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Provide AFTER Photos for your Home Staging Clients

AFTER home staging - Dining Room

In fellow stager Craig Schiller's blog today Set Your Sites Low..., we are reminded to shoot rooms and not ceilings. It inspired me to suggest that we stagers ALWAYS provide AFTER photos to our staging clients, realtors and homeowners alike.

We are paid to be visual professionals. What better way to finish the job than to provide beautiful AFTER photos that document the work, and help sell the house via better listing photos.

As visual pros, we must spend the time to ensure that the photos look their best. I find that spending just a few minutes testing camera settings while shooting can make all the difference. I try and find the setting that will let me shoot without a flash, which allows both natural and artificial lighting to look its best. Heck, sometimes Portrait settings work best. Who knew! And sunny days are not always the best time to shoot, as they can generate too much contrast and glare. Takes a bit of experimentation, but it is so worth it.

I take lots of shots, at several angles - without too much ceiling! :) - because you cannot always tell which angle will look best once posted online. I also typically shoot with a tripod, to ensure the photos are clear.

My clients have so appreciated this service. I am sure yours will too.

Lisa

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Posted by Lisa Kauffman Tharp - BostonHomeStaging.com on 01/16/2007 06:42 AM

Comments (9)

listing photos, home staging services

9 Comments on Provide AFTER Photos for your Home Staging Clients

JAN

2007

Lisa... BINGO! Taking the time to do this will pay off. The client will appreciate it and as you said you learned by doing. So right now to give these photos away for free is a good idea... until you get good.

BUT once you do get good you can SELL this as a service on top of the staging.

This post is the perfect example of how Active Rain can work... one shared idea can generate another idea.

What if every ACTIVE RAIN stager took awesome pictures and offfered them to thier clients. Wouldn't THAT alone differentiate you from others? Couldn't that alone raise the "standards" that all other stagers aspired to?

The industry grows as we share.

Stage it forward...

JAN

2007

I always provide after pictures to the client so they can remember how to keep their homes staged and what it's suppose to look like! But only did that with occupied stagings... I'm going to aspire to take better pictures (thanks to Criag's nudging) and provide them for everyone - good idea! (Now if I can just remember to bring my reading glasses so I can actually read the buttons on my camera!)

Thanks for the reminder that the photos help the owner keep the home staged. Great photos are one of the best reasons for staging in the first place- to get great photos to put up on the web. With increasing numbers of home buyers using the Internet for their home search, the photos used to market the property take on more and more importance.

I absolutely agree. It helps us to stand out as professionals and can be very useful for the agents to use on the MLS. Lisa you make good points about trying different light, flash, angles- I am very very very slowly figuring it all out.

Judy, you are so funny!

Lisa - what you say is so true! Thanks for a photo 101 crash course!

I know that I am going to have to start taking my tripod on jobs because my pictures are always at an angle!

Fabulous advice. Great photos are essential for a stager's portfolio, the agent for listings and clients for maintaining the staged look. I think I am going to take a photography course. My pictures always seem dark even though I've learned about the "fool the shutter" technique.

Absolutely. Photography is an art. It invokes people to react upon what they see. If a stager do not take professional photos, then hire one.

I dont understand how a realtor (in my line) could say that he is in and out with photos in 20 minutes..... That's why we get the qualities that we do on MLS.

JAN

2007

Val Thank you for your comment regarding photos taken on an angle.

When in doubt, photos on an angle usually provide the buyer not only with a betters sense of multiple walls in the space, but a better idea of the SIZE of the space. It is no coincidence that many design magazine photos are not straight on, but rather on the angle. Gives the eye a lot more visual interest, and generally makes for a better shot.

Lisa

JAN

2007

Hey Lisa,

I totally agree with you. I mentioned that in Craig's blog as well.

More stagers should offer photography as part of their services. They are the ones with the artistic flair after all, and taking them just after the staging is complete is the best possible time.

You (meaning Craig) inspired me to invest in a digital SLR with ultrawide angle lens (plus flash and tripod) and my photos are shaping up quite nicely.

What a great way for stagers to add value to their service and to set themselves apart from the rest!

And with the Kodak that Jeff Turner recommends, it can be easily done for an investment of less than $300 (currently $230).

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