Do Your Photos Make the Grade?

Thank you Margaret, you're awesome!  8}

Clearly a difference between the first and second versions. Good work :-)

As a Stager, it would be an asset if you align yourself with a professional photographer and include the photographs as part of your services.  Make your price higher, but you are delivering TWO very valuable services to the client (and/or agent).  Remember, no matter how good your staging is, if the photos are poor, your efforts will be in vain.

I have begun aligning myself with Chrissie Sutherland of Ready Set Stage and we have one project under our belt with 2 more just around the corner.  Here is an example of our collaborative efforts:

http://activerain.com/blogsview/883465/The-POWER-of-Home-Staging-Professional-Photography

I plan on aligning myself with other Home Stagers as well, it just makes sense, I need their work as much as they need mine.  It makes for a great symbiotic relationship.

Great before and after's and what a testimony to doing a little bit of prep work.

YOu can do my photos any day....great point and great post...thanks for sharing!

If people were not convinced about the importance of well taken and staged photography, they should be after viewing your excellent before and after photos.  When I take photographs of a home, I plan on being at the home for a long time moving things and removing things from the shot.  Then there is the light which is huge in making sure you can actually see the room and it captures the true colors and essence of the room.  Appreciate your post, it is great!

You are right Margaret, I give the photographer an "A"! In the first exterior photo, the focus is on the tree which seems oversize. In the next shot, the house is the focus. And, it is IN focus!

So true.  And those are excellent examples!

Your photos do make a difference.  I'm curious about bedrooms - the photo is almost always of the bed.  Those are the most difficult photos as far as I am concerned.

What an amazing difference in the little blue bedroom.  It looks twice as big in the professional shot.

Bruce & Mary,

For this particular property there were actually a couple of different angles that were shot for a couple of the bedrooms, but for the purposes of the comparison, I tried to only include images that were from roughly the same perspective or of the same subject (i.e. the front side of the house) if I didn't have a shot from the same perspective.  I think that Margaret is correct though, often times you see the bed because it gives people a frame of reference so they can get an idea of how large a bed will hold.  This was a large consideration for me, personally, because I have a rather large canopy bed, and any home we purchased had to be able to accomodate our bed in the master bedroom.  Having images that give an idea of how large the bedrooms are (ceiling height included) were very helpful to us, so showing the ceiling height in pictures, in relation to the rest of the room, can be very beneficial.

Sharon,

You're correct in noticing that the original picture of the bedroom made it look smaller, however I will hasten to add that the view you see in the second image does in fact reflect more accurately what you see when you stand in the doorway to the room.

I'd like to also note that there were more bedrooms and features in this property that are not shown here.  In my comparison I only included images that were similar to what were actually used.  I'm reiterating this again, not to harp on the person who listed the property, but to say that for what the MLS is utilized for (to give a good first impression of the listed property) I truly believe that less is NOT more in most cases when it comes to the use of pictures.  I keep hearing about the amount of realtors who are leaving the field right now because the market is "so bad," yet I keep seeing listings that I truly feel shouldn't be a hard sell, but (in my opinion) simply aren't being presented in the best possible light to get them seen in the first place.  I don't mean to sound like a nag, and I by no means think that better listing pictures are going to sell the property for you (a well thought out, wholisitic marketting approach including targeted marketting, top notch staging and pictures, coupled with a positive attitude can put you miles ahead of the rest of what's out there) but it can be very frustrating to listen to the negativity, all the while knowing there are still things that can be done to move things in a more positive direction.

Great example of putting some additional effort into your photography and it will pay!  Your homes will sell faster and for more money!  Mindy