Process | Dermatology by Design

Back in May, Dermatology by Design held an open house for its grand opening located directly across from Tanner Springs Park in the heart of Portland's Pearl District.  This was a unique photoshoot assignment as it was one part architectural photography, and one part event photography.  

Lobby / Waiting area

THE VENUE

This is a cleanly designed dermatology office with a lot of great details to capture.  Of course I may have a slight bias since the designers of the space are my friends.  It's not a large space, but it makes the most of the space that it does have with all critical areas receiving ample amount of natural daylight.  I can envision their clients walking in and appreciating the cleanliness of the environment.  In addition to the entry lobby/waiting area, there is the Doctor's office with its own waiting area, a few examination rooms, two restrooms, and a break room that was mostly left untouched during the renovation.

There was plenty of light so I wasn't too worried about blurry or grainy photos.  My main challenge with this space was controlling the white balance.  There were many different artificial light sources in addition to the natural ambient light filling the space.  Couple that with the overall contemporary white and gray color palette and it makes for a pretty fun post processing session.  Another challenge for this space was the arrangement of objects.  Since the space itself was very clean and sleek, the placement of the objects become a lot more noticeable since they would stand out and immediately become to focus of the image.

THE IMAGES

I arrived about half an hour early to get some shots of the interior space before it got filled with people.  I was immediately drawn to the clean, modern look that the space conveyed.  Typically when design becomes less ornamental, the details start to stand out more.  I set out to capture those details that help set good design apart from tacky and boring design.  

In addition to the details photos, I also wanted to capture the displays that pertain to the clinic.  These included products on display shelves, the doctor's office, the exam rooms etc.  I figured these photos would be used the most for the website as they represented the space and the clinic's branding. These photos were the ones that I spent the most effort on in terms of composition and editing.

The final set of photos I worked on taking was the open house event itself.  These photos primarily consisted of the guests interacting with each other and the staff and volunteers.  I also wanted photos of the guests engaging with the physical space itself.  As with most of the events that I photograph, I tried to find moments where you can infer some kind of conversation going on between the people in the photo and generally having a good time and enjoying themselves.