IDS Podcast S3E3: Styling a Room for the Camera with Jamie of JBT Designs

There's a strange math in the design world: eight months to a few years building a room, one afternoon to shoot it, and then those photos represent your work for the next five or ten years. That's exactly where this episode lives. Brian sits down with Jamie of JBT Designs out of northern New Jersey — an interior stylist who came up through the editorial side of the business. She started at Hearst on the startup magazine Shop Etc. and later worked in the photo department at Oprah Magazine before moving into design, and eventually styling full time.

Jamie's whole thing is styling for the camera, and she's great at explaining why that's a completely different skill from styling for real life. When you design for a homeowner, you're styling for their reality — kids, pets, budget. When you style for a shoot, you've got two seconds to tell the story on a four-inch phone screen, and proportion, flow, and the right few props make or break the image. Brian and Jamie dig into what the camera sees that your eye doesn't, where the designer's job ends and the stylist's begins, the three-way dance between designer, stylist, and photographer on shoot day, and some honest advice for designers on a tight budget (spoiler: less is more, and don't skimp on the florals).

Find Jamie: Instagram @jbt_styles | jbtdesigns.com

You can learn more about our host Brian Berkowitz:

Brian's Website: https://www.brianberkowitzphoto.com

Brian's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brianberko