Like everyone, we’re doing our part to flatten the curve of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the entire team here is fully accustomed to working at home/on the road, we’re well-set-up for remote work and we’d love to talk to you about your projects. We’re also carefully following current guidance for keeping us—and you—as safe as possible. We’re all in this together, so let’s stay well and make the best we can of it, as much as we can!
The news changes seemingly every hour, so we’ll try to keep this post up to date as situations change. Our local associations have been doing a great job keeping everyone in touch. If you’re in residential/commercial construction around Vancouver, the folks at HAVAN and CHBA-BC have been doing a fine job of keeping everyone in the loop at https://havan.ca/covid-19-resources/ .
Working on your marketing?
This is a great time to let your clients know that you’re still around and will be after this pandemic, particularly if you’re a smaller firm. You might be, as we are, taking this as a much-needed opportunity to work on your business and your marketing/social media/awards work—after all, if your potential clients are sitting on their couches scrolling through Instagram, you might as well keep ‘em inspired! This might mean it’s going to be time for more photos of past projects. If we’ve photographed your project—even if we did it ages ago—let us know as we can very quickly process image relicensing requests since we’re spending a lot less time on location. We’ll also be posting several articles on revisiting and reusing past projects over the next while.
Photographing new projects (BC)
We’re following BC CDC’s guidance and current industry best practices for continuing work. At the moment, construction is considered an essential service: if stuff’s being built, we’re able to photograph it, as long as we can maintain social distancing. This means that projects that Martin can photograph solo are good to go: we aren’t bringing the team out for shoots. In particular:
Exteriors/landscape projects, both residential and commercial, are on. We’re finally starting to see the odd sunny day, and as spring plantings come into bloom, it’s a good time to start photographing early landscape projects—or planning to have them photographed later. For projects that benefit from having empty streets and less traffic, this is about the best time ever to photograph, as long as facades are clean and not boarded up for security purposes. Note that we may have difficulties accessing preferred vantage points from neighbouring buildings.
Commercial interiors without people are on. We’re developing ways to keep you connected to the shoot remotely. We recommend that you do any staging/furniture placement before I arrive, and can arrange contact-free key/access drops as necessary. When rules are relaxed, we’ll have a new prompt to get people to spread out appropriately in a large space: “go arrange yourselves to maintain appropriate social distancing!” You’ll get great results…but it’s not yet time for that, so let’s plan to work on those projects later.
Residential interiors may need to be delayed. Our current practice is: if it’s a residence that’s not regularly inhabited (e.g. show suites, display units, spec builds/homes for sale), I can photograph it. If it’s a residence that would be regularly inhabited (likely, it’s a renovation project) or if it’s a project where you want to take a “lifestyle” approach to photography, we’d prefer to reschedule it until current rules are relaxed (we’re figuring once gatherings of less than 5 people are permitted again).
Photographing out-of-town projects is currently subject to availability of food and lodging on the road. We expect that current restrictions may make projects outside Metro Vancouver not prudent to photograph at this time, but we’re happy to plan with you so that we can photograph them later in the year.
We will also be waiving reschedule fees until further notice—so if the rules change, or your schedule changes, or if Martin feels sick at all, we’ll be as flexible as possible.
Photographing new projects (Washington)
Given the current closure of the US/Canadian border to non-essential trips, we’re unfortunately unable to photograph new projects in the US until the border reopens.
Staying educated and connected
We miss you all! We’ve moved our usual lunch-and-learns online. Stay tuned for more information as we get events scheduled.