Photography For Real Estate

I’m working hard on the second edition of my Photography For Real Estate e-book. I’m adding several new chapters and updating several of the existing ones. One new chapter will be on the process of shooting 360 images for real estate. (Everyone that has purchased the first edition will get a free copy of the second edition).

Ever since I started using my 1Ds for 360s I’ve been shooting them with the camera body horizontal. This is possible since the image circle of my Sigma 8mm fisheye fits entirely on the full frame sensor so it doesn’t make any difference if the 360 frames are shot in landscape or portrait mode. They are effectively the same. Continue Reading »

Here are some recent news links of interest to real estate photographers:

• Photojojo.com has a post on putting a point and shoot on a painters pole. This is very similar to the one I did recently on the same subject but I like their suggestion of using a small light ball head on the top of the painters pole.
• Here is a very interesting video  over at crunchgear.com describing some technology that UW students came up with to fix video with stills. I can see some application for this in real estate photography!
• For iPhone users there are some pretty interesting apps starting to appear that are of use by photographers. Micah Walter talks about one at Inside Aperture and David over at Strobist talks about a couple of good photographic uses for the iPhone. Another good use for the iPhone is to keep a bookmark button for the site that tells you exactly when sunrise and sunset is where every you are.

I also want to point out the new FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page that I added to the top links along the top of the blog header image. I get a lot of questions that are covered on the blog and I thought I’d use this page to point out features of this blog and where to find answers. There are over 430 posts on the blog as well as many pages that don’t show as links on the top of the page. It’s getting so even I have trouble finding stuff so I thought a FAQ would be a good way of indexing the important parts of this site. I’ll be adding to this FAQ in the future.

Today a reader asked me for statistics that demonstrate that good marketing photography pays off. The exact wording was, “Do you have any statistics on the benefit of hiring a real estate photographer (i.e. home with professional photos sell X% faster)…I’m looking for anything to back up why a homeowner would want to use professional photos over a realtor.“. I was stunned! There is actually someone out there that doesn’t find it obvious that good photography sells homes? Continue Reading »

Yesterday I was standing in a line (with my G9 in my pocket) listening to a recent TWIP podcast in which Alex Lindsay and Stu Maschwitz were talking about the two latest G9 contenders just announced. I’ll spare you another rant about my Canon G9 but a fact that hasn’t escaped camera manufacturers is that the G9 hugely popular because it is less than $500 and has big-boy camera features (like RAW, IS lens and high ISOs etc) yet it fits in your pocket.

The big news is that the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3 looks like it (available in Sept 08) has everything the G9 has plus a 24mm f 2.0 Leica lens. Wow!

The reason I bring this up is I’ve talked to several people that are eying the Canon G9 as a potential PAP (Pole Aerial Photography) camera. Only problem with the G9 as a PAP camera is that without a converter it’s widest angle is 35mm and you’d like to have something a bit wider, like 24mm. This Lumix LX3 looks like the perfect pole camera.

See, I predicted yesterday that since the print media is cratering that all these unemployed print media photographers would be moving into real estate photography and this morning I wake up to a post by David Hobby on real estate photography. What can I say.

Seriously, David has a wonderful series of real estate shots that he did recently in Florida that is well worth a close look at.

Vincent Laforet, a Pulitzer prize-winning staff photographer for the NY Times, sums up the situation going on now in photography as follows: “This past year has been one of the roughest years for the newspaper and magazine industry — and the truth be told — the outlook for the next few years looks even grimmer” in his post “The Cloud is Falling”.

David Hobby over at strobist.com has a pretty graphic story of about how these same economic forces have touched him in his recent post, “Will Shoot For Food“. Continue Reading »

Phil Scott of New Canaan, CT is the second winner of the PFRE Idol award for this month. The photo above is Phil’s front-shot that he submitted for the contest. For a front-shot it think it is a particularly striking image. It helps that this property is a striking property elevated above the surroundings but I think Phil has nicely captured and refined the image to give it a crisp attention grabbing punch. If you look through Phil’s portfolio you will notice that his images all have this same crisp, punch. Continue Reading »

In the first PFRE Idol contest two contestants tied for first place. One of the winners was Tyra Pacheco. Those of you that frequent the PFRE flickr photo discussion group will recognize Tyra’s work and notice how much her work has improved over the last year. This is Tyra’s kitchen shot that she submitted to the contest and one of my favorites. I like the nice even lighting of this shot. If you look through Tyra’s portfolio you will notice that the even some what diffuse lighting is a consistent look in her work. Continue Reading »

The LA (Santa Clarita) workshop was really fun, and I think the participants got a lot out of it.

Thomas and I worked hard to come up with a format that combined time for us to do a bit of lecture and discuss gear and our general approach, but which maximized the time everyone spent actually shooting. We felt strongly that a very hands-on approach that had the participants behind the camera, not us, would work best. I even traveled to Seattle on July 27th to conduct a “dress rehearsal” workshop (organized by Ron Kenny, a.k.a. captainronsphotos) and iron out the kinks. It paid off, as the Santa Clarita event went very smoothly. Continue Reading »

I talked about Lightroom 2 and PTlens last month just after PTlens came out but this combination is such a sweet combination for real estate photographers I need to say more.

The main point I want to stress is that if you are starting out in real estate photography and trying to decide what photo editing software is best for you, Lightroom 2 (or Aperture 2.1) and PTlens is all you need to do create great interior photos. Here’s why: Continue Reading »