We will help you with practical tips on photographing real estate so that you can photograph real estate correctly and take better photos than the competition.
We live in a visual age. Before reading a text, the reader looks at the illustrative photos. And photos actually say more than a thousand words sometimes. This sentence always applies to photographing real estate. Meaningful, aesthetic images are a trailblazer for sales success. But they don't shoot themselves just by investing in expensive technology. High quality real estate photography needs fixed rules and a good look.So let's get into our 10 Tips For Beginners To Get Better At Photographing Real Estate | Real Estate Photography shall we?
Photographing Real Estate in the age of flood of images
The 1,000 billion mark was broken in 2015: This is how many photos were taken worldwide this year. In the era of the smartphone, the picture is not far - most of these snapshots do not meet professional criteria, they alone have a personal value. There are also countless photos on the real estate market. Unfortunately, many of them were also artlessly shot with smartphones.
Better photos support the sale of the property
But photographing real estate is not a social media communication, but a sales support - even the most important in the run-up to prospecting for a property! You can own a dream villa with herringbone parquet, stucco ceilings and rose rondel: If you take photos carelessly through the rooms with a shaky smartphone in rainy weather, your sales opportunities will decrease. Because in the visual age, you compete against a large bevy of competing photos from other properties. And, real estate market competitors may have done their homework better and put an average apartment or conventional house in the best light. So it's worth doing this homework yourself or, if you don't have the time, to get professional help from our agency.
Show your qualities with high quality photos
As a seller / landlord for a housing association or as a commercial broker, you also show your professionalism with high-quality photos. A technically and aesthetically well-made photo is the best way to prepare for a sales pitch. The preparatory work of our agency will be particularly helpful for regular or large projects, because with our network we can visit a large number of properties nationwide in a very short time, take photos and provide you with high-quality real estate photos.
Planning & preparation
Preparation is everything. The observance of this principle is decisive for the success of real estate photography. Before you get into what tech you need and how to use it, you need to make your home and property photogenic. Let's start with the outdoors.
- Order is the first selling point. A well-tended lawn and cut shrubs testify to the careful handling of the property and send positive signals.
- Clear annoying objects such as clothes horse and rubbish bin from the picture.
- If you want to achieve spatial depth, place highlights of the property in the visible area.
- Present your property in as large a format as possible. Take photos from an elevated position, for example from a stepladder.
- If your property is in a quiet, scenic environment, this attractive neighborhood can of course be part of photographing real estate.
- But advantages of the immediate surroundings such as shopping centers, public transport stops, playgrounds and parks can also be added to the exposé.
The right weather
Finally, a word about the weather. A property that is recorded in a rainy landscape has a dreary appearance. Take photos when the weather is favorable. The time of day also plays into the effect of the picture. Recordings at the golden hour, in the morning or in the evening sun convey a cozy atmosphere. The real estate photography expert recommends a beautiful day at dusk with the windows lit for objects whose exterior paintwork is past its prime. And if the weather doesn't play along perfectly, our professional photographers can help out with tricks such as a good weather guarantee .
This is what real estate photos from professionals could look like
Here are some examples of professional real estate photos from our photographers
Outside and Inside
Order and cleanliness are self-evident. Do not present the rooms of the property completely cluttered and over-decorated. Avoid taking photos of private objects such as toothbrushes, colorful shower curtains, but also trash cans. The more objects there are in a room, the smaller it looks and the more disoriented the viewer's eye becomes. Conversely, photographing real estate does not have an appealing effect if the object shown is presented completely bare and empty. In this case, a few decorative, high-quality objects, furniture and decorations will help create a living atmosphere and draw attention.
Digital furniture for empty spaces
And if you don't want to lug furniture and place decorations yourself, you can also help digitally afterwards. The art of decorating even has a name: You can find out more about it under the keyword Digital Home Staging.
It's all about the right light
Light also plays an important role in indoor shots. Spring and autumn are ideal for photographing real estate of interiors. However, you shouldn't use a spring image if you're not marketing your property until winter - customers could get the idea that it is a slow moving business. Good lighting is essential. Turn on all the lights, open windows and doors, and let in as much light as possible. Also, pay attention to the time of day you are shooting. You will achieve the best results in the morning when the sun is low or in the evening when the golden hour begins. However, you should avoid the so-called blue (twilight) hour.
It all depends on the perspective and perspective
Photographing Real Estate: a pinch of technology cannot be avoided
The photo model is in optimal condition. And you know the times when it would like to be photographed. Now let's take a quick look at your equipment for photographing real estate without getting lost in technical details. Smartphones today take amazingly good photos - but real estate photography requires a higher quality camera. Digital SLR cameras or mirrorless system cameras have sensors of the right size and differentiated programs to deal with the sometimes difficult lighting situations in real estate photography.
A super wide angle lens is a must
A very important accessory is the wide-angle lens, with which much larger and therefore more presentable image sections can be recorded. A tripod is recommended as a further extra to prevent camera shake. Alternatively, you can place your camera on a chair, cupboard or stepladder.
Do not use your camera's internal flash
The camera's internal flash must remain switched off when taking pictures indoors. This message surprises laypeople in photographing real estate again and again - after all, you work in areas with less light and want to provide brightening there! In fact, an internal flash can reach a maximum of four meters. He creates ugly, hard-edged shadows and irritating reflections. The warm colors of living spaces are inevitably destroyed by lightning.
Use the indoor camera program. Avoid overexposed photos because, unlike underexposed photos, they are more difficult to correct in post-processing on the PC.
A tip from the professional: If you still have to flash, the light should also come from the direction of visible light sources such as windows or lamps - keyword: unleashed flashing.
It depends on the perspective "The golden section"
You can heed all the previous tips, create all the prerequisites for successful results and still fail if you reproduce your interior with distorted vertical lines (so-called converging lines). For the correct alignment, switch on the 9-digit grid of the camera and obtain an external spirit level. This is a small, inexpensive and very practical tool that is simply plugged into the external flash connector of your camera. The best starting position for successful real estate photography is definitely below half the height of the room.
- In order to achieve a large room depth and to depict as much of the room as possible, choose the door frame as the location and take pictures diagonally across the room from about waist height. You can achieve a good spatial perspective if you always include two or three walls in the picture.
- Give the viewer of the recordings clues as to which room of the house it is. In other words, if you depict the dining room, there should also be a dining room set in the photo.
- You are welcome to dedicate your real estate photography to valuable architectural details. A stucco rosette, a brick fireplace and the valuable old parquet floor are good sales arguments.
- You can photograph most of the rooms in your property in landscape format; only very small rooms look better in portrait format.
- Avoid unwanted self-portraits in the mirror when taking pictures.
- And do not take photos directly in the direction of the window - the strong incoming light would make the room in front of it appear cave-like and dark.
The right focal length for outdoor real estate photography
The exterior shots of real estate are an important part. Often, however, there is not enough space to photograph the entire building. We often see partially cut facades or terrible upright photos in which everything is crooked and crooked.
Which lens and focal length is best for photographing real estate ?
The best lens for real estate photography is a super wide angle for full format cameras with, for example, 14 or 16mm focal length. For small format cameras this means 10-18mm focal length. However, it should not be less focal length, as this distorts the rooms too much.
Avoid falling lines
Outdoor shots are always distorted. This is due to the technical nature of the lens and sensor. With simple tricks in image editing programs (e.g. Lightroom: Upright Transform) a distorted image can be quickly straightened (straightened image over this text)
Best Cheap Camera For Real Estate Photography
To get started with photographing real estate , we recommend an inexpensive entry-level SLR camera with a super angle lens.
In this case, for example, the Canon 5D Mark IV is great for photographing real estate and a light carbon tripod for around 90 $ (Links to Amazon).
The equipment of the professionals: Our professional photographers, on the other hand, use full-frame cameras with bright lenses and usually even larger wide angles - that means: They get even more space on the photo. The equipment used by professionals usually costs more than 3,000 euros (camera + lens). It is not uncommon for our photographers to have several lenses in use for their orders, so that the equipment is quickly worth between 5,000 and 8,000 euros.
After the shoot
We not only live in an age of the image, we live in the age of image processing. For the discerning photographer, there are possibilities for aesthetic image formation that would previously have required an entire retouching factory. The possibilities of deviating from reality are just as great. For this reason, image processing in real estate photography should be used very carefully. You must not falsify the character of the object or make new from old. But you can correct distortions, color casts, unsightly lighting conditions and poor color saturation. For example, reduce the saturation of the color blue to reduce the cooler daylight from outside.
Once you've tweaked everything, it's time to sort your stuff. You need a reference photo as a lead picture, two photos per room and two to three exterior shots. Complete your image exposé with the inclusion of a particularly high-quality detail / room. Saving in jpg format allows publication on online real estate portals.
These were our "10 Tips For Beginners To Get Better At Photographing Real Estate | Real Estate Photography" for you. I hope you enjoyed! Don't forget to leave us your question down below in the comments. We would love to hear from you.
No comments
Post a Comment