I love photography -- Good photography.
Years ago I was an eager amateur. I even had my own darkroom where I played with shading and lighting. The enjoyment was in discovering the nuance in the image.
Since then, I've spent untold hours art directing photographers taking pictures of commercial buildings for brochures, marketing displays, advertisements and direct mail campaigns that I have produced. It's fun, but it is also serious business. From my experience, commercial realtors are extremely concerned about how they present their buildings - particularly Class A buildings - to corporate real estate decision makers.
Today, in addition to providing marketing services to commercial realtors, I have a business creating closing gifts for residential realtors -- www.wevemovedgifts.com). And you'll never guess what I use -- Of course! Photos of homes. (You already are catching on to this if you've read my other blogs.)
It's a simple process. My clients email me their home pictures. I retouch them, set up the card or other gift for printing and Voila! A beautiful closing gift. That's only half true.
If the truth be known, and with all due respect to my clients, many of the photos are unbelieveable. Not unbelievably good either. I have viewed pictures on MLS listings, and I'm sorry to say, they're, well, sorry. When I see a $600,000 house, I don't want it to be leaning to the left or right. And it's great that a bright blue sky is captured, but not if it throws the front of the house into darkness.
Get more particular, agents! You're selling a product, and it should look goooood.
Here are a few tips:
1. Make sure the entire house is in the frame -- complete with all sides, folks. In fact, give yourself a little room to crop from any of the sides.
2. If you are using a digital camera, shoot at a medium to high resolution. You don't have to get 500 photos on one disk. The great part about digital photography is that you can erase the images and put new ones on your camera. There's no film or processing costs. Be a sport, give yourself (and hopefully me) a bigger file to work with. You'll be glad you did if you want to create a flier with an enlarged picture of the home on it.
3. Consider what time of day is best for the home to have lighting on the front face. Otherwise you will lose a lot of detail in the shadows.
4. If you have a choice, shoot with a somewhat normal lense (or setting aroung 50mm). Don't use a wide-angle lense unless the house is extremely horizontal. If you use a wide-angle lense on a multi-story house and shoot from a low vantage point, you will have a picture of a house that seems to be falling in on itself.
5. Oh, here's a basic one. Hold the camera steady!! Also, don't forget that focusing feature that I believe all digital cameras have today. Depress the shooting button about half-way and allow the camera to lock in its focus on the center of the frame. Then take the picture. If you do this too quickly, you are bound to have a fuzzy picture.
Make taking pictures fun! That also means, go for the best picture, not the most expediant. Your clients will be impressed with how nicely you are presenting their homes.
And, if all else fails, send me the file anyway -- I'll fix it up beautifully!!!
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