Sandy's Photography Class 2

As a professional photographer in Real Estate it makes me cringe when I see some of the listing photos put out there. If you understand the value of curb appeal, if you understand the value of a well staged home, but you neglect the value of high quality photos you are really doing yourself a huge disservice. Over 80% of home shopping begins on the internet where your pictures do ALL the talking for pete's sake.

more about me:

My name is Sandy Jagmin, my husband and I own Brick Road Visuals. We offer professional photography, 360° interactive virtual tours, and marketing solutions to real estate agents and businesses in NW Arkansas. If you are ready to let me take on some of your workload so you can concentrate on bigger and better things don't hesitate to give me a call. If you are not ready for a professional, but you want to improve your photos read on...

There are a lot of things you won't see in any of my photos - blown out windows, flash reflections, out of focus shots, under- or overexposed shots, the list goes on.

Today we're going to talk about the blown out windows.

Here are some examples from real property listings:

The reason that the windows get blown out is basically your indoor to window light is out of balance. The camera's shutter stays open long enough to expose the indoors, but by doing that it stays open too long for the window light. To combat this you will want the indoor light to match or overpower the window light. You can achieve this 2 ways: wait 'til the outdoor light is not so bright (evening) or increase the indoor light. Since you may not want to spend all of your evenings going to your homes and taking pics, lets talk about increasing your indoor light.

You need to use more flash power. Unfortunately, your on camera flash is not going to do you much good. Most of the time they are not powerful enough to light the entire room, so you'll have dark corners. Also, the angle of the flash will leave ugly shadows, but we'll talk more about that later. You will need a good off camera flash - or two! I set up 1 or 2 flashes strategically to avoid flash reflections and harsh shadows, they fire when I take my photo, and I get beautifully sharp pictures with no blown out windows.

Here's one of my photos:

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Sandy Jagmin

Brick Road Visuals

Professional Virtual Tours in Northwest Arkansas

www.BrickRoadVisuals.com