Real estate photography tips.
Taking good photos of the homes you're representing for sale is a most important step in your marketing process. Here are some suggestions for improving your real estate photography.
Where's the light?—For any kind of photography, lighting is a crucial ingredient. To get that perfect, attention-grabbing shot of the front of the house, you must choose the optimum time of the day for the shot. Usually that's when the sun is behind you. It's therefore necessary to know which direction the house faces so you can plan your photo shoot. Shoot homes that face east in the morning and homes that face west in the afternoon. Homes with southern exposure can be shot at any time of day. Of course, just to complicate things, sometimes you'll run into massive shadowing from trees or other obstacle that will thwart this general advice.
Northern exposures—Homes that face north are the most challenging in Oregon because it usually means shooting into the sun. The sun never shines on the front of these homes. Solutions include hiding the sun behind the house or a tree; shooting on a cloudy day where the sun is hidden; shooting when the sun is low on the horizon and not such an obstacle; or as in the photo below, focusing on interesting, well-lit features in the foreground.
The best color—The light source also affects color. When the sun is lower in the sky, either in the morning or in the afternoon, you get more intense color. That makes the sky pop blue and the house show off its best color. High noon overhead sunlight tends to wash out color.
Cloudy and overcast days can often provide surprisingly wonderful diffused light that can bring out great color, as with the fall foliage below, although shots like this lack the bright blue sky in the background.
Flash—Many real estate photos suffer from an inadequate flash. Built-in flashes often don't have enough power for capturing all the details in a big room. They leave a lot of dingy areas in the photos. Even when you brighten the scene in Photoshop, the results are often less than spectacular. In the photo below, an external flash lit up a room that was actually quite dark to the naked eye, especially at the rear of the room:
Other Lights—When I photograph interiors I turn on as many lights as possible. This really isn't to illuminate the room as much as it is to aid in photo composition. Particularly pay attention to any accent lighting like under-the-counter lights or alcove spotlights.
Take lots of photos—When you're on the scene, you often can't see how your flashes are bouncing back at you in mirrors, windows, appliances, and from shiny cabinet surfaces. I take many more photos than I need, knowing that when I download them onto my computer, I'll suddenly notice all those things I didn't see while shooting. In the first photo below, I caught a reflection of the flash in the glass frame above the fireplace. With a slight zoom in, the reflection disappeared. By taking many photos, I increase the odds of getting keepers.
Experiment with composition—Taking lots of digital photos also helps find the right composition. For example, I will go into a kitchen and try different angles to see which yields the shot that looks and feels the best. Often I am back home at my computer when I see which angle I like best. Here again, the smallest re-positioning of the camera sometimes makes all the difference.
Watch your horizon line—Many snapshot takers don't pay attention to the horizon line when they take photos. Their resulting photos are tilted uphill or downhill. You can tell how much effort one real estate agent took in capturing this photo:
Photoshop—I take it as a foregone conclusion that I will enhance photos in Photoshop. By adjusting such things as brightness, contrast, color saturation, lens distortion, and how the photo is cropped, I can get the best photos possible from what I took or was handed off to me.
Of course, a better solution would have been to step out of the car and find a better shot. Yes, the home below is the same home as above!
Wide angle lens—Besides an external flash, nothing helps good real estate photography like a good wide angle lens. I use a 12-24mm zoom lens. With a wide-angle lens you can cram more of a given room into the photo. You can also get some interesting photographic effects. The downside is that wide-angle lenses cost a bundle, and you usually have to correct for lens distortion in a program like Photoshop.
Empty rooms—Rooms without furniture are often challenging, especially bedrooms. They're challenging because they're boring. Often the rooms are too small for you to get much in your viewfinder, even with that wide-angle lens.
Camera blur—If you find that you're consistently getting blurry shots, the problem could be in how you hold the camera. You could be jerking the camera downward every time you press the shutter. Learn to squeeze the shutter in a slow movement. Another solution is to increase the shutter speed. Some digitial cameras come with image stabilization, which is a third solution.
Download those photos from the camera—If you're using an office camera (and even if you're using your own), download the photos onto your computer and keep them in a safe place. Burn a CD for backup. I can't tell you how many times Realtors have called me because they misplaced photos or didn't download them from the office camera where they were deleted.