Impressive Professional Real Estate Photography Tips
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You don’t have to be a professional to learn professional real estate photography. Doesn’t matter if you are a beginner or a professional, if you want to know more and learn something new about professional real estate photography then this blog is for you.
Real estate photography is in demand, and this category has less chance of getting off the market. History is the biggest proof of it. You will never see the real estate’s designs or demands getting lower or out of the market, or even out of the trend. So, learning something which will never get out of the trend is like gaining an asset. So, let’s learn some effective tips that will enhance the real estate’s photo.
Benefits of Professional Real Estate Photography (Why Is Professional Real Estate Photography So Important?)
Before getting straight into the main topic of what are the special tips you should apply to your real estate photography, let’s know why you should start learning real estate photography. What are the benefits? Why should you consider learning professional real estate photography? So, let's have a look at the benefits.
1. Fast sale of property
Why do people even take photos of their property? Maybe his/her property is so mesmerizing that he/she wants to show off on his/her social media. Or he/she wants to sell the property. But in most cases, real estate photography is done by professionals when the owner is trying to sell the house, and to attract customers they hire professionals to shoot the property's photo.
Suppose you want to buy a house. What would be your first thing to do? Surfing on the internet, right? Most people search the property's image, location, surrounding environment, and many other things on the internet first before going and actually visiting the property physically.
So, if your property also has a professional touch and attractive look on the internet, people will at least consider visiting your property first. And rest can be done by you or the seller. But in a normal sense, people will choose to visit that property first which looks more attractive than others.
2. Get Traffic More Than Others
If you know anything about the digital market, you will know why traffic is a big concern in online platforms. Whether it is social media or an e-commerce platform where you can upload your property's photo to the customers/buyers, it needs traffic. Traffic is considered potential customers in online business.
Yet, that doesn’t mean you can stand out from the crowd or your pictures will be the only picture to attract the audience. To ensure that you have to hire professional real estate photographers. They will make the property look picture-perfect and saleable.
3. Makes The Home Look More Appealing to Others
Later in this blog, we will talk about some tips to make your house look more appealing to others. There are many ways to make a photo look attractive. Real estate photographers usually offer other services. You can use this to market your property online. Furthermore, it can increase interest and make an online presence more interesting by presenting a home or building in the best possible light.
Image quality matters the most; it does not matter if you are selling a luxury home or something easy to afford. A high-quality image makes a far reaching impression. A professionally created real estate image can minimize the hassle of staging the property physically. Because the image itself speaks of the qualities of the property thoroughly, exactly what the audience looks for.
4. Help To Stand Out from The Crowd
We have already talked about the basics of how to capture photos that will help you to stand out from the crowd. But previously we only focused on the timing of capturing the photo. How twilight or golden hours are the perfect time for a real estate photoshoot. But this blog will be more than that.
Professionals are able to enhance your property’s personality. A professional will never just copy-paste any technique to a photo. They will enhance the individual qualities of an object (in this case property, home, house, etc.). For example, if your neighbor has a spacious front yard that complements the whole house and he hired a professional real estate photographer for a photoshoot then they will obviously focus on the front yard to make the picture stand out well. But in your case, you don’t have a front yard but you have a beautiful swimming pool at the backside of your house. Then the photographers will definitely focus on the swimming pool of your house rather than focusing on your non-existing front yard.
Basically, professional real estate photographers will definitely be able to find out the uniqueness of your property and they will work on that eventually. Every picture will have its own uniqueness and individuality if you hire one professional photographer.
5. Help You to Achieve Create a Higher Price for Your Property
Why would a person spend on something which he/she is eventually selling in order to gain some profit? A person will only invest his money in something when he/she knows the investment will make the profit worthy. For the same reason, people hire professional photographers and do professional photoshoots of their homes, and spend money on that. Because they do not see it as spending money. They see it as a business investment.
When you are spending more to make something look and take care of your property, you are automatically one step ahead of other competitors, and your property has already gained more value than others. That’s how by Professional real estate photography you will get a higher price for your property.
Pro Tips on How to Do Real Estate Photography Like Professional
We were talking about why you should hire a professional for simple house/home photography. Now let’s talk about some tips and tricks about how to do professional real estate photography.
1. Planning
This tip will always be at the top of the list. You can not execute something without having a proper plan. To make your work process easy and smooth, you must set a proper plan. A proper plan would do half of your work. Now, what kind of planning are we talking about? Basically, whatever you will see in this blog from now on, can be considered as a part of planning. Even reading this blog properly means you are already taking the first step of planning.
Now take a pen and notepad and start taking notes of what you want to do with your real estate property. Create a short list of what you will need afterward while working. Like Camera, lens, tripod, drone, timing of the shoot, places to shoot, and all the other things to do, when to do everything. Let’s have an idea about it.
2. Schedule Everything (Time of Shooting)
Since we are talking about professional real estate photography, it is simply very obvious that you have to focus on the indoor and outdoor look. In most parts, you have to depend on natural light. You have to choose the timing of your shoot so that you get enough lighting to shoot.
At this moment you might wonder, why do you have to schedule a time for shooting. You can shoot this anytime in daylight, right? Wrong. If you want to depend on daylight then you have to keep in mind that the weather is unpredictable as daylight. Especially if you are shooting in monsoon then u have to take some risk. You never know when it will start raining. So, what you have to do is, check the weather report before the actual shoot. Schedule your time at that time when the sky will be clear according to the forecast.
Besides the weather, you still have to schedule your time for the lighting. As I mentioned in my previous blog, the best time to take real estate photos is at twilight, dawn, or golden hour. And these all are very short periods of time. So, you have to be prepared for that exact perfect time to capture the moment. Morally, Schedule your time so that you don’t have to rush with other work at that time.
3. Clean the Property
This might seem unnecessary at first but you will know the difference once you get the pictures of clean property and unclean property. Yes, you can retouch your real estate photo at any time. But that will only make your process long and pathetic. So, choose the easy path. Just like SRK said, it's not always necessary to choose the hard way to follow your success. And in this case, you can achieve better results by choosing the easy path. Then why choose the hard one?
Not only inside the house or inside the property. But, outside as well. Because when you are shooting the property from the outside, the surroundings will also be in the picture. If you google real estate photos then you will see pictures that will see more exterior pictures than interior pictures. And when you think of the exterior of the property you have to keep the surroundings clear as well because of the same reason.
4. Use As Much as Natural Lighting Possible
Real Estate Photography needs more natural light than other photography. But not only natural lights real estate photography also needs many artificial lights as well. No matter indoor or outdoor you will need house lights.
Suppose you are shooting in the living room and it's bright outside. Then you will definitely need room lighting but besides that, you will also need daylight or natural lights from the outside. So, try to keep the curtains wide open. If you are thinking of having only one source of light then you will underestimate the other sources. And also, since it’s real estate photography you have to showcase every single bit of the property. Including how the room looks with the natural lighting. I just gave an example. You have to do this for every room in the house.
Not only indoor shoots, in outdoor shoots as well you will need artificial lights. Suppose you are shooting the property view from outside of the house. Then also turn on your indoor light keeping the curtains open and remove anything that can disturb the lights. So it will give you a very classy vibe.
5. Target a Showstopper Angle of The Home
What is a Showstopper? Or what do people even mean by the word showstopper? If you ever went to a fashion show you will see models' graceful ramp walking and showcasing the designers’ designs. But not everyone performs as the showstopper does. Basically, the main model of the show. That is what showstoppers do.
That is the same thing in Real Estate Photography as well. If you are shooting a property, definitely you have to shoot the entire property pretty well but it’s wise to keep a focus point. Suppose your property has a very beautiful fountain in the front yard and that is the main attraction of the guests. Then focus mainly on that particular fountain. Rather than focusing on the whole house, focus on that specific part of the house. So, find that showstopper angle of your property.
6. Get the Perfect Equipment for Shooting
Getting the right equipment is also a huge point. If you got all the points right and didn’t get the equipment right then there would be no point in doing anything. Because, ultimately you will end up with bad-quality pictures. If you got a luxury house to shoot, you cleaned the whole property perfectly, you got the showstopper angle, you got everything on point but the equipment is not perfect for professional real estate photography then the picture quality will be bad and your whole hard work will be wasted.
Mandatory Equipment for Professional Real Estate Photography are:
- Camera for Real Estate Photography
The most basic is a camera. In my previous blog, we talked about camera settings. In this blog let’s talk about cameras in general. There are many cameras that you can find on the market. But based on my experience I found Canon EOS Rebel SL3, Nikon D850, Nikon D3500, Sony A7R III, and lastly Fujifilm X-T3 quite good for professional real estate photography. - Lens for Best Real Estate Photography
The lens is also the same. Necessary equipment for professional real estate photography. Again, there are tons of equipment and lenses on the market so rather than justifying what’s good and what’s bad I’m just going to include what worked best for me…- Canon EF-S 10-18mm f/4.5-5.6 IS STM,
- Sony FE 12-24mm f/4 G,
- Nikon AF-S DX 12-24mm f/4.0 IF-ED Zoom Lens,
- Fujifilm XF 10-24mm f/4.0R OIS Zoom Lens,
- Tokina 12-28mm f/4.0 SD Zoom Lens for Nikon F-Mount,
- Sigma 12-24mm f/4 DG HSM Art.
- Such mouthful names, right!
- Tripod for Stability
Tripod is essential not only for real estate photography. For any kind of photography where you need some stability. You can find a tripod at almost any electronic device shop. Mostly in phone and camera shops. So, rather than mentioning the models of the tripod let’s focus on what features to notice or focus on before buying a tripod. Just like the camera and lens, you should focus on the usage of the tripod.
A good tripod will have good leg fixation, will be lightweight, and also be durable. 360-degree rotation ability could transform into a monopod and would be flexible to use and carry. - Get a Drone
It’s always wise to have a bird eye view of a big property. So, get a drone and shoot from the top angle. Well, this point is not mandatory but it will give your photography a unique kick.
These are the main equipment that you will need directly in the name of professional real estate photography. I’m saying these are the main equipment because there are lots of equipment you can buy for real estate photos. Like Omnidirectional (360-degree) cameras, Photographic Filters, Mirrorless cameras, Camera flash, etc. These types of equipment are optional.
These might not feel easy for many people, so people hire a professional photographer for real estate photos. But if you are looking for a long-term learning process, this equipment is worth buying and achieving something new.
After all of these readings if you still are confused about what to do and where to start then don’t panic. You can copy and paste the checklist right below:
| Previous Day Preparation | Shoot Day Preparation |
|---|---|
Check Equipment
(Check all the equipment you need for shooting) | Check the Details
|
Cleaning List
(Basically, Clean the whole house) | Double Check Every Room
|
Hopefully, this checklist will help you start your work quickly and organize. You can also customize your own checklist according to your own needs. That way you can also create a unique checklist of your own.
Ending With…
Like I always say, at first you might feel that everything is hard to try. Or it’s difficult to cope with. But soon you will have a grip on it as you will get used to the equipment. If you are someone who always wants to learn new things then this is just for you.
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Anika Wahab
Hello, it's Anika, Content Executive from Color Clipping Ltd with a devotion to contributing my skills and knowledge more simply. Keep learning and growing with us.
