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Photo Studio Director | Director of Photography

Creative & Design

Photo Studio Leader | Digital Production Specialist:Having worked with major retail brands such as Pottery Barn and Men&#39;s Wearhouse, I lead and consult in digital and print production for high volume eCommerce photo studios. I&#39;ve directed crews, managed teams, produced studio and on-location shoots, overseen and project managed thousands of creative projects, increased quality, defined roles and responsibilities, and improved industry standard processes for digital workflows, all with great results saving millions in annual budgets.Commercial Photographer | Producer:With the highest level of photographic knowledge and expertise, I’ve produced hundreds of assignments in studio and on-location, creating quality impactful imagery for clients and major studios worldwide; in-studio and on-location, pre production to set to post production, projects and campaigns from concept to delivery. My work has been published in hundreds of ads, books, catalogs, publications and sites worldwide including Amazon, American Express, Backpacker, California Tourism, Discovery, ESPN, Fuji Film, Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, MTV Networks, National Geographic, Newsweek, The New York Times, The North Face, Nikon, REI, Sunset, Timex, The Travel Channel, Via, and Vogue. I’ve led live and online photo workshops, multi-media digital presentations with field sessions, lectured at large events for industry leading companies like Tamron and BetterPhoto, and appeared on various tv, radio, and podcast shows.

SUMMARY: 
     •	From directing photo shoots to opening photo studios, with a strong skill set in creative ops, I’ve enjoyed 
        piecing the intricate digital production puzzle together, helping teams succeed in their roles while improving 
        quality, efficiency, lead times, budgets, overhead, KPIs, metrics, moral and work environment.  
DESCRIPTION | SKILLS: 
     •	Photography, Digital Production, Digital and Photographic Workflows, Art Direction, Creative Operations, 
        Project Management, Leadership, KPI Driven Performance Improvement and Metrics Management, 
        Creative Services Operational, Optimization, Staffing Strategy. 
SUCCESSES: 
     •	 Having worked with major brands such as Pottery Barn and Men's Wearhouse, I lead and consult in digital
        and print production for high volume eCommerce photo studios. I've directed crews, managed teams,
        produced studio and on-location shoots, defined roles and responsibilities, delegated tasks, and improved
        industry standard processes for digital workflows. With great results our teams save millions in annual budgets.


Photo Studio Director | Director of Photography | Digital Production Consultant

WILLIAMS-SONOMA | POTTERY BARN, San Francisco | Richmond, CA – potterybarn.com


SUMMARY: 
     •	Overseeing all post-production imagery and retouching for digital and print, editorial and eCommerce, 
        to produce high-quality final assets while delivering accurate and consistent product color-matching.
DESCRIPTION: 
     •	Strategically partnering with Digital Production, Creative, Photo Studio, Digital Asset Management, Merchants,
        and Product Developers to oversee project timelines, style and lighting guides, production workflow, and 
        supply chain efficiency. Supporting photography, editing, merch tracking, retouching, and digital asset management.
     •	Maintaining, forecasting, balancing, and maximizing quarterly/ annual budgets. 
     •	Managing quarterly attestation for Digital Production and Photo Studio team system access.
SUCCESSES: 
     •	Fine-tuned processes throughout production to maximize budgets, reduce lead times, increase 
        quality, update KPIs, reduce customer returns, and improve overall efficiency for 16K+ assets annually


Pottery Barn Kids | Pottery Barn Teen Post-Production Manager for Assets, Color, Print 

SUMMARY: 
     •	Directing all operations for a multi-bay shared-services Photo Studio for various eCommerce 
        and Editorial based shoots for multiple brands. 
DESCRIPTION: 
     •	Managing and hiring a team of 15 employees and 50+ freelance photographers, models, 
        producers, stylists, digital artists, tailors, and assistants.
     •	Maintaining and forecasting a multi-million-dollar annual budget (freelance, on-call, full-time payroll). 
        Photo Studio purchase requirements. tracking costs, analytics, KPIs for studio production.
     •	Strategically partnering with Merchants, Brand, Creative, Site Merch, Digital Asset Management, Engineering, 
        Legal, Human Resources, to oversee project timelines, style | lighting guides, production workflow, and 
        supply chain efficiency; supporting photography, merchandise tracking, and post-production.
     •	Producer/Project manager of all E-commerce Stills and Fashion photo shoots
SUCCESSES: 
     •	94% production increase with just a 19% cost increase in four years. Increase in moral, efficiency, 
        process, and image quality. Discovered various layers of inefficiencies through the product 
        procurement and E-commerce processes, from Merchants to Site/Creative to Studio.

Photo Studio Director | eCommerce Producer for Mens Wearhouse, Jos A Bank, K&G, Moores

SUMMARY: 
     •	Produced hundreds of assignments creating photography and licensing imagery for various uses worldwide.
        Led crews in on-location, including models, stylists, assistants, art directors, and clients, photographing on-location
        in the US and internationally. Involved in pre-production planning and post-production preparation of all jobs.
DESCRIPTION: 
     •	Growing a professional photography business from scratch to a successful well-known industry name.
SUCCESSES: 
     •	Published with and completed assignments for numerous major clients worldwide (300 magazines,200 companies):
          o	Amazon, American Express, California Tourism, Discovery, ESPN, Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, National Geographic, 
              The New York Times, The North Face, Nikon, Random House, Sunset, Timex, The Travel Channel, Vogue.
     •	Photo editing and managing a million+ image stock collection from worldwide locations.
     •	Authored and photographed numerous articles and two how-to books for Random House | Amphoto:
          o	The BetterPhoto Guide to Exposure (Jan 2009), The Complete Guide to Nature Photography (Dec 2011)
     •	Led live and online photo workshops: Multi-media digital presentations with field photo sessions.


Commercial Photographer | Author | Producer | Art Director

Freelance Director of Photography/Cinematographer/Producer

Co-Founder / CEO

I was recently asked how I’d assist a company with brand strategy. As a critical part of how a company presents itself to their customer base, and a key component to its growth and success, providing a short quick answer to such a complex challenge is tough. Throughout my career I’ve helped companies define their brands, aligning marketing efforts in numerous ways. Here’s a brief synopsis of my thoughts on this essential process.Brand strategy is the ability to understand and influence conversations about your company and your products. A good plan considers the current state of your brand – your strengths, your vision, and your offer – and builds a path toward the thoughts and feelings you want people to have about you and your products. Jeff Bezos simplifies it by saying “A brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.”Goals are often positioned around customer awareness and brand loyalty while defining target audiences. Elements of a Brand Strategy include:· Purpose· Consistency· Emotional Impact· Flexibility· Employee Involvement· Loyalty· Competitive AwarenessOnce a strategy is in place, teams should stay on brand to tell this story. Efforts can be focused and driven by data and statistics (sales, price points and customer purchasing habits) while analyzing market trends, balanced with the business directives.Giving a voice to your brand is also a collaborative effort, often centered around marketing’s high-level Creatives (Brand Managers, Brand Directors/Strategists), CMOs, and company leadership. Brand execution however involves all departments from merchants to marketing to brick-and-mortar, producing a unified identity.Marketing teams execute brand strategy in different ways. Visual branding through photography or video should be shot with a consistent style, flare, mood, following a set of defining parameters. As for designers and illustrators, uniformity in media assets are applied through choices of design, homogeneous fonts, typography, color palettes, and logo use. Copywriters verbalize this process utilizing specific words, phrases, and tag lines. Web teams develop site consistency through layout and assets, delivering a high level of customer experience. This is why it’s critical for digital production teams to update lighting and style guides often, realigning these brand blueprints with creative and strategic partners as they affect teams across the process. When pivoting within your team, collaborate on new ideas to ensure you stay on brand while receiving leadership approval.Brand strategy improves company and product recognition, a cornerstone to success. You must have a good strategy in place, pivot when necessary, and execute all the fine details to uniform the message. It’s a story every employee utilizes as part of their job to help map the customer’s journey.To read an expanded version of this article, visit my blog: <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer" href="https://www.seanarbabi.com/post/understanding-brand-strategy">https://www.seanarbabi.com/post/understanding-brand-strategy</a>

1 Week until next Group Y event in Laguna Beach.  Join us for networking, drinks, meet other industry leaders and hear from brand founders.  Tickets on sale at www.GroupY.co  ** special discount ticket for Malakye members, use promo code "Malakye" 

Sharing just a few of the thousands of hashtag#editorial spreads and hashtag#ecommerce products I helped produce while leading post production for Pottery Barn Kids and Pottery Barn Teen; two separate color-centric billion-dollar brands owned by Williams Sonoma.Our team focused on various collaborations with top companies and brands such as Disney, Harry Potter, NFL, NBA, Lego, Hello Kitty, and Star Wars. We worked closely with merchants to identify textile and fabric colors to match as closely as possible, assisting customer&#39;s online experiences. We retouched spreads to add remove or customize items, improve lighting due to set limitations, create moods by cloning seasonal imagery into windows, and deliver consistent skin tones for a variety of multi-cultural models. I also oversaw image consistency from digital to print usage. Having a great partner and retoucher like Byron Lobos didn&#39;t hurt too!Outside of fine-tuning imagery for web and marketing uses, I owned the efforts of tracking samples to our team, assisting photographic efforts, improving process documentation to create savings and improve lead times, pushed for better naming conventions and software/systems integration, assisted DAM &amp; delivery quality, and managed post-production budgets and vendor relationships.When you step into a brand with a long history of proven success, not only do you not want to drop the ball during your tenure, you want to carry on the legacy and make improvements when needed. Proud to say I believe we did so, helping both brands reach their highest comps during some of the most challenging economic times. I can only post one spread here, so to see all 12 spreads, visit my blog @ <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer" href="https://www.seanarbabi.com/post/managing-post-production-for-pottery-barn-kids-pottery-barn-teen">https://www.seanarbabi.com/post/managing-post-production-for-pottery-barn-kids-pottery-barn-teen</a>#digitalproduction #photography #postproduction #retouching #brandidentity #potterybarnkids #potterybarnteen #teamefforts #teamcollaboration #photostudio #ecommercephotography #teamsuccess #creativephotography #creativedirection hashtag #printing #vendorrelationships

Roadmapping the implementation of #AI/ #GenAI with digital teams is a tech as well as a creative challenge in today&#39;s current arena. Listening to Adobe CC&#39;s live event &quot;SoDA Series Live: On Gen AI&quot; today, as the moderator mentioned, it&#39;s easy to forget Spell Check has been around for years and is a form of AI. A perfect example and solid definition of it. Spell Check is a tool to work faster and ensure quality when used appropriately, confirmed or altered, and approved by the user (or expert). As is AI.As AI technology rapidly morphs and advances, creative/media teams will be able to keep up with some of these tool updates, but not with all. A good example of this is systems and software integration within digital production and creative ops. Teams are only able to make upgrades, catching up with current technology, through a process of discovery, time, funding, training, department partnerships, daisy chaining tech, and finally, implementation. Necessary steps to the success of any system improvement.As an industry photographic expert, it&#39;s easier to know where to apply AI as a tool to speed up processes, reduce budgets, or expand on imagery (whether being creating on set or in post). However, for clients or people who haven&#39;t performed these specific creative/production roles, it&#39;s misconstrued as an end-all solution. The dialog shifts from &quot;fix it in Photoshop&quot; to &quot;just use AI&quot;.It&#39;s not that simple. Currently, AI is a tool. An amazing tool. One that will expand into every area of our lives from medicine to food, media to energy. However, it still requires expertise to successful utilize...as every tool usually does.Ironically, as I wrote this post on my Linkedin page (<a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/arbabi/">https://www.linkedin.com/in/arbabi/</a>), I noticed in the left corner of post window a button that read &quot;Rewrite with AI&quot;. :)#artificialintelligence #digitalproduction #creativeoperations #digitaltechnology #photostudio #techtalk #creativity #postproduction #photography #ecommerce #digitaltools #firefly #aiprojects #midjourney #chatgpt #adobecreativesuite #adobephotoshop #adobe

Graphic Design | Video Editing

Sierra Anderson

Design Wrangler + Chaos Organizer + Vibe Curator = Graphic Design Manager

cindy Balsitis

Product Designer

Rianne Camerino

Senior Designer

Cory Casella

Los Angeles Based-Graphic Designer  | CSUDH -BA Graphic Design| -Substitute Teacher- LAUSD

Astin Clark

Lead Graphic Designer at Scotty Cameron Putter Studio

Rit Cooper

Graphic Designer

Shane Dominico

Building Brands through Community, Content, & Creative

Brent Durand

Cody Gaulin

Creative Professional, Video Editor, Outdoor Enthusiast

Ethan Golub

Award-winning Creative Director/Copywriter/ACD

Hugh Gurin

Graphic Designer specializing in great brands and good times.

Jake Hill

Creative Director // Art Director // Graphic Designer // Accessories Designer

Blake Ingram

Senior Women's Designer / Design Manager

Megan LeBrasseur

I’m a versatile designer specializing in apparel, graphics, web, and motion design.

Jasny Lindor

Creative

Tyler Miller

Graphic Designer, Illustrator, and Print Specialist

Mason Plum

Experienced Senior Level Art Director open to new opportunities and remote contract work.

Simon Purll

Content Creator | Photographer | Sr Graphic Designer | Art Director

Sam Schafer

Design Director / Creative Lead

Gavin Schuck

Art/Design/Direction

Elvis Segarich

Graphic Designer at Callaway Golf

William Spack

Commercial Artist, Brand Designer, Apparel Professional.

Tony Sylcott

Design / Art Direction  -  FOR HIRE

Miguel Vega

Creative Design Professional

Jon Wagner

Associate Creative Director/Senior Art Director

Greg von Urff

ARCHITECT- DESIGN LEAD - CREATIVE THINKER

victoria weinberger

Sean Arbabi is a Photo Studio Director at Arbabi Productions Inc. in Lafayette, California.

Sean Arbabi

Sean Arbabi

Sean Arbabi

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