I got married recently. For our wedding, Erin and I wanted to make sure that we had amazing pictures to be able to always look back at and capture the feeling of that day. It's one thing to capture the moments, it's another thing entirely to capture the feeling.
In my recent blog post about buying a home, I talked a little bit about how images guided much of our home search (even going so far as to completely eliminate houses before we ever considered them). Images, when done right can be a powerful medium. When done wrong they can be an equally as powerful distraction or irritation.
Ours were done right!
Starts With Hiring a Professional
Most of this starts with hiring a professional. We could have considered using our family friend John, who is a good amateur photographer and took our engagement photos. Or heck, we could have even tried to take them ourselves. It would have a saved a ton of money. But just like you get listing photos done to be the best representation of the home you are marketing, we wanted our wedding photos to be the absolute best representation of the day we got married. So we hired Vivian Hsu. We knew if we wanted to capture the feeling of the day, we needed a professional.
After our recent experience with pictures while searching for a home, and after being able to compare our engagement photos with our wedding photos, I'm more convinced than I ever have been in my 13 years in the industry that professional photos are a huge value proposition for agents to offer their clients. Being able to show your listing client a portfolio of professional photos that you've done on your other listings is absolutely going to set you apart from the pack of other agents trying to get that same listing. We looked at 100's of houses online (it felt like millions) and I can tell you right now, most of your competition is not doing this.
Have a Plan
If there's one thing I've learned about my wife (and there are many) it's that she is a planner. A friend had recently gotten married and he lamented that he didn't feel like they had capture enough of the special moments in their photos. We were determined that wasn't going to happen to us. So we set out to detail exactly what we wanted. We looked at thousands of wedding photos anywhere we could find them and we pulled out the ones we liked the best. I was responsible for finding pictures I wanted with my groomsmen, my son and my family. Erin picked out stuff she wanted with her bridesmaids, niece and family. And together we picked out some of the different photos we wanted of us and the entire bridal party.
Then she made a book. It was 150 pages long (with 4-6 pictures per page) and we used it as the shot list for our marathon photo session. We used three different locations and we knew exactly what we wanted at each location. First was the bridal suite at the Alexis Hotel in Seattle, where we did all the getting ready photos and some of the group photos on the staircase. Then we moved on to Kerry Park in Seattle, which has a backdrop of the Space Needle and Mt. Rainier. We chose this location because Erin is a city girl, born and raised in Seattle. My roots are a little more country and was born and spent my formative years in the shadow of Mt. Rainier (a little town called Ashford WA). The backdrop was a perfect blending of our lives. And we finished of course at the wedding venue, the Pac Med Tower, former home to Amazon on Beacon Hill overlooking Seattle (Seriously, I've been in all the tall buildings in Seattle, and I don't know if there is a better sweeping view of the city while standing in one place than what you get from where we got married).
The point is, we planned meticulously in order to make sure every shot we wanted was something we ended up getting. We only had one chance. We wanted no regrets.
Do you do this with your listing photos? Do you ever spend any time looking at other agent's listings and then taking notes and developing a collection of photos you want to make sure to get when the listing presents the opportunity? (Pinterest would be a great place to collect photos in this manner on a board). Not every home will present itself to allow a picture of the pool, but when it does, you want to have a vision in mind for how you're going to market that pool. If you just walk in with no plan, you're likely to end up like our friend, regretting that you missed an opportunity.
Execute on That Plan
We were only able to execute on the plan, because we actually had the plan. After looking at hundreds of listings while trying to find the home we wanted to buy, it was obvious to me that many of the agents marketing these properties didn't have a plan beyond 'get 20 pictures of the house'. Maybe somewhere under that was the idea in their head that they needed one of the kitchen, one of the bathrooms, one of the bedrooms, one of the backyard, etc. But it's obvious they haven't given it much thought and probably move from listing to listing with no real plan about they intend to showcase the home via photos.
One night, I was so amazed by the variety of the quality on the pictures of the listings we were looking at that I went and started looking at listings from the same agent. It was obvious there was no plan. In one listing they would start with the kitchen photos and next I'd see the bathroom. In the next listing they'd start with the entry way and lead me into the bedrooms. There was no rhyme or reason. I quickly became thankful for the agents that clearly had a plan to their listing photos. I could feel like I was walking through the home and it made sense. Agent's like this, when I looked at their other listings, would almost always follow a similar path. Starting with the front of the house, moving me into the entry way, living room, family room, kitchen, then upstairs to the bedrooms, bathrooms, and usually finishing with the garage and the backyard. Not every house sets up the same, but I could feel that they had some sense of a plan to highlight all the best features in the home and also move me, the potential buyer, through the home in a manner that made sense and allowed me to actually envision the home. I never clicked away from one of those homes wondering 'what do the bathrooms in this place look like' (because if I didn't see a picture of them, I immedately assume they have nothing but a hole in the ground and black mold all over the walls, haha). I found myself wondering these types of things on almost every listing where you could tell there was no plan.
Look Back and Enjoy
You get to look back and enjoy when the house has sold and you know that a great visual representation of the home online was a major factor why. You get to look back and enjoy when your 'photo marketing plan' is part of what helps you secure the next listing. We got to look back and enjoy when one week later (which seems to be unheard of) Vivian's photos showed up in our mailbox. We hoped that all the plannning, and our decision to hire a professional would result in awesome pictures. We were right (if I do say so myself).
Some of My Favorites
- The Stewarts!
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