Real Estate Photography
Taking Real Estate Photos Like A Pro – Creating professional real estate photography using a standard digital camera will be challenging compared to the ability of a professional real estate photographer with SLR camera, tripod, flash equipment and several lenses to take normal and wide angle photos. There is however a few simple techniques to assist in generating reasonable quality real estate photography using a standard digital camera.
Clean Away Clutter – Ensure that you present your property in the best possible way. In the kitchen, clear away bench tops, fridge magnets and so forth. This applies to all parts of the house you will photograph.
Composing a good real estate photo – Rule of three prevails here. Look at the shot you are about to take through your view finder and equally divide the shoot area into nine equal portions.
Select a key feature within the photo area that you feel the viewer’s eyes will be drawn to and use this in one of the nine quadrants. It is this focal point that will lead the eyes of the person viewing your photo. Looking for lines and angles within the view finder before clicking will also assists in taking a photo like a professional real estate photographer.
Real Estate Photography (interior shots) – There will be a good chance the light will be poor in the interior of your property, which in turn will activate the flash. Given that the standard flash is only good for around two meters in front of the camera your flash activation will create an image that is bright and washed out in the foreground with a dark and gloomy background. To overcome this firstly you need to deactivte the camera’s flash and borrow or purchasing a tripod. The digital camera will read the light level and activate the camera shutter accordingly and bring more light into the camera. The tripod stops any camera shake which in turn delivers a clean, blur free photo.
Turn on interior lights and open up curtains to bring in natural light. If you have fluorescent lights keep these off as they make your photos look green. Always shoot away from windows and never aim your camera directly towards the window. Shooting towards windows will make everything dark in the room while the exterior, being bright, will flare the photo.
Real Estate Photos (Exterior Shots) – Getting the best from your exterior shots can be achieved by once again locating lines and angles that lead the viewer into the shot. This can be achieved by using pathways, fence lines or taking your photo from the corner of your property to give perspective and interest. Avoid taking the photo of your house front on unless you have pathways or something unique to lead the eye into the main subject, being the house.
– Critical to great real estate photos is the time of day. Never take photos between 10.30 am – 3.30pm. At this point the sun is at its harshest and will wash out colours and tones as well as create dark shadow to your shot. Shoot anytime before or after these times to take advantage of soft natural light.
– Shooting at dusk will make your house look warm and inviting. To achieve this you will need a tripod to alleviate camera shake while also disarming your flash. Turn on all the interior lights to your property and shoot from a vantage point outside that offers the best of your house.
– When pressing your camera button do it as gentle as possible to avoid any camera movement. Due to low light tour digital camera shutter will stay open a little longer than normal to allow more light into the camera. Any shake of the camera will make the shot fuzzy and unfocused.
– To give your property that crisp fresh feel another trick of photographers is to do the photo shoot early morning. The tip here is to ensure you take your exterior photos just before the sun hits the horizon. Shooting the exterior during this time offers very soft clean light making your house appear fresh and clean.
Finally for Sellingmyhouse.com.au website ensure your camera’s image setting is minimum 800 x 600 pixels. This is the minimum size to enable our online system to create signage and high quality print material. In addition do not go much bigger then these image dimensions as the photo file size (megabits) will slow your upload capability if you have a limited broadband plan.
See our photo editing page so you can size and manipulate your real estate photos for a great look.
Happy Real Estate Photography
