How to brief a hotel or serviced-apartment photographer in Poland

Start with what the pictures are for

Before anything else I need to know where the photographs will live: the website, booking platforms, social media, a press kit, printed brochures, or several of these. Each place has its own shape and its own audience, and the answer decides how many frames we need, in which formats, and what gets priority.

Tell me also who is meant to look at them, whether leisure guests, corporate bookers or long-stay guests, and by when: an opening date, a season, a campaign. I plan the shoot back from that date.

Brand guidelines

If the brand has guidelines, send them with your first message. What I look for is the colour palette and tone of the images, how people may appear, what must never be seen, how logos and text sit over pictures, and any cropping rules. If there are no guidelines, three or four reference images you like are almost as useful. Tell me what you like in them: the light, the calm, the angle, the way a room feels lived in.

Guidelines also set the limits of the edit. A colour treatment, text overlays or composites go beyond a standard edit, and I would rather know about them before the shoot than after it.

Shot list and hero shots

After our call I write the shot list: a room-by-room list of frames, in order of priority. For a hotel it usually covers arrival and reception, public areas, each room type, bathrooms, restaurant and bar, spa or pool, outdoor areas, the building itself and a few details.

Hero shots are the few frames that carry the whole property: the ones that come first on the website, open a listing on a booking platform or appear on the cover of a brochure. We choose them together in advance, because a hero shot gets the best light, the most time and the most careful styling. One representative room per room type is better than a photograph of every room that looks alike.

For everything else I think in three steps: a wide frame that shows the space, a closer frame that shows how it feels, and a detail that says something about the place. The same sequence works for a suite, a lobby and a restaurant.

Formats: website, booking platforms, social, print

Agree the formats before the shoot, because they decide how I frame. A wide, horizontal frame suits the website and booking platforms. Social media wants verticals, commonly 4:5 for the feed and 9:16 for stories. Print needs full resolution and often a portrait frame for the cover. Every platform has its own rules and they change, so send me the current specifications of the ones that matter to you.

I leave room around the subject so that a horizontal frame can be cropped for several uses. But a crop is not a vertical. Where a vertical matters, I shoot it as a separate frame with its own composition, which is why the list of formats belongs in the brief.

Schedule in a working hotel

A hotel does not stop for a shoot, so the schedule is half of the brief. The same goes for a serviced-apartment building, where the apartments and the shared areas, such as the lobby, gym or terrace, are photographed between stays. These rules work well:

• block the rooms we photograph in the booking system, with time for housekeeping to bring each one to its final standard before I arrive;
• shoot guest rooms between check-out and check-in, public areas early in the morning before guests come down, and the restaurant before opening or between services, with tables laid;
• name one person on the property who knows the plan, holds the keys and can ask for quiet in a corridor;
• avoid days with maintenance, deliveries or building work nearby, because scaffolding in the frame is hard to remove;
• for a property outside Warsaw, agree the number of days and the travel at the planning stage; travel appears in the quote as a separate item.

Light, weather and the order of the day

I work in natural light, so the day is planned around the building, not around my calendar. I need to know which way the windows face, which rooms get morning sun and which the afternoon, and what is outside them. With that I plan the order of rooms around the path of the sun, the season and the weather forecast. In practice a shoot may be split into a morning block and a late-afternoon block.

Low, hard sun draws out texture and depth; the soft light of an overcast day quietens a room. Both are useful, and I will tell you which one a particular room needs. If you want an effect that daylight cannot give, I can recreate it with flash and modifiers. Exterior frames depend on the weather, so keep a second date free. An evening or seasonal set, such as the façade at dusk, is a separate item in the quote.

Models and guests

Decide early whether people appear in the pictures. Many of the best hotel frames have no people at all, only signs of them: a tray on the bed, a book on the table, a laid breakfast. If you want people, whether staff, models or a guest in the lounge, tell me who, in what role and where, and plan their time as part of the schedule.

Anyone clearly recognisable needs to consent to the use of their image, and the property collects those consents, ideally in writing and before the shoot. Guests should stay out of the frame, so build a quiet window into the schedule.

Selection and retouching

After the shoot I make a first selection and a quick edit, and you receive an online gallery to choose from in up to 5 working days. You choose the frames that go on to the final set. The chosen frames then get full post-production and retouching, and reach you with the licence: in full resolution for print and in lighter versions for the web. Advanced retouching, beyond a standard edit, is a separate line in the quote.

Licence

The licence is easier to write well before the shoot than after it. Agree where the photographs will be used, for how long, in which territory, and who else needs them: the architect, the designer, a PR agency, a booking platform. I explain the terms in Licensing interior photographs commissioned in Poland, which also covers consents, credit and brand guidelines.

What to prepare before the first call

• What the photographs are for and where they will be used.
• The spaces to photograph, as a floor plan or a simple list, and which are the priority.
• The brand guidelines or a few reference images.
• The formats you need, and the platform specifications if you have them.
• The dates: opening, season or campaign, and how flexible they are.
• Access: keys, who coordinates on the day, and when rooms are free and quiet.
• Who else will use the photographs, and whether people are to appear.

You do not need all of it. A few lines are enough, and we settle the rest on the call.