Pro
Associate Photographer Associate Photographer

Dennis Shew

San Mateo, CA
Shew Design Studio
About Dennis

I've been working as a photographer since 2008. My educational background is in an area that mixes artistry with creative thinking and technical know how : Architecture. As an alumni of the University of California at Berkeley, I spent close to twenty years making use of my degree working in both the corporate world and eventually running my own architecture practice. I came to find the busier and more successful my business became, and the more projects I had running, the less time I actually spent being creative and the more time I had to devote to managing everything else that was going on. In short, I wasn't spending enough time being creative and too much time attending to other things. I was getting stifled so I got out.

Closing my architecture business coincided with the birth of my two children. This time off afforded me the rare opportunity to be with them when it was most important and also rekindled an interest I had held since high school: Photography. I dusted off my old film camera and it was great, but I felt the need for more creative control. An inhouse darkroom was impractical, so I purchased one of the very first digital SLRs, a Nikon D100 and recorded every moment I could. I found the immediate gratification of photographing in digital together with a significant and all consuming subject matter really allowed my creative energy to prosper. It has all served to propel me to where I am today.

Now I help college graduates and working professionals with their head shots for LinkedIn and corporate websites, aspiring models, actors and actresses with their portfolios, families and children with portraits, dancers capture their movement in a variety of different feature sets. My clients include manufacturers that need product photographed, construction companies and architectural firms needing buildings and other projects recorded, even hotels that need their rooms, grounds and menu items catalogued on a continual basis, and of course individuals, couples, families, and friends. I even shoot profile photos and head shots for individuals needing to update their online dating profiles!

What I enjoyed most about my architecture practice was creating spatial solutions that helped make the every day lives of my clients better. What I love about photography is it helps me make the moments I share together with my clients more meaningful and everlasting.