that's a good question because there's going to be a lot of topics I think people are going to be interested in hearing about. I'm going to be putting out some questions so hopefully we're going to find a way to communicate with some of the people that are going to be showing up for this day three and we're going to put out some questions. I want to hear back and hear what people want to hear from me. But for sure, we're going to be talking about my road and my journey to where, how I basically got to this particular niche of the industry and what took me here and what might be inspiring or of value to others who are looking to maybe dabble in this aspect of architectural photography because it's certainly as interesting. And honestly, I had no goals or aspirations to become a hospitality photographer. It was a complete out of the blue. It's just a series of events that took place and here we are. You know, and I don't want to spoil your talk, you know, and you know, we're obviously still a few months away. You know, we don't, I'm sure you haven't mapped out it out completely. But I did want to ask, like, you know, if you are a real estate photographer and you do have an eye towards doing some hospitality work, you know, what's your advice for how to kind of get into it, even just, even just to puto into it? Well, I would say that advice I'd normally give people is like, you're not going to really, it's like everything else in life. You're not going to get the job unless you have, unless you can show that you've already done that said job. Right. Of course. Right? It's like the portfolio. It's that catchpoint, too, with one's portfolio. If you don't have it in your portfolio, people aren't going to be, people aren't going to be picking up the phone to call you about that particular aspect of architecture photography. So I'm strongly recommend, you know, taking some, some of the, some of the budget and spending it on a snazzy hotel room doesn't have to be the most luxury hotel somewhere. But just spend something on something that has interesting design, that you think maybe you can just rent and just book it, book it for night and shoot it, shoot the crap out of that hotel room, head down to the lobby and make sure it's a hotel that has an interesting lobby as well, head down like at midnight and shoot it when no one's around. No one's going to stop you if you're in there, in and out of there quickly. I literally still have three images on my website, no, four or more, that were done from literally being in a hotel shooting something completely different and it's like, well, I just wanted these shots. And nobody knew who I was and I just went around, I shot a guest room, shot the lobby, there's like an amazing lobby at a hotel in Miami that does just like, I was a book to shoot. They've already been shot like when it was built, I just needed to shoot that, it's like, this has to be my portfolio, this is like too crazy and I happen to be here. So those are the kind of things that you need to get out there. So you got to be, yeah, yeah, don't ask permission, just ask for forgiveness kind of thing, right? Pretty much. I mean, once they see the shot, they might want to purchase them, you never know. Right. Well, right, well, yeah, I think that, yeah, I mean, that's always that big catch 22, man. And so, but I think that's, that's great if I, because you can, it's pretty easy. You can get access to any hotel if you want to pay for it. I mean, it's, you know, but, they're probably places, and like, well, that's it. They don't have to be like this five star luxury place. There's great design and some smaller hotels and you, you know, your way around, you know, some light and some lenses, you know, you can do an amazing job with something that just has some solid design and, you know, just get in there and make it happen. And there's a lot of real estate projects that you can probably fudge into a hospitality folder as well, you know, that look close enough that could, man, this could be public space. This condo lobby looks like it could be, you know, something to do with a hotel. Why not? You know, it's a great shot. I really like it. You know, you have to pull these things together in the beginning, for sure. Well, and so are you kind of, and when you're saying hospitality, I mean, is that referring really just strictly to hotel business and, and obviously within these big resorts and stuff, you're going to have restaurants, you're going to have gyms, you're going to have, you know, all the amenities, but are also, I, is that term encompass, like, just run in the middle restaurant, standalone restaurant photography? I mean, are you getting hired to, you know, shoot a fancy new restaurant opening in Las Vegas or New York? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It hospitality covers all of that. So definitely restaurants, and for some reason, we've been on such a run with restaurants lately. So a lot of restaurants, and it seems to be a big trend with high end restaurants in America right now. So we're shooting tons of them. So that's, yeah, the very, very big part of it. And a very, there is a very unique part of the industry too. It's its own niche because there's a, there's a, you know, you're dealing with this room with complicated mix lighting, you've got tons of furniture in this space that you don't want to look too overly complicated in this two-dimensional image. You know, it's fine when you're walking through a space or even a video camera moving through it. But when you flatten all that into a two-dimensional, you know, image that can be extremely busy. So there's a lot of, a lot goes into a restaurant shooting a restaurant, but so a little bit different once again, than other aspects of shooting a hotel. Mm-hmm. Well, I would, I was thinking a way, like, if I'm thinking about the, like, when you are looking at, you know, high end restaurant websites and that stuff, in my mind, I'm not really picturing a lot of, like, wide shots of the dining room. You know, it's more of, like, close-up stuff. It's like the, you know, the bar table, the tables at the bar, or the chairs at the bar, and, you know, play settings, or, like, the accent of the artwork, or, you know, whatever. I mean, is that, is that kind of really more of what you're shooting? Not so much. I, we get brought on to do the large architectural shots. So the restaurants, they're becoming more plentiful nowadays, like, very high end restaurants where the architecture and design are a huge, huge element. And they're going into winning awards. The design firms are extremely well-known worldwide for that particular niche of hospitality design. So it's becoming more of a thing, for sure, this type of restaurant, where you do want these killer hero shots, you know, that it's not just the design details of the food imagery, for example. Mm-hmm. Well, but then are you, so, will, if you're not shooting those detail shots, then will they have someone else come in, because that's not your forte, or are you, or do they just not do it? Uh, that's a good question. I'm not really sure how they handle the details. They're, we are brought in for the most part for the architectural. So tends to be the wider overalls. They bring people in for the food photography, that tends not to be our niche. There's a whole different thing, right? But, you know, I'm sure those food photographers, because they're, that's detailed photography. I'm sure they're probably doing design details, perhaps as well, maybe. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. All right. Interesting. Are there any other things? So, and again, as we frame it around kind of, you know, a real estate photographer who maybe wants to, to get into this a little bit and grow their business this way, we got restaurants, we got hotels. Anything else that kind of falls under that rubric of hospitality photography? Uh, no, that's pretty much it. I would say that's pretty much it. Actually, sometimes food does fall into hospitality photography. Sometimes lifestyle does fall in there, where you see the models in the pool and, you know, enjoy the spa and that type of thing, you know, spas, spas and any sort of resort that has a pool, they tend to use a lot of models and that definitely falls into lifestyle photography. That is a part, a part of this world that I don't particularly do. I'm not really my forte, but there are hospitality architectural photographers out there that do this type of thing as well. My add-on, my diversity is actually shooting food. So I will, if I'm shooting a restaurant, sometimes we'll do some food shots, but that's, that's, that's, uh, that's what I do. That's what I enjoy shooting, I don't enjoy shooting people in the same way. So, uh, look at that to the experts, the people that are really great at that, you know, there's a certain, um, knack to that for sure. Well, yeah, so you don't have, so you, you're not going to do the shot of the Infinity Pool with the lady in the bathing suit with the big hat, the gazing out, you know, shot from behind. Right, probably not, occasionally, once again, occasionally I do, especially if somebody's traveling us halfway across the world to do something and they're like, hey, we just need this shot as well, we need a wedding set up and something or other else and we'll bring the models in and do all that. It's like, great. As long as you handle all of that pre-production stuff, I'm good. I just don't want to be part of that production, casting, winding, you know, hair, makeup, wardrobe and all that sort of thing. I'm not really, you know, that that's where, that's where you need a producer or you need a hotel that's really on it to get, to get that type of thing going. So I'm just not interested in all of that, but they're willing to do that part of it. I'm happy to shoot people and sometimes it's great having a person that's a focal point in the shot. I mean, look at Emma Peter, I mean, you know, she's built a career out of having that beautifully perfectly placed person in an architectural, wider architectural image. I love that book. So when we have the opportunity to do that or when something does feel that it needs a focal point or it can work well in a shot, you know, we'll certainly try to look for that as well. Well, no, and that's exactly who I was thinking about because I, you know, I just had Emma on this podcast recently as well. And I know she actually has a, has a lot of background in shooting hospitality as well. So but yeah, I could see like really cool hotel, like Emma Peter style, you know, hotel shots, but just that, you know, kind of one lone person walking in there. I mean, that, yeah, I mean, that, that seems kind of interesting to me. So not the vibe I would think most hotels are looking for. They just want this is, this is the building, right? And they're not having their staff in the photo, they're just, it's just the structure. Right. It varies. I mean, we will include a staff person here and there of it feels like it just needs somebody in there for scale or for focal point, you know, as long as they're a little bit blurry, you know, we're not focusing on them. They're not a higher model, you know, so they're, so it's, you know, so it gets a little tricky sometimes when you're using hotel associates in that manner. But, you know, as long as it's blurry and unrecognizable in the shot, you know, we're happy to have that little bit of that touch of human life in an image. So it's not just dark architecture, you know, architectures meant to be lived in. So it's nice to sometimes have people and involved in it for sure. And Brandon, I just want to return just for a moment here before, before we wrap up, you know, as I kind of ask, how do we get, how do we dabble? How do we get into this? If, you know, even if we're not abandoning real estate photography to go to hospitality, but even if we just want to add it to our portfolio. So the other suggestion of just kind of clandestinely shooting, shooting some space. But once you have those, those images in your portfolio, now what? Right. Well, it's, it's about getting yourself out there, right, isn't it? You know, and then you just have to use the ways that you've probably been advertising before or the same techniques that have brought you work as a real estate photographer can potentially bring you work as hospitality photographer to start within your community, start within your city, your town, what not. I would approach, you know, there's nothing beats a personal interaction approach. You know, where you can locally, I would say approach hotels, try to, try to speak to the marketing people and the fact that you've made an effort to come in and personally speak to them or to try to set up an appointment or even a Zoom call or something with them quickly to talk about what their needs may be. There is definitely need for local people, you know, they fly us in to do, you know, a lot of the overall overarching photography that's going to go to all the booking engines and the website and that sort of thing. But they meet constant, constant material, you know, they're constantly feeding social media or starting out, you know, with hotels and, you know, and they're constantly in between people that do their social media, you know, they're, it's, it's usually not a perfect situation where they have like the brilliant team that is doing all of this. So I would say approaching, approaching hotels locally is not a bad way to go and, and in this, in this context, we're probably looking for more like independent hotels or well, even a lot of hotels that you think are independent are actually owned by big chains. But because does, for instance, like, are the local, and especially if you're not living in an area that's known for luxury travel or anything like that, but is like the holiday in express down the road, do they have a marketing person or is that more of just like a regional marketing person? And obviously, I know you can't speak to every chain, you know, exactly what they do. But in your experience, is a hotel like that even going to have a marketing person? Right. So some of those probably wouldn't, you'd be speaking to the general manager in some of the smaller hotels. And that's a great place to start. Honestly, I shot my share of four points by a share and when I was first starting out in a hospitality as well. So, you know, that that happened to be part of the larger chain that became married down the road, but still independent, great, because they're not locked into all the brand considerations, you know, and the brand approved photographer and all that type of thing. Right. So there's a lot more leeway with independent. So 100%, I would say, approach independence and, and but also approaches these other brand, the smaller brands, smaller branded hotels as well, because like I say, they love to have somebody on the ground. They need a photographer on the ground because they bring us in for like one big shoot, like every few years, you know, but they still do content. They still need things for fresh and they still have like one-offs here and there. And it's a great entry, entry point, the other entry point I'd recommend is, is tracking down hospitality designers, and that's what worked for me. That was my entrance into Accord, for example, which is the overarching brand from Fairmont, Raffles, Sofutel, numerous names that overseas, they, they were not on my radar at all until I shot a hotel out west for for hospitality for and the hotel saw the images and they wanted to purchase them. So there was a situation where third party licensing came in, but then the hotel brought me in to shoot more. The brand saw the images, then you know, went to the next step, one thing led to another, to another, you know, and for you know what, I'm shooting for numerous Fairmont hotels, you know, across the world. You really have to take it very seriously, ever approached by a designer, any sort of interior designer, you know, take the work for sure, 100%, even if they don't have the budgets to begin with, I would say, that's, that's a good one. Not only that, but it looks good in your portfolio because the designer is going to come in, they're going to prop it, they're going to put, they have the work to look great too. So that's, that's a great way of, of, of adding on to a real estate portfolio, I would say, and hotels recognize that. They can see a well executed image, well propped image, you know, because a lot of it is content too. People can't see past the content. So you do, you do have to have some nice design in there. Mm hmm. Well, right. And so I, I want to touch on one more thing because it's a phrase you used and a few moments ago, but brand approved. So if we are shooting for, you know, even say even for a holiday in or something, I imagine the, you have to get brand approved. How do you get brand approved to, to photographs with these larger corporations? There's, that's a real mystery. It's a mystery to me for that matter. So they, they choose you, yeah, great, right? So, yeah, we have so little control over that, they, they literally, they come to you and they say, hey, we'd like to prove you for this brand and not brand or another, you know, and are you into it? That's, that's how it's been with me. It's extremely hard to nail these people down to, and again, the only way you can do it is if you already have that brand in your portfolio. So once again, this massive catch 22 because they're expecting to see their product in your portfolio or a product that looks very similar to theirs. It doesn't have to be the exact same hotel brand that you've somehow shot for somebody else. But they're going to want to see something very, very closely resembles what they're doing. So, you know, the best, the best bet for shooting any of this stuff, of course, is to study the work of, you know, not only myself, but there's a lot of us out there who shoot hospitality and just see what it is we're doing and for the various brands because if we're shooting for certain brands, we've obviously got the brand photo guides in hand and whatever we've done in these photos is what's been approved and they probably gone through one, sometimes even two rounds of retouching editing notes from the brand that we've had to go back in and do certain things. So if you see a certain look, there's a certain look to the way the view is in the window or the, the degree of the linens on the beds that are just like maybe they're a little bit rough or maybe they're like ridiculously perfected. But that is a brand driven thing, generally speaking, you know, certain brands don't want a crazy, over-photoshop looking bed, whereas others want it to be beyond perfect. Right. Well, that's interesting. Yeah. Well, that, you know, I think to do any of that, I mean, does take action, which means it's time for action items. Which you know are sponsored by Pixel CRM. Pixel CRM is the only CRM out there that was designed by a real estate photographer for real estate media professionals. We've been using Pixel CRM and it's been great. And I say, you know, we still, and I think one of our summer projects is going to be diving more into Pixel CRM and having it do more for us. But already, all the stuff it does, you know, we're doing our mailing list, we're doing the reviews, we're doing a few other things and it's been really fantastic. So go to PixelCRM.com/upmarket and you are going to get a risk-free 30-day trial. I'm going to be exciting. The one thing about PixelCRM.com, it's P-I-X-L-C-R-M.com. There's no E. It's the hit Pixel. It's the hit Pixel. Pixel CRM.com. And so Brandon, you know what, I'm going to go first. I think I think you have a good one. I don't know what it is, but I'm just guessing because you, you seem like a very smart person. So I'm hoping you have a really good one. Mine is really very specific to real estate photography, something I did yesterday that then it just reinforced and I may have even done this as an action item one time in the past. So go to Caravan and if you don't have a Caravan, go to an open house in your town. And so Caravan is when all the new listens come on the market and one day a week in a town. All the agents hold the new listens open and then all the other agents drive around and tour the properties. And I went on that yesterday and you end up just like seeing a bunch of clients that you haven't seen in a long time, especially if you're not out there doing the day-to-day shooting and you have your staff out there, it's a great opportunity to have some FaceTime with your clients. And I ended up having a half hour conversation with someone who uses this occasionally but is a high volume producer and so it was really good to get to know that person who I didn't really know before that and have that face-to-face interaction because as I'm sure it does work brand in what you're doing, you know, in any business, it is a relationship business. The more you can kind of have those relationships with the people, the decision-makers on who gets jobs and when those come up, the better off you're going to be. And I imagine you have relationships, yeah, you have relationships with whatever the general manager, you know, I don't know executive vice president, right, whoever it is and you're going to get multiple jobs from that person. Yeah, and you just never know where your next job is going to take you, of course, because every job is a building block to another potential opportunity. Oh, that's that's a really good way, that's a really, really good way to look at it. So all right, well, Brandon, come on. I want it. Action on it, baby. Okay. Here you go. So what I would suggest, and for somebody who's been shooting a lot of real estate and is really comfortable in that niche and it's been doing well, but you want to look at maybe exploring something in design photography or hospitality photography, I strongly recommend creating another profile for yourself. I've seen it done by colleagues of mine that were shooting real estate. They created a completely separate profile so that it so they gave themselves a different identity and that that new identity just had specifically, well, of course, they pulled from their prior work, actually, but you're reorganizing, you're taking certain real estate shots, you're picking the crem de la crem of shots that, you know, beautiful high end properties or really nicely designed projects or very aspirational situations that you've had or some really amazing exteriors, putting those all into separate portfolios and just giving a little bit of a pivot, a little bit of a spin on it to make it look and feel a little bit more like hospitality photography. So I'm not saying to come up with some crazy name or something, go buy your own name, people want to deal with a person, they don't want to deal with, you know, lightscameraaction.com photography, you know, it's like they don't want some, right, kitschy name, it's like I really strongly suggest work with your name, your name is the brand. Well, that, no, and that that is the exact opposite advice I give to people for real estate photography. Well, it depends on your goals, right, and so the advice I give to anyone who wants to grow their real estate business and have a team, I said get your name out of your company, right, now if you want to be known as a luxury real estate photographer and blah, blah, blah, you don't want to grow a team, sure, of course, use your name, right, but, you know, we, we struggle with that with my business partner and I, even now of like, well, oh, where's Reed, where's Mark? You know, like they want us to shoot it and it's like, no, no, no, no, who want our photographers to shoot it, but with you, it really, in hospitality, it does rest solely on the, the, your creative shoulders. It really does that people like people have in this world for whatever reason, they seem to like that signature, they want to feel that a little bit of your own authorship, even though they love telling you what to do, they still want, they're still buying, they're still, they're still an aspect of them buying the authorship that you're providing. So that's, so that works out beautiful. So if you have a company name for your real estate aspect, create a new domain using your own name, somehow involved in, in that and that becomes and, and create those slightly more signature images, put them in there and anytime you can jump into a situation and have the opportunity to run and gun some Gorilla hospitality photography and some random decent looking hotel, you know, go for it and, and get those shots out there, you just got to show that you're doing that and, you know, and set up the SEO, set up, you know, your keywords and that type of thing so that when people are Googling for that hospitality or hotel photographer in their area, hopefully, you know, you are actually coming up in that search, and, and, and it's best to separate those two, don't get it confused with your other, with your other aspects, it's because it's, it's such a, it's such a specific niche and there's a very specific audience for that niche. Right, so, so don't add a hospitality page to your real estate photography website, just have a, a, a separate one. I think that's a, that's, that's, that's really, that's a, that's really good advice because I think, yeah, you don't want a muddy, because anything that, that, that muddies the waters of someone goes to your website and they don't understand what you do, I think is, is bad. And, you know, and the, and those, and those two client bases are, are different realtors and hospitality, you know, marketing managers are, are two different people. So I think a separate website is, is really, really smart. Like you're going to, like, you know, have the Airbnb page on your real estate website, but don't have the hospitality page on that. Right. The images, of course, can cross over into your hospitality, no problem. There you go. There you go. Brandon, thank you so much. I really appreciate you taking the time. It sounds like you have a mountain of editing to do and I know this is, this is eating into that, but I really appreciate you sharing all that with our audience today. Oh, it's been great. Thank you so much for having agreed. I really enjoyed it. Of course, so forward to P. M. Reed. This is going to be my first time, so I'm really, really excited about it. Well, I'm looking forward to seeing the shots you take of the Palms Hotel and Casino, you know, while we're there, because I'm sure you'll steal away and get some of the shots for your portfolio, you know? Well, the next job is going to come from, yeah. Well, you never know. Well, the first thing is that I've already been there to, for a shoot a couple years past, but it was for specifically their restaurant and bar venues and this, and it was with hospitality design perm. So there you go. Oh, yeah. Well, you should definitely show those, you should definitely show those images when you're on stage. That would be great. That's great. Thanks, Reed. Upmarket is a production of Upmarket Studios. This episode was produced by Chelsea Frolic and edited by Bethany B. Drich. Thank you so much for listening, and we really hope you'll listen to the next one, too. In the meantime, our wish for you is to not have to shoot any Friday night twilight shoots. Thank you for everything.