Level Up Your Professional Life With BIID CPDs

Caroline Milns attended Smartphone Photography For Interior Designers, here are her thoughts on how CPD can improve your day to day professional life.

This CPD was held at CP Hart showroom on the 8th February 2024. It is particularly relevant for Interiors Design professionals as it shows you how to utilise all the knobs and buttons of your smartphone, how to ensure you capture the best possible images using photographic techniques and then how to edit the images to further enhance your photos. 

The format of the event was well organised from 10am – 1pm, which took us through a PowerPoint presentation teaching us about our smartphone features and interspersing it with hands on training, so we all had time to practise and feel confident using our new found skills. As the CPD was hosted by C P Hart Flagship Showroom in Waterloo, there was also an opportunity to explore the huge bathroom showroom and put into practise, taking photos of FF&E products within an Interior scheme. 

The event was very well organised; from the initial booking, the well-chosen venue and communication of timings and location. We even enjoyed the well thought out ‘Pret’ refreshments on offer throughout the day to keep us going!

Key takeaways were learning all the photographic techniques that our smartphone have to offer; including locking in focus, considering the laws of composition, checking camera angles and how to edit your photos to achieve to best possible result. 

It was hosted by Jenny Kaye, a brand photographer with many years’ experience in the field and who has also given many seminars on learning photography. Jenny’s presenting style was very inclusive and relaxed, great at creating an atmosphere to learn, share ideas and collaborate with other design professionals. 

The CPD was quite varied, in terms of presenting the content to cover and learn, practise the key features on one’s own phone and then have open discussions with other designer about our findings and observations. Jenny was also very knowledgeable, taking time to answer all our questions, whilst still keeping us on track to cover the full course content. 

I particularly benefited from learning about the best ways to take photos for social media, in terms of composition and formatting images and text. Jenny also shared her personal favourite external apps for smartphones, should one wish to further graphic design edit images to a greater degree.

I would highly recommend this CPD as a fun way to learn about getting the best out of your smartphone camera, which is now technically as good as many professional cameras, it’s just knowing how to use it! 

It’s often hard to make time to get out of the office and learn new skills when there are deadlines looming, however attending a CPD gives you new skills to use within your profession, making you a more rounded designer, plus a great opportunity to network with others in the same field. 

The BIID offers many exciting opportunities to develop professional practice with CPD hours.

Recording your CPD regularly throughout the year alleviates the stress of compiling your annual report in one sitting. To help our members in achieving this, we have set out the following handy hints 

• Upon registering for a CPD activity, add it to your diary. TOP TIP: Make a note on whether the activity is structured or unstructured and the length (in minutes and hours) of the activity. Colour coding your diary will help you find important information quickly.
• Set reminders to add your completed CPD training to your tracker, this could be weekly, monthly, or quarterly. Or, add it to your tracker as soon as you complete!  
• Check your tracker to see how many hours you have remaining to complete for the year. If you’ve outstanding hours, book more CPDs in to make sure you reach the minimum by the cycle submission date. Remember: CPD can be sourced from external organisations and can be of any length.  
• Consider joining up with other interior designers and booking CPDs together, or dedicate time to CPD training for your team  
• The annual CPD Requirement for BIID Registered Interior Designers is 10 hours of structured and 10 hours of unstructured learning, and the CPD Cycle date is 1st April to 31st March. Members have until the last Friday of April to submit their CPD Reports.  

For more information on the requirement, and exemptions, please visit our Continuing Professional Development and the BIID webpage 

To see upcoming workshops, and more, please visit the events list here.

Save the date

Interested in attending the Smartphone Photography For Interior Designers workshop?

The next one will take place on Wednesday 13th November 2024. EmailHayley McLennan to register your interest and be first to hear when registration opens.

The BIID thanks guest writer Caroline Milns.