It's always great when our clients win awards, and this past award season has been a banner year, with at least 17...yes, seventeen...finalists or winners from our client base. We've had clients place in just about every major local building industry awards, as well as a number of local and national wins. There's been lots of celebration, thanks, and bragging rights bestowed all over for some truly excellent projects.

We always recommend that if you go to the effort of having a place photographed and doing your awards writeup, you should try to make that work go as far as possible by entering as many awards and as many categories as your project could reasonably win. For instance, a condo renovation could place as a condo renovation (of course), but also bathroom, kitchen, heritage, sustainable, etc. if it also has these qualities. And since many awards programs have similar requirements, if you've done the work for one, you've also pretty much done the work for another, and the entry fees are inexpensive once you have everything all rolled together and ready to enter. (Just read the requirements carefully as there are always a few little 'gotchas' to check and pay attention to).

Our clients took this to heart this year: almost all the projects placed in either multiple categories, multiple awards, or both. Bravo, everyone!

To paraphrase Iron Chef, "Who got it? Who won? Whose projects reigned supreme!?"

Teragon - Mayfair

The crew at Teragon called us just a few days before the Georgie deadline needing exterior, outdoor room, bathroom, and a few other fill-in photos for a finely renovated Shaughnessy mansion. A goodly chunk of the house had been previously photographed earlier in the project by another photographer, but several areas weren't complete at that time. Luckily, we were able to fit them in, and even luckier still: as often happens in the fall, the rain stopped and the clouds parted for the two hours we needed to get solid images of the outdoor areas.

This project was a finalist for Best Residential Renovation >$800K and Best Outdoor Living in the Georgie Awards, finalist for Best Bathroom and Best Exterior Reno in the Ovation Awards, and the winner in Best Outdoor Living Space in the Ovation Awards, among others.

Reid Development - Eton St.

We originally photographed this sweet heritage renovation for the GVHBA Parade of Renovated Homes--the Reid folks needed exterior and a few choice interior images for the parade brochure and PR--and then came back to rephotograph it later in the season when a few things that weren't quite done by the parade were finished off.

This project was notable for combining aging in place features with a sensitive treatment of a heritage structure, and for this, the project was a finalist in Best Heritage Renovation, Best Renovation $500-800K, Best Exterior Renovation, and a winner for Best Accessible Reno in the Ovation Awards, and a finalist for Best Residential Reno $500-800K in the Georgie Awards.

TQ Construction - Lynndale Retreat

Lynndale Retreat, a renovation of an early-1970's house on a cul-de-sac in central Burnaby, was one of the coolest projects we photographed last award season. As with Eton St., we first visited the project before the Parade of Renovated Homes and shot preliminary photos for parade PR, as well as videos of what has to be one of the best laundry features I've seen in a long time: using a roll-up garage door on the interior to conceal a full laundry station with shelving, work space, ironing, and so forth.

Lynndale was a finalist in the Best Residential Reno $300-$400K in the Georgie Awards, and a finalist in the Best Kitchen >$100K category in the Ovations. We got a wonderful surprise on this one: it's the second CHBA National SAM Award winner we've photographed. We've found that more unusual design and architecturally oriented projects tend to place well in the SAMs, even when they don't necessarily place well in local awards; this was a perfect case of this. Different judging, different criteria.

TQ Construction - Spruce Avenue Kitchen

It's always fun when you've photographed projects that compete against each other--you get to cheer loudly twice at the awards gala! This was the case with this fine kitchen+greatroom renovation, brought to you once again by the folks at TQ Construction:

Spruce Avenue was a finalist (along with Lynndale) in the Best Kitchen category at the Ovation Awards. It was also a finalist in the Best Kitchen >$100K category at the Georgie Awards.

Porte Development - Lift at UniverCity

I'm an SFU grad, and opportunities to photograph back at the alma mater are always welcome. We've made three visits to Origin, Porte's nearly-neighbouring project on the hill (twice for their successful Ovation and Georgie submissions a couple of years back, and then once again when one of our realtor clients Robert Crowe had us shoot a unit he was selling in the building), so it was great to see what Porte has been up to with their innovative mixed stacked townhouse/apartment project:

Lift brought home the Best Townhouse Development award at the Ovation Awards. Since we photographed this project in frigid January, we wish the Porte team all the best in the upcoming Georgie Awards and whatever else they enter.

Tien Sher Group of Companies - Jade

The Best Townhouse Development category in the Ovations was another where had two projects competing against themselves: Porte's Lift won, and Tien Sher's Jade, on Alberta Road in Richmond, was a finalist. Bravo to both of them! It was great to work with Tien Sher again after a couple of years hiatus for us as they busily built out several projects.

Prior to this, we  photographed their Quattro3 project in Surrey, and when we were recently photographing their new Balance micro-loft project, Caroline Jecklin, Director of Marketing, referred to our still-often-reproduced image of their Quattro3 project as "one of the prettiest shots we have of any of our projects!":

...and another award season begins!

Summer's almost officially here, and the weather's been amazing. We've been shooting some great projects already, and we have it on good authority that the Georgie Awards call for entries will be coming up in July. It's time to start scheduling your awards photos while we have great weather...and the earlier you have us photograph your project, the cheaper it will be and the easier it will be to schedule. We'll have awards packages up soon, but early birds get even better deals, so get in touch!