Episode #5
Why Interior Designers Choose This Photographer’s Work (George Diebold)
In this captivating episode, Gail Doby sits down with fine art photographer and interior design graduate George Diebold. Gail shares her personal journey as a collector of George’s work, highlighting how consistent weekly email marketing over several years eventually led her to select two major pieces for her new home. George reflects on opening his commercial studio in 1978 and building a reputation with Fortune 500 companies in New Jersey before earning his interior design degree at age 50. He discusses why interior designers are sometimes hesitant to specify photography over traditional paintings and breaks down the technical nuances of dye sublimation (metal printing), which offers extreme archival durability and vibrant color depth. George also shares the stories behind his Hawaiian landscapes and floating plumeria shots, while offering a critique of AI’s impact on the authenticity of the photographic medium. In this episode, Gail and George discuss: Long-Term Nurturing via Email: How Gail followed George’s weekly emails for 6–7 years before purchasing art for her new office space. Going Back to School at 50: Why a home renovation project on Kauai inspired George to enroll in an interior design program alongside 20-year-olds. Why Designers Hesitate on Photography: Overcoming the myth of photography’s “reproducibility” and avoiding the trap of generic, copycat imagery. The Backstory Behind the Art: Why telling the harrowing story of long-exposure lava captures or aquarium-shot floating plumeria helps designers sell photography to clients. The AI Debate: Why altering real-world moments with artificial intelligence contradicts the foundational purpose of recording a genuine moment in time. If you’re listening on your favorite podcast platform, view the full show notes here: https://thepearlcollective.com/s15e5-shownotes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NDSdRy1z3c Episode Transcript Note: Transcript is created automatically and may contain errors. Click to show transcript GAIL DOBY Well welcome to the Creative Genius Podcast, George. GEORGE DIEBOLD Thank you very much, Gail. GAIL DOBY Well, it’ll be fun to have this conversation. I have ⁓ I’ve followed you for a very, very long time. I think I started looking at your photography. I bet it’s been six or seven years ago. And yeah, and I was thinking about it and every time I would get one of your emails, don’t know how I got on your email list, but I would look at your work and I would browse through all those things thinking, I really want one of your pieces. And then when we finally bought this new house, and you can see the picture behind me. That was the one that I bought from you earlier this year. And I just bought a second one from you this year. And I ⁓ am really happy to have those pieces because they’re really interesting and of course beautiful, beautifully shot. So thank you. That’s how I got to know you. GEORGE DIEBOLD Thank you. ⁓ yeah, you you were on my constant conta I do a weekly email ⁓ image ⁓ mailing ⁓ primarily to designers and collectors. And ⁓ I guess that’s initially how you found me. Yeah. GAIL DOBY Right. Right. And so it does work to do email marketing because it did take a long time. I just didn’t have a spot to put things in my other house, but when we built this house, it’s larger, so I had the space to do it. So I finally have my own office, which is great. Perfect. ⁓ yeah. So absolutely. And I’m enjoying these a lot. I look at them every day and just admire them. So and I get to see them in my background all the time. ⁓ Yeah. So let’s talk about your background because you actually are a photographer and you have an interior design degree. And it was kind of later in life that you did that. So talk to me about what came first and ⁓ what brought you to interior design. GEORGE DIEBOLD I opened my studio, my photography studio in 1978. ⁓ a bit after college. I graduated in 75. ⁓ I got my design degree when I was 50. And how that happened was we would spend ⁓ a big block of the summer, ⁓ my wife and my son and I ⁓ vacationing and me shooting in Hawaii. And ⁓ I I found after a while that it really didn’t matter that I was back in my studio, that I was still able to run my business from Hawaii. So we decided that we would buy a home out there and we decided on the island of Kauai, bought a home, ⁓ and I made plans to bring it down to the studs and renovate it and then turn the garage into a studio. So I could go back and forth between Hawaii and the East Coast. So I did some rough sketches and I made some detailed notes. I got turned on to an architect. And when she saw them, she said, you should consider studying design. That’s really as far as it went. when I returned back to the East Coast, I just said, you know, all right, I’ll do that. So I enrolled in Keene University’s design ⁓ program. ⁓ So for about two years I was running my studio, then I would jump in the car ⁓ almost every day, drive to ⁓ Union, New Jersey, where the campus was, have two or three classes. Every night I was doing homework and then plus coordinating the rebuilding of the house in Hawaii. So ⁓ it was a bit of a crazy time, but I had a I had a lot of fun and I was definitely the oldest person in the class, that’s for sure. ⁓ I ⁓ you know, I was just surrounded by all these kids, which they thought it was kind of funny. So yeah, it was a good time. GAIL DOBY Did you ever do interior design for clients? GEORGE DIEBOLD I the only thing I ever did interior design for was ⁓ it helping me specifying stuff with people like yourself and doing homes that I owned. ⁓ after it seemed like after I finished my design degree, ⁓ then my business got my photography business got extremely busy again. And ⁓ I was doing a lot of shooting in Hawaii. I picked up a lot of clients in Hawaii. So ⁓ the the short answer is ⁓ no. ⁓ I have a degree in design and ⁓ really I just used it to to help me better explain myself to designers and present myself to your community. GAIL DOBY Mm, interesting. Well, and I would have to say that in all the work I’ve done, yes, I’ve selected artwork or I’ve selected photography for clients, but it’s never been one of the dominant things I’ve selected for clients. So I don’t know that we as a trade are hesitant about specifying photography, but maybe we’re just not thinking about that as one of the things that we’re planning our designs around. So why do you think designers don’t think about photography very much? GEORGE DIEBOLD I think th there are a couple of reasons. I think designers are hesitant to ⁓ for one thing because they’re hung up on the premise that a painting there’s only one painting and a photograph can be reproduced multiple times, which there’s really no denying that. But ⁓ oddly ⁓ I can ⁓ really not even remember a time, even though my editions are extremely small. I c I ⁓ Designers never ask me how many of these are you making? So it doesn’t really seem to be ⁓ a b a big problem for them. ⁓ I I think also, you know, a f a painter gets a canvas and ⁓ you know, it’s like he’s got he’s now he’s creating this thing on the you know, and it’s just like so just a it’s an original thought and and it’s just like his. putting his soul on the canvas and but I think you have to realize for a photographer, especially somebody working ⁓ professionally like I do, it’s so involved, not only from a monetary standpoint, the the investment, I mean, just even like the picture behind you. I mean obviously I had to get to Hawaii. I spent six weeks in Hawaii, which you can imagine what that cost, ⁓ making the prints. ⁓ All of that ⁓ goes into it. So it sort of balances out. ⁓ I I think. But I I think ⁓ really the core thing is that design designers just think that there can be like so many copies of the photograph. ⁓ One of the big problems is that I think a lot of photographers who are trying to get somewhere copy what other successful photographers do. So the result of that is that. Designers ⁓ tend to look at photography and say, another another picture of the Grand Canyon. another picture of this Japanese maple tree in the garden in this exact same. It’s almost like the photographers go and they put the tripod in the exact same spot that somebody successful did. So ⁓ not trying to ⁓ toot my own horn, but I find when people a lot of times the first comment people make about my work is. GEORGE DIEBOLD They say, it’s different. I I’ve never seen that. Or and I think that’s also partially because I do location work as well as studio work. ⁓ And ⁓ and ⁓ I think that helps me a lot because I have a very wide ranging portfolio. GAIL DOBY Mm-hmm. GAIL DOBY Mm-hmm. And you do advertising photography too, right? GEORGE DIEBOLD Yeah, not to the extent that I ⁓ once did. I mean, that’s really ⁓ when I opened my business, that’s primarily what I did. I did annual report work ⁓ and ⁓ advertising work for like Fortune five hundred company of companies, which I was in that sense I was very lucky to be ⁓ in New Jersey. When I started my business, ⁓ the the the thought was, you know, if you’re gonna be a big time professional photographer, you had to be in New York City. ⁓ anywhere else was just ⁓ it was like Deadsville. But what nobody realized was that most of the major corporations in America had their world headquarters in New Jersey. And I knew New Jersey. So I was able to get in my car almost every day and drive to a meeting with ATT or Sony or any of the pharmaceutical companies. So ⁓ I I was known in New Jersey simply because everybody would see me there. So that’s really how I built my reputation ⁓ in the advertising business. GAIL DOBY Interesting. Well, let’s talk a little bit about specifying photography instead of other forms of artwork. Wha how what’s different about that? And what are some of the things that you would recommend to designers to think about when they’re considering photography? GEORGE DIEBOLD I guess the biggest difference in specifying photography is that there’s a lot of trust. ⁓ even though you followed me for like six or seven years, ⁓ you ordered a print ⁓ without seeing it. ⁓ which is very different than seeing a a finished canvas and saying, like, yeah, I want to, you know, if you go to an art show and you see the canvas and say, Yeah, I want to buy that, I’ll take it. So there’s a certain amount of trust that has to take place with the client and they have to research, you know, the photographer’s reputation, which is that’s not too hard to do. ⁓ what I try to do to minimize this gray area is ⁓ for for ⁓ it wasn’t really a your situation because you seem to know exactly what you wanted. But sometimes I’ll make smaller scale prints and send them to a client so they can see, you know, they can physically hold in their hand a print and see, ⁓ you know, ⁓ what it’s going to be like, except that it’s going to be bigger. ⁓ I can also send ⁓ samples of the medium, you know, whether it’s going to be metal or a fiber print or stuff. I can send that to them. ⁓ I can send them ⁓ samples of frames if they do in fact, you know, put a frame around the piece. So I think the more you just try to give the designer information, I think it increases the comfort level and and and they see that, you know, obviously you’ve done this before, so you wouldn’t have much there wouldn’t be much benefit in me trying to get over on you. I mean, I’m my my I my plan is to is just to sell pictures. So I’m not trying to ruin my reputation by trying to scam people. So GAIL DOBY ⁓ yeah. Well you were very helpful. I know that when we were talking about it, I knew that ⁓ I knew the scale I wanted for ⁓ the piece. Well for both pieces. And so ⁓ you were able to guide me and say, yes, I can do that scale, I can do that that proportion. ⁓ And ⁓ and then we talked about what the ⁓ what the format was in terms of doing it on the metal and GEORGE DIEBOLD Mm-hmm. GAIL DOBY Maybe just talk about that because I’d never heard of printing on metal ⁓ and you’d mentioned that that it was a lot ⁓ probably more stable. So talk talk about the difference between the backgrounds that you can print on. GEORGE DIEBOLD Yes. GEORGE DIEBOLD Printing on metal, which is also called dye sublimation, ⁓ without getting overly technical about it, which, you know, I can’t get that overly technical because I’m not, you know, it’s it’s very complicated, but it’s basically infusing the metal ⁓ with the dyes. So the dyes, I think through extreme heat, are actually like saturated into the metal and become part of the metal. What this does is it results in it’s extremely archival and it’s very durable. For many years I was a big fan of laminating the images I delivered ⁓ under plexiglass, which is it looks very cool. ⁓ And as long as it’s lit well, you know, you don’t get reflections in it and stuff. But it’s fragile. ⁓ in fact If somebody if if the delivery was anywhere like in the tri-state area, I would almost always insist on me hanging it because I was always ner you know, if you bump the corner putting it up, you could fracture the plexi. ⁓ also the plexiglass has to be ⁓ We we recommend cleaning it with rubber cement thinner and like a hundred percent cotton rag. So you have to be because you know you get that swirl effect on plastic if you cleaned it with a paper towel or something. ⁓ the dye sublimation, the metal, ⁓ I mean, you could literally like take a a ⁓ you know, I mean you should be a little bit more careful than a paper towel, but you could take a paper towel with like Windex and just clean it. So In that sense, it’s ⁓ very, ⁓ very durable. ⁓ as far as the range of colors that it’s available, it’s it’s ⁓ extremely wide. ⁓ and for clients that also want a traditional presentation, I can also deliver ⁓ prints on all kinds of different materials, canvases and fine art papers and stuff like that, where if they’re looking to have something matted and framed under glass. GEORGE DIEBOLD But even when you go to museums now and you see photography exhibits, there’s there’s a wide range ⁓ of ⁓ ways they’re presented and metal is one of them ⁓ now. I think people have realized how good it is. So ⁓ yeah. I I r I really like it. I mean I think it’s you know. And it also ⁓ they have about five or six different ⁓ levels ⁓ of reflection. You can get it super high gloss. I think the print behind you is one step down from that. I think that’s what we decided on. And then you can go all the way to like, you know, very luster like Matt, which ⁓ I don’t want to do because it’s a little bit flatter. But ⁓ it’s it’s a really great medium. And I don’t know who came up with it, but GAIL DOBY They were very smart to do that. GEORGE DIEBOLD Yeah. GAIL DOBY Yeah, so I I ⁓ I really love the piece and ⁓ why don’t you talk about that? How long did it take you to set up for that and take this photograph? GEORGE DIEBOLD I ⁓ I ⁓ I went to the big island. ⁓ I guess this was two years ago. The big island is the island that’s called Hawaii. They actually don’t technically call it the Big Island anymore. They call it Hawaii, which makes it even more confusing for people because the chain of islands is called Hawaii. And now they want to call just the one island Hawaii. It’s where the volcano is and it’s been erupting. ⁓ I specifically went there. Not to photograph the volcano, although that would have been cool, but I wanted to photograph the lava patterns in Volcanoes National Park, which was my primary goal. And that’s what I spent most of my time doing, just doing close-ups of how the lava cooled and the shapes it made. ⁓ And in addition to that, I would travel around the island, which is no small feat, because that’s it’s definitely the big island. I think that’s ⁓ a mistake a lot of tourists make when they go there. They get up in the morning and they they tell the ⁓ the ⁓ guys at the front desk, we’re gonna take a ride around the island today, you know, and then like midnight they get back and they’re just like, God almighty, you know, like ⁓ it’s it’s huge. I mean it’s it’s really big. So this particular location behind you was about an hour ⁓ ride. from the condo I had rented, ⁓ and ⁓ really, really scary roads where the roads are very narrow, there’s no lighting. A lot of times it’s pouring rain, there’s trucks coming at you. So I would drive to this location, I would shoot, ⁓ and the in the case of your picture, it’s almost dark. ⁓ and that’s ⁓ so the camera ⁓ is it’s a very long exposure, which is allowing the water to turn into that silky ⁓ look. And then like in the pitch dark, I would, you know, load up all my equipment and then get in the car and then have this terrifying ride back to my condo. ⁓ which I i every time I was doing it, I was just saying like, you know, ⁓ what am I doing? You know, if really this is just kind of stupid. I mean the odds of like something going wrong. GEORGE DIEBOLD w were a little scary. But ⁓ so th I would hop around to different beaches, which on the big island, the other cool thing you get is you get the black sand beaches. It’s the only ⁓ island that still has the black sand. They also have red sand and green sand, which is r really quite amazing to see. But ⁓ in this case of the picture behind you, that’s just, you know, an example of where ⁓ I don’t know how many years ago, but that’s where the volcano happened to flow down to ⁓ and all those boulders or lava that hit the ocean and cooled and so you get all these fantastic shapes. ⁓ and ⁓ that’s I I I’ve returned there in the sixth I mean I I don’t know, twenty times probably, ⁓ back and forth just going there. ⁓ I would shoot splashing waves during the day. ⁓ And then as night started to fall, I would do these time exposure pictures. So ⁓ and that’s another thing I think that ⁓ just to go back to one of the previous questions, I think clients also like to hear the backstory ⁓ like what I’m telling you now, that gives them like a feeling of ⁓ you know, when they look at it, they can imagine. GAIL DOBY Mm-hmm. GEORGE DIEBOLD you know, the the situation when it was done. That’s a little bit different than, you know, a painting. So I think that’s important for clients. If an interior designer is trying to sell a client on a photographer’s work, ⁓ I think it probably helps if they, you know, make it sound like, yeah, get, you know, you gotta get to know this guy and you gotta hear some of the stories he tells about some of the things he did and stuff. So GAIL DOBY Well, I I don’t have a way to show you the other photo that I purchased from you, but ⁓ the floating plumeria, which I really kept coming back to and kept thinking, I I think I have to have that. ⁓ And ⁓ and I did ultimately get that, but talk about how you did that. GEORGE DIEBOLD That’s another ⁓ yeah, I have a story for everything. So that that’s another ⁓ the last thing in the world anybody needs to see is another flower picture. I mean, because that’s just what I mean, it doesn’t matter if t if today is the first day you got a camera or you’ve been doing it for fifty years. ⁓ There’s just so many flower pictures that it’s unbearable. But ⁓ I was standing in back of o
