Linda Holt empowers interior designers with tools to photograph their own design projects.
By Lindsay Field Penticuff
Her entire life, Linda Holt has had two passions—photography and decorating.
“I got my first camera when I was 10, and I was obsessed,” says Holt, Owner of Linda Holt Creative in Boston, Massachusetts. “I’d always be bringing in stuff I’d find in the woods to decorate my room, and I was always moving my furniture around. I remember being as young as 7 years old, rearranging my room.”
She even had a playhouse in her backyard that she constantly made things for and decorated. She wanted to go to college for interior design, but her father dissuaded her.
“He said I needed to go get a ‘real’ degree,” she says. “I also happen to be very good at science, so my first college degree is marine biology, and I worked in the field for a year, but I was miserable.”
Holt went back to college, and this time on her own dime; however, interior design school was still quite expensive.
“So, in thinking about what else I love to do—and still be creative—I decided to go back to school for photography,” she says.
Holt was a professional photographer for 25 years, shooting professional, commercial headshots for everyone from actors and models to opera singers, comedians and celebrities.
“During the Great Recession in 2008, my photography business kind of collapsed, and that’s when I closed up my studio and went back to school for interior design,” Holt says. “What helped me with interior design, I’d spent nearly a lifetime of building up my eye, so I had a good feel for color, balance, harmony, and all those things that are transferrable to room design.”
She remembers being able to go into a client’s home and visualize the entire space designed and could envision photos of the finished space, even on the first visit.
Interior design was her found-again, full-time job until 2020, when the COVID-19 outbreak started. She stopped working with clients and began writing a smartphone photography course.
“What empowered me to start creating my [smartphone photography] classes is that I would go to these classes with designers and be taking photos, and [designers would] look over my shoulder and ask, ‘How do you do that?’, and I was constantly tutoring someone while at the market,” she recalls.
That’s when a new passion, which combined her lifelong passions, evolved. And she’s thrilled to be able to show others how to take professional photos of their designed spaces with a smartphone.
“The biggest misconception about smartphones is that they are just sub-part DSLR cameras,” Holt says. “Smartphones today are probably 10 times better and more powerful than the last professional camera I owned when I was shooting professionally and being published.
“If you put this into perspective, back then, my camera was an 8 mega-pixel, $3,000 Nikon camera. Today, there are 24 mega-pixels in a smartphone. People think you need a digital camera for print, and that’s false; 10-12 mega-pixels is more than enough for the quality for print.”
Another misconception often voiced by designers is their ability to take high-quality photos with their smartphones.
“They think they can’t take a good photo, but the phone does 90% of the work for you,” she says. “Instead of thinking about their phone as a sub-par digital camera, start thinking about it as a $1,200 digital camera, which is what it is, and give it respect.”
Holt says designers need to give their smartphones the same thought and attention as they would with an expensive digital camera.
“Designers who have worked with professionals, they have it on a tripod, they take their time, they take a shot, they look at it, they analyze it, they tweak it a little bit,” she says. “You need to do that same procedure whether you’re using a $10,000 or your 4-year-old smartphone. You have to give it the respect and really take the time to get the shot.”
Learning Holt’s smartphone practices also saves designers money and allows them to own the copyright on photos taken in the spaces they design.
“Designers need to own the copyright to their own design photos. If they don’t take the photo, they don’t own the photo. The photographer they pay owns their photo, and they can do anything they want with it. They could put it on their website and tag the products and have a store. It’s all about empowering designers to own their own images,” she says.
It also gives designers have opportunity to have control over the story they tell through images.
“You don’t have to rely on someone else’s vision of what it should be,” she says.
Looking ahead, Holt believes artificial intelligence (AI) will greatly benefit smartphone photography.
“I’m pretty excited about the future of AI in photographer,” she says. “Right now, AI is not going to be able to go in and photograph your finished project. You still have to do that, but AI can make the photo go from good to great.”
DSA Members interested in purchasing Holt’s signature class for interior designers, Smartphone Photography for Interior Designers, can use the code DSA for $100 off the original price. The coupon code is valid for 14 days.
Click HERE to access her 30 Instagram ideas for stories or reels for interior designers, and HERE to learn her five smartphone tips for magazine-worthy interior photos.
“I encourage people to follow me on Instagram, because I do almost daily smartphone tips,” Holt adds. “My niche is interior designers, so everything is pretty much tailored to what an interior designer would want to know about their phone.”
Holt’s next live class, Interior Photography With the Smartphone, is being held Tuesday, March 25, from 1-3 p.m. (EST).
Be sure to connect with Linda and explore more of her awe-inspiring work on her website and Instagram!
Lighting Tips: Composition is important, but light is everything, according to Holt.
- Pay attention to the natural lighting in a space. You want to choose a time of day when the natural light coming in from doors or windows is even. “Make sure the light is still nice and bright, meaning there’s no hard sun streaming through a window causing super hot spots across your furniture and the floor,” Holt says.
- Learn how to set the exposure manually. If it’s a little bit dark, you want to be able to increase exposure to help improve the lighting in a space.
- If a room is dark, you need to bring in supplemental lights. You don’t EVER want to turn on the lights in a space, but if you’re shooting in a dark space without any natural light, you have to bring in the light. Use a professional softbox. Click HERE for a list of items in Holt’s digital camera bag. “You must have a very specialized bulb—a professional-level video bulb,” Holt adds. “They aren’t hard to use. They are continuous light. It can pop in that little bit of light you may need. In my course, I have an entire module about using supplemental light, but they are not hard at all to use.”
