Who knows how to photograph a house? Apparently nobody.
When selling a house, your photographs are little, under-paid salesmen, trying to entice buyers to buy. And the better you are at taking good pictures of houses, the more successful your photo salesmen will be at attracting buyers and selling the property.
Taking real estate photographs is not brain surgery. Real estate agents don't have to have loads of artistic talent to take good house pictures. It shouldn't be an effort to photograph your listings. If you feel that clicking away at a property is a waste of your valuable time, then you are probably doing it all wrong.
Let's start from the top:
You need photos of your real estate listings. There is nothing worse for a property's online exposure than those dreadful "no-image-available" thumbnails. Take a picture, even if you have to use the digital camera on your cellphone.
A proper real estate camera is better at taking pictures than your cellphone's built-in camera. But even a bad picture is better than none. And two pictures are better than one.
Take a picture!
Try to remember that your camera is not a gun, and the house you are photographing is not a target. Getting the house exactly in the middle of your sights would be a great way to shoot a big hole in it, but it is not so great for photo composition.
So many real estate photos have the house centered in the frame, with miles of meaningless sky above and non-discript space or fence to the sides. A house photo like that is barely better than the dreaded "no-pic" thumbnail.
Your real estate photographs should make buyers stop and take note. It should grab their attention. Buyers need to be able to see those details in your photographs that are most important to them. Every buyer is different. And different buyers look for different things in a house. So, you need to take lots of pictures!
Ask yourself (and the owners), "What is unique about this house? What makes this house special?" Take photographs to show off those features. You want to fill the frame with the feature you are trying to highlight.
If the ceiling is interesting, you need to get a photo. If the postbox is unusual, take the picture. Photograph the features that are popular in your area. Photograph textures and shapes as well as the usual views of the house.
You are using a digital camera, so take lots of pictures of the house. It costs practically nothing. You can always discard some photos, but if you need more pictures later, it will usually be too late to take more photographs.
You shouldn't have to spend lots of time editing your real estate photographs. To be practical (and therefore good), real estate photos should be taken in such a way that they are ready to show off as is, and not need to be cropped and re-touched in PhotoShop.
If you find yourself thinking, "I might want to crop/edit the image later", why not crop it now by filling the whole frame? The resolution of the picture will be a lot better, and you won't have to spend your time editing photographs on your computer.
Unusual photo compositions can capture the viewer's attention. You want your real estate pictures to stand out in the crowd. Why not get down on your knees to get an unusual point of view? Or try to get a higer-than-normal point of view by holding the camera high above your head. Get in really close to fill the frame. Turn the camera at an angle. Use your imagination!
Many digital cameras feature adustable LCD screens that allow you to compose photographs even when you cannot look through the optical view finder. Technology allows you to be creative, so why not go crazy and see what works?
If the property is in a place where you can get an arial view of the house, make the effort to get the shot. The effort you put into taking photos of your listings will pay off. So go for drama.
Any house will have darker nooks and crannies. Don't be afraid to blast the house with your electronic flash. The flash will bring out the details that would otherwise be cloaked in shadow. Use the flash - even in bright daylight outside.
A real estate camera with a wide angle lens is great for photographing the interior of a house. It will include the floor and ceiling in the picture, while giving a better idea of the size of the room.
The human eye takes in a whole lot of information and incorporates it into one picture. When we enter a room, our eyes rapidly move around, focusing on various features in quick sussession. Photographs ore bad simulations of the pictures our eyes capture. But a wide angle photograph allows our eyes to move around and pick out the details that interest us. They allow our eyes to move around as if we are really in the room, creating an experience of space. The closer we can emulate human sight in our real estate photographs, the more satisfying the experience to the viewer.
Two photographs taken with a wide-angle lens is enough to document the whole of the room. But remember that you should be looking for features to emphasise. You are photographing a house, but buyers want to see a home. Capture those things that a buyer may want to see in his/her new home.
Take lots of photographs. Oh, did I say that already? Well, take lots of photographs! You might need to discard a lot of the pictures you take, but the sellers will appreciate the effort, because it shows that you care about what you do. You are also more likely to find a few excellent real estate photographs in a pile of mediocre pictures.
Real estate photographs are opportunities to passively sell your listings. Your real estate photographs might very well be the only chance you get to entice a prospective buyer. So make it count.
Buyers are more likely to commit to a house after spending time looking at photos, often simply because they committed so much time to looking at those pictures. Quality and quantity are both important, where real estate photographs are concerned. At worst, the more time buyers spend looking at your real estate photographs, the less time they will have to look at other houses!
Good real estate photography takes time, but it is time well spent. Buyers pay attention to your house photos, because they are the first glipses of the property they can get.
Take lots of good pictures of your listings. Your efforts will be rewarded.
