If a picture says a thousand words; why tape it's mouth shut?  

I am a designer and marketing specialist by profession, but I specialize in Real Estate marketing. In addition to 3 other Real Estate Books; I proudly produce the graphics and layouts for The Tulare County Real Estate Book. When it comes to listing photos, I think I have seen it all; from top-notch, beautifully staged listing photos to low resolution camera phone photos being submitted for print ads.  

Some of the most common problems I have seen in printed listing photos include: 

• Photos taken by a camera phone or with camera settings that allow for more photos to be taken at a lower resolution to fit more on a memory card.
• Photos with half of the house cropped off to hide a car in the driveway
• Photos with the sun behind the house, leaving the home completely in the shadows
• Photos taken at night (not the artsy dusk type shots either - I am speaking of homes that have a fluorescent bug light blaring on the porch and the rest of the home is so dark, you are hard pressed to find a silhouette)
• Photos taken from a car (Yes, I have had to remove the rear view mirror!)
• Photos taken from a great distance and zoomed WAY too far in and cropped
• Photos cropped in too far to allow for creative placement within the ad

Curing these problems are actually easier than one might think!  Here are a few tips on taking photos good enough for any print ad:

• Set your camera on the highest quality you can without sacrificing the ability to store more than a couple photos. A large memory card and a reasonably priced mid-range camera will do the trick just fine. Just please put away the camera phone! :)
• If there is no way to get the car in the driveway moved or you can't come back when it's gone. It's better just to leave the car in the photo than to chop the house off at the garage. Leaving things up to the buyers imagination only works with lingerie.
• Make time to go take the photo when natural sunlight can work with you. Heck sunlight is free and it sure beats a porch light!
• Don't take photos at night. If you just love those evening shots with all of the house lights on, just remember that the aperture settings of a standard point and shoot camera cannot adjust enough automatically to let in creative light. Leave the night time shots to the pros or if you're so inclined use a tri-pod and a camera that can be manually configured. (Not for the photographically faint of heart)
• Take photos at a distance, leaving 20% of croppable area around all sides of the house and submit the uncropped versions for print publications. Photos taken with a high enough quality setting can be zoomed and framed nicely without sacrificing quality. If you are not laying out your own ads - it is very hard to tell the dimensions of the box or frame that the photo will set in. Cropping in too close will mean that the photo will be further cropped if it does not fit its photo box exactly.
  
• Do not use photos posted on the internet for print.Your computer monitor does not see beyond 72DPI and most print publications require a photo to be at 300DPI or more. Even a photo that fills your entire computer screen will most times not be print quality. The best bet is always to provide the publisher with photos downloaded directly from your camera.

Many times in print people tend to scan quickly, going from photo to photo. Once a photo grabs their eye - the lead in line draws them to read through the rest of the way (Lead lines - that's a separate blog post all together!)

Taking the best possible pictures will definitely pay off in the long run and you will reap the rewards of the few simple steps you've taken in the beginning to ensure the best possible outcome!