Agents Taking Listing Photos - Counter Points To An AR Featured Post
There is a featured post called:
"Don't let your agent photograph your home with their cell phone". It was a members only post so I can not link to it from this post since my post is public. The short of it is that Eric Hemler gave his opinion about photos taken of listings. He made a comment that created a pretty good debate. Allen May let me know that I can link to the members only post and if you are logged in you will be able to get to the post. So I added the link just now.
What sparks most of the comments was that he said that sellers should not allow the listing agent to take listing photos with their phone.
I was one of the commenters that totally flat out disagreed with that statement.
Actually it got me to thinking that if I had more time I could create an entire article series and tutorials on making the most of your iPhone 4 and iPad2. But I really don't have that kind of time right now.
The point is that if you can take good photos of your listings with a shoe box camera than go for it.
It is not so much the camera as it is the vision and talent and skill set of the person taking the photos. Many agents become very good at photography. There are photographers who become agents and visa versa. Just because you are a real estate agent does not mean you have to hire a professional photographer for all your listing photos. Just because you are a real estate agent does not mean you can not also be good at taking great photos.
If you look at our high end listings- we take those photos.
Nestor takes great photos and I also take good photos. We enjoy taking the photos ourselves because we know what buyers are looking for in the house. A photographer might be able to take a great photo but it may be the wrong photo! An agent who is good at marketing- which should be the second skill set after good communication skills- will know how to capture the look and feel that a potential buyer would be attracted to. Buyers find our listings online and they make offers on our listings. They compliment our photos often.
The other side of this argument is about truth in advertising. How much should that photo be photoshopped before it is considered false advertising? An agent taking photos is going to have a much more realistic approach. But that is a subject for another post.
Now for the camera points-
You can have the fanciest and most expensive camera in the world and still take crappy photos.
You can have a simple point and shoot camera and take a great photo.
In this day and age saying that a phone is a bad way to take a photo and that a sellers should not hire you because you are going to take photos of their home with your iPhone is just- well- not understanding technology!
There are entire awesome groups of photographers who have abandoned their expensive camera equipment and gone all out with iPhone apps, a tripod and lighting. There are entire short movies being made just with an iPhone and the apps to make that process awesome.
We get the iPhone magazine and in the latest edition there were pages and pages devoted to all the cool iPhoto apps that are now available for pro photographers. You can with a few apps, take a photo on your iPhone, add framing, lighten it up, remove shadows, crop the image, add saturation and all the other techie touch ups to a photo like you can in iPhoto- and even upload that photo right to your website, facebook page and posterous, etc.
Here is a beautiful short video that was entirely filmed and produced on the iPhone of the California Redwoods. It is only about 2 minutes long. But when you see what you can do in the forest with the iPhone you can also do on your listings.
The iPhone 4s camera is an 8 megapixels camera with state of the art optics that compete with the best in cameras. It also has 1080 hd video. With the new pixels on this phone you can print up to an 8x10 photo- that has never been done before on a phone. The lighting in the iPhone is even better- the "custom lens uses five precision elements to shape incoming light which makes the image sharper". The camera lets more light in which makes sharper images. It also has an infrared filter that keeps the IR light out so your colors look better than in a regular camera.
It has an A5 chip which makes the processor just as good as those in DSLR cameras. You can also take the photos in HDR. This is just the tiny part of what the iPhone camera can do. I hope to find the time to gather up for you the coolest apps on the planet to help you edit your photos right on your camera.
Here are a few photos that we took with our iPhones and also some that were taken without any editing at all from the Apple website. ( Apple's TOS says you can use their images to share information about their products). These photos were unretouched!
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