Real Estate Photography – Showcase that Fireplace!

As a child, I can remember icy cold winter evenings laying on the family room floor watching television while warming my feet on the front edge of a wood burning fireplace. The mantle was lined with family Christmas photographs and there could not be too few marshmallows in my hot chocolate. Such wonderful memories in my childhood home will never be forgotten...

Very few features in a home can leave an impression as well as a fireplace. Fireplaces tend to be the main focus in family rooms and living rooms throughout the mid-western United States and are the perfect feature or upgrade in any home.

Important features should never go without being highlighted in real estate photographs and listings. Here are a few tips for getting that perfect fireplace photograph:

  – Make sure the fireplace is lit.

    The warm cozy feeling of a fireplace will be lost if the fireplace is not lit. While viewing photographs, the viewer’s eyes will be drawn to the dramatic highlights and colors created by a fire. Moreover, a cold dark hole where the fire should be will leave a fireplace photo uninspired and dull.

  – Make the fire glow.

    In all cases, photographs do not just take themselves. A good fireplace photograph will need a long exposure in order to catch dramatic dancing flames. In order to capture the photograph all in one shot, the use of strobes (multiple or single, depending upon the scenario) a longer exposure and high F-stop can create the perfect image.

   - The room and fireplace can be photographed separately.

Taking a completely separate exposure of the fireplace and placing it into a photograph of the room can result in a very dramatic photograph. This way you can get the perfect fireplace exposure separate from your exposure for the room. A simple Photoshop cut and paste or an HDR merge can help create the perfect photo in post production.

Next time you have a property with a fireplace, remember to showcase it in your listing! Good photography will make your listings look professional! Better listings = More Clients!

Read more blogs from Ian Haseltine and Haseltine-Photo:

What is most important in real estate photography?

Professional Real Estate Photographs - Making an Impression on a New Client

Are your real estate photographs the right color? - Getting white balance right

All photographs and content are the property of Haseltine-Photo INC - Real Estate Photography and Virtual Tour Provider. 

The topic of good real estate photography has been discussed in many ways. I have read articles and blogs about simple topics regarding which rooms should be shown and which should be excluded. I have also read and written about the technical aspects of real estate photography such as, white balance and focal length. However, these tips are not very effective if a real estate agent or home seller never asks the most important question about the images representing their real estate listing. “What do prospective buyers want to see in a listing?”

Moreover, how do you effectively market a real estate listing to homebuyers with photography?

It is important to focus on the factors that buyers look at when purchasing a home. These factors have not changed much from year to year, but what has changed is the availability of information and content to buyers.

In a vacuum, most agents and homebuyers would agree that the most important factors when buying a home are location, price, and condition.

All three of these factors can be expressed to a potential buyer via high-quality and well thought out photographs.

Location –

Clearly we can not change the location of a home, but we can make an effort to convey the positive factors of a property’s location.

If the property is a city condo, show the view and proximity to major landmarks via photographs.

If the property is located on a lake or canal make sure to highlight such features.

If the property is a white picket fence home in the suburbs, make sure to accentuate that feeling in your exterior photographs.

Virtual tours or photographs of the neighborhood, street views, or nearby landmarks are also great tools to help sell the location.

Price –

It is important to make a property look worth its listing price. If the photographs representing a property of any dollar amount don’t convey the property’s size, features, or value, the listing will not result in interest from buyers.

Rooms should appear large.

Features should not be ignored and should be highlighted.

Condition –

The condition of a property is a very important factor to buyers and it is important that a photograph does not highlight a property’s low-lights. Simple adjustments to a property’s condition will aid the photographer in getting a better photograph. Consulting a professional home stager to upgrade a property’s appearance to convey both price and condition is a great way to upgrade the quality of a listing.

Avoid highlighting a property's negatives.

The result of taking photographs to accentuate what potential buyers desire will result in converting real estate listings into sales!

All photographs and content are the property of Haseltine-Photo INC - Real Estate Photography and Virtual Tour Provider. 

Now that the holiday season has come and gone, we are looking ahead to a prosperous New Year and an exciting resurgence in our business and industry. The last two years have been very difficult to endure, but we feel like we have learned much from our mistakes and missteps. Every decision we made seemed to be more significant than the one before because of diminishing resources and the shape of the market. Ahead, we see a bright future and are ready to take it on with every ounce of energy that we have.

In the last year, we have added some valuable new clients and deeply appreciate their business. We have also continued to work with our clients of the past and are happy to see them fight this economy in-step with us. We hope to keep providing those loyal to our services with the greatest professional photography and overall quality of business they have come to expect.

We also would like to continue to improve on a daily basis in an effort to stay ahead of our competition, better ourselves, and create a service that our potential clients will seek out. Our quality matters to us in a great way and we hope it shows. We will strive to achieve the goals that we set and meet the already high expectation that we have set for ourselves. Success is not something that is given to anyone, and we understand that. At Haseltine-Photo we are willing to work hard and make success happen!

One of our first steps to success this year was put into motion with the creation of our new web site. It is our belief that the new site projects the confidence that we have in both our quality and service. We hope that we can use our new site to portray our company’s mission to provide the best professional photography and virtual tour service to the industry.

Please take some time to review our new web site. We are committing to constant updates and changes to the site and hope to get positive feedback as we go. We also welcome constructive criticism along the way…because we will only get better from it! 

Our new web site can be found at http://www.haseltine-photo.com/

All photographs and content are the property of Haseltine-Photo INC - Real Estate Photography and Virtual Tour Provider. 

Images are the property of Ian Haseltine - Haseltine Photo INC.

Put your real estate listings in another class with professional photography and virtual tours by Haseltine-Photo! All of our tours are MLS compatible and can be posted to Realtor.com. Click Here for a Sample Virtual Tour! 

Thank you for checking in! Read more from Ian Haseltine - Haseltine-Photo  ---> HERE!

Images are the property of Ian Haseltine - Haseltine Photo INC.

Put your real estate listings in another class with professional photography and virtual tours by Haseltine-Photo! All of our tours are MLS compatible and can be posted to Realtor.com. Click Here for a Sample Virtual Tour! 

Thank you for checking in! Read more from Ian Haseltine - Haseltine-Photo  ---> HERE!

What kind of difference can professional real estate photographs make?

Well, they can make an incredible difference! A recent client of Haseltine-Photo was a Chicago based real estate agent with a beautiful property in Chicago's West Loop. The property has a great location surrounded by commerce, culture, and some great places to dine. Even though the real estate market has been hit pretty hard around the country, Chicago's West Loop has many forms of property still increasing in value (of course not all properties)!

This agent called our office at 5:45 PM on a Thursday evening. The call was forwarded to me in my office from one of my customer service reps who are answering phones here 7 days a week. I was already shutting down for the day seeing that I was going to be fleeing the office at 6:00. The agent was set on having professional photographs and virtual tours for her listing as soon possible. When I heard that, I quickly swung into action and made room for her listing's professional real estate photography session the next business day.

While engaging in friendly conversation with my new client I learned that she has had the property listed for some time without receiving a single call. I was not too surprised to hear this seeing that we were being hired via a Google search to take photographs of the property. Usually when a new agent calls us to inquire about our services they are usually pretty frustrated with the results of their current or past listings. The other popular "new agent/client" qualifiers are: that they are fed up with the service/quality of the other company they use, someone else in their office uses our services, or they were pressured by a homeowner to get professional photographs. In an effort to be fair, all reasons for needing our services we happily accept :-)

After completing the shoot, creating the virtual tours, and packaging everything into a link that we host at no additional cost I took the time to view the agent's previous listing for the property...and I was shocked by the photographs that I saw previously representing the property! I had to create a before and after!

My new client was thrilled with the results and promises to refer Haseltine-Photo to every agent and home seller she knows!

Here is the link to her Virtual Tour...I chose not to send everyone to the actual listing to keep my new client out of the headlines. However, she seems to be a wonderful person and agent...and I am very happy to work with her!

The new photographs will surely have an impact on this listing!

All photographs and content are the property of Haseltine-Photo INC - Real Estate Photography and Virtual Tour Provider.

Images are the property of Ian Haseltine - Haseltine Photo INC.

Thank you for checking in! Read more from Ian Haseltine - Haseltine-Photo  ---> HERE!

There are many blurry lines when it comes to what photos can and cannot be used on a blog/website/newsletter/etc. There is one rule every blogger and business owner should follow, and that is: If you are not the photographer or if you did not have direct contact with the photographer, you are not safe to use the image!

There are a lot of "free" stock photo sites out there that many bloggers and businesses are using. The only thing free about these sites is their liability!

Look closely at the terms and conditions of these sites...they will say things like, "You agree that neither (place the stock photo site's name here) nor its affiliates, nor any of their respective officers, directors, employees, owners, agents, representatives, licensors and (sub)licensees (other than yourself, as applicable), shall be liable for any damages, whether direct, incidental, indirect or consequential, arising from any use by you of the Website, even if such parties have been advised, or advised of the possibility, of such damage."

Many of these websites operate by trading or receiving photographs from its "members" who have agreed to "give" their photos and copyrights to the site to be redistributed for free. The "members" are asked to certify that they are the rightful owners of the photograph and they are submitting their work.

Well, in a perfect world...this would work just fine...but the subject of copyright is wrapped with far too much red tape to keep any users of these sites to stay out of trouble.

If a "member" uploads a photo that they copied from another website or did not rightfully own and you post it to your blog or your website...YOU ARE LIABLE TO BE SUED!!!

If a "member" uploads a photo that they did take and own the copyright to, but they do not have the proper release signed by the person or brand owner of the photographs subject...YOU ARE LIABLE TO BE SUED!!!

If a "member" uploads a photo that they did take and own the copyright and they do have a proper release signed regarding brand owner or person of the subject in the photograph and you use it in a way that can be considered defamation of character or slander...YOUR ARE LIABLE TO BE SUED!!!

Example #1:

There was a case in Minneapolis where the phone company used a Photograph of the city taken by a photographer that posted his image online. When the photographer saw his image on the phone book and knew that he had not submitted it for their use he began to inquire. The phone company claimed that they had rightfully attained the photograph from someone else who had clearly stolen it. Even though the phone company had documentation regarding the purchase of the photograph they were forced to pay $19,462 in a copyright lawsuit.

Example#2:

At a Virginia state fair in 1996 a photographer took a photograph of Andrew Marsinko holding a prize goose. The photograph was then sold to a notable stock photography agency which then sold the photograph to the Leanin' Tree greeting card company. The card company put the following quote on their greeting card over the photograph of Mr. Marsinko and his prized goose, "Since it's your birthday, you decide - Would you rather get spanked... or goosed?" The card was mass-produced in 2006...and there is an ongoing lawsuit still today.

Overall, be careful when you use images for your blogs and websites. DO NOT trust sites that allow you to take photos for free but accept no liability of their own! Remember to practice safe blogging!

ALL images are always owned by Ian Haseltine & Haseltine-Photo - Real estate photography and Virtual Tour Provider. 

Images are the property of Ian Haseltine - Haseltine Photo INC.

Thank you for checking in! Read more from Ian Haseltine - Haseltine-Photo  ---> HERE!

     An effective real estate photograph should be sharp unless the photographer is attempting to give the photograph an artistic spin. After all, the point of all real estate photography should be to showcase the property in the best way possible. In my opinion, that means that a real estate photograph should show the property's best angles, optimize the room's size, show proper colors, show the room free of clutter/distraction, give an accurate portrayal of layout, and last but not least DETAILS. It is difficult to show detail in a photograph that is not sharp.

     To effectively take a sharp real estate photograph your camera should be mounted on a tripod...unless you are trying to rush the shoot...you should always use a tripod. Also, you should use a timer or remote to control your shutter. In order to get the sharpest photograph possible you should remove all influence of movement while capturing your photograph. This is also important if you are taking any form of an HDR photograph. Any movement will compromise the quality of laying one photograph over another. If you are not using professional lighting, you are likely to have a long exposure. The long exposure is necessary because you will want to have a high f/stop (above F-8) in order to extend your depth of field and create a sharp photograph throughout your image.

     The above tips along with many others will help you attain the image we are all striving for...but if your photograph does not have that perfect crisp look, here is a Photoshop tip to help sharpen your image.

     Use the High Pass Filter. Photoshop defines the filter as: Retains edge details in the specified radius where sharp color transitions occur and suppresses the rest of the image. (A radius of 0.1 pixel keeps only edge pixels.) The filter removes low-frequency detail in an image and has an effect opposite to that of the Gaussian Blur filter.

     My suggestion to using this filter is based on the fact that it gives you more control over the sharpening process, it adds contrast and sharpness to the edges of objects in your photographs, and it will not pixelate your photograph like many sharpening tools will. It is also a great filter to use on specific objects in a photograph. Anything shiny will "pop" in your photograph with the use of this filter. 

Here is the step-by-step how to on the High Pass Filter:

1. Open your image in Photoshop

     2. Create a duplicate copy of your image/background layer (Drag the current layer to the create new layer button, or select all copy and paste)

     3. Go to the menu bar and select - Filter > Other > High Pass

     4. Select a level of intensity and click "OK"

     5. Change the layer blending mode from "Normal" to "Overlay"

     6. Adjust the Transparency of your High pass layer until the photo has the level of sharpness you desire.

Compare the results...Save and Close.