The week that was…19-23rd June 2017

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The week that was…19-23rd June 2017

Perth, weekend 24-25^th June 2017

Back in Perth, back from the warm and humid tropics into the wintery Australian season…Perth in the winter is a mixed bag of cold and rainy days with sunny beautiful days. I have had plenty of both over the past week…besides catching up on projects I also used my time here to renew my China visa and while doing so was confronted with the new world reality of terrorism…Normally a routine submission, this time they scrutinised my passport page by page and came across some Turkey visa stamps. Pointing to the stamps I was made clear that Turkey is now on their high security risk list of countries and that the application of my visa would now have to go through some extra security checks not allowing my normal 3 days turnaround…arguing that my visa had been renewed in the past without any issues with Turkey stamps in it turned out to be useless as they keep saying: sorry new rules! They will now call me when ready… 🙁

This week’s blogger is one of the rocks of our team! Nils is one these fantastically talented people who can turn ordinary renderings into magic! Over the years Nils has sharpened his skills and to me he is now the undisputed champion of rendering magic. I can’t express how much his renderings have contributed to ecstatic clients and project team members when we reveal them in our presentations. Even though Nils has pursued other endeavors in between, he has always remained faithful to supporting our team, something we value enormously…thanks Nils, you are amazing! To many more years!

Introduction: Nilskee

Hi everyone, my name is Nilskee, one of the team members of the KLD Shanghai office. I was introduced by Kevin to join KLD in 2006, which suited me as it was nearer to my house. Martin was my first foreigner boss and as we didn’t communicate that easily in the early days, he decided to hire an English teacher to help us improve. Through the many interactions we have had over the years I learned to appreciate him as a very kind person caring much after all of us. I started as a lighting design assistant; basically working on images, renderings and animations. My work at KLD provided me with a great in-depth understanding of lighting design. After Martin left China, I went on to other lighting design companies to further understand and study the design philosophy in each company.

I think of a lighting designer more as a makeup artist, just that the service is applied to buildings and spaces. But no matter the building or the space, the ultimate target are the people, the public in the building or space, just like we have to show the final makeup of a face to the public. At present, I occasionally try to create my own lighting designs, however, we all have our own professional skills set and after all I started as a rendering specialist, so I am planning to set up my own rendering studio specially dedicated to lighting design. The success would be solely the result of my long working experience in KLD.

My working experience in lighting design companies makes me understand that lighting designers would need to spend a big amount of time in creating renderings during concept stage. A picture with lighting rendering is the most effective way to visualise the lighting concept, be it to the client, interior designer, architect or landscape designer. In the field of lighting design, rendering skills are a very important skill but also can be very time consuming. It is however not an essential skill that the lighting designers need to master, so my ambition is to set up my own studio to help the lighting designers reduce their time spent in creating renderings so that they can focus more on other more important parts of their work.

Nils