My Recent Real Estate Photography

First of all, take a look at the pictures in this home listing: [url="http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1098-Mount-Vernon-Rd-Cookeville-TN-38501/41986813_zpid/]http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1098-Mount-Vernon-Rd-Cookeville-TN-38501/41986813_zpid/[/url]. Seriously, just do it. It sets up the story.


Done? Good.


As most of you know, I shoot portraits...and, typically, only portraits. However, a previous client of mine has had his home on the market for over a year now. During his family portrait session, I suggested he look into having professional shots done of his home in order to increase interest in the property (his agent took the original shots of the home seen above). Last week, his wife contacted me and requested that I take some shots.


Keep in mind, architecture is not my forte. I knew that my wide angle lens would introduce some distortion to the images--but that was alright with me. I could fix the pictures relatively well in post if the distortion was distracting. I knew my wide angle lens was going to be the key to conveying the spaciousness of the home--it was indeed essential.


I took the most time on three rooms--the living room, the dining room, the kitchen, and the finished basement media room. In my mind, those were the best selling points of the home. We decided to delay taking the outdoor pictures because 1) there are no leaves on the trees and 2) it was cloudy, miserable, and cold.


So what gear did I use? A Canon 7D and a 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5. For the living room shot, two monolights in the actual living room, one shoe-mount flash in the dining room, and one shoe-mount flash in the hallway. For the basement media room, two monolights and one shoe-mount flash (which is oddly placed, I know, but I thought it worked well). For all the other shots, I typically used a shoe-mount flash with a Fong-sphere on it. I know I missed one bathroom in the house, and I must go back to shoot it. Good thing they live 5 minutes away. ;-)


Without further ado:
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<td style="height: 194px; background: url(https://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/tra...background.gif) no-repeat scroll left center transparent;" align="center"][url="https://picasaweb.google.com/seansetters/1098MtVernonRoadCookevilleTN?feat=embedwebsite]https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/_l...okevilleTN.jpg[/url]</td>
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<td style="text-align:center;font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:11px"]1098 Mt Vernon Road, Cookeville, TN</td>
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Great shots Sean. Architecture shots are very hard indeed...also coming from someone who does portraits! Really makes you wish you had a 17 or 24 TS!!


Just out of curiosity...the house looks beautiful!! How much are they asking? Never mind, clicked on the link above. I will buy it!! For that price, OMG!!!!!!!!! Here in Santa Cruz, CA, a house like that, with hardwood, all the trimmings, would go for a minimum of at least 1 plus!! And I mean MILLION!!!! WOW....but I digress..


I think you did a great job on the lighting(you always do), but the distortion(as you stated), throws it off just a touch. But..after looking at the pictures from the real estate site, yours blows the doors off theirs!!!


Just a suggestion...taken with a grain of salt....you could rent a TS lens before you go back for the other bathroom, or outside shots. I know of a great rental agency...well...in Tenn as a matter of fact!! Lensrentals.com is fantastic..but you might know that already!!

I thought about a tilt-shift lens, but wanted to try the shoot with the gear I had, first. I won

Just a thought. And I can understand the justify part, very well right now!! You could always, if you have a tripod, do indoor HDR

OMG!! I WANT THAT HOUSE!!! And I love Tennessee!!


Overall, you did a fantastic job on the lighting in every room! Extreme improvement over the original listings photos! IMO there is one room that the distortion is really noticeable and that is the master bedroom.


Denise

I just did some heavier-handed lens correction on the master bedroom. I replaced the pic in the gallery. It's not perfect, but I think it's better. Now off to bed... :-)

Sean


They look great.


But I do have one comment. The drapes in the master need to be closed. The car in the window is not a good selling point, ....well unless you love your car more than your wife....

Much better!!! One thing to add ...you not only succeeded in making the photos brighter than the originals but you created a very warm cozy feeling about each of the rooms!


Very well done!


Denise

Very nicely lit Sean. Wish I could do similar.


Keeping with your lens instead of a TS, what about just keeping the lens dead-level then cropping to get the desired apparent viewpoint. Could you still get enough of the foreground in that way?


Paul.

Oh, and I think you did a marvelous job of conveying the spaciousness of the home!


I don

Sean;


Outstanding first effort, as usual the lighting is excellent, but as Greggf mentioned, the distortion in the rooms is noticeable w/the 10-24. Would a potential customer viewing MLS notice....possibly....would it be a negative....probably not. All in all, you did an excellent job.


Your link to the original pix is a perfect example of why home sellers or RE agents should have a professional shoot the house, especially in today

Quote:

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Originally Posted by HDNitehawk

Sean


They look great.


But I do have one comment. The drapes in the master need to be closed. The car in the window is not a good selling point, ....well unless you love your car more than your wife....
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I didn't even notice the car until I was editing the master bedroom earlier yesterday morning. Ideally, the car should have been parked somewhere else.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ddt0725

Much better!!! One thing to add ...you
not only succeeded in making the photos brighter than the originals but
you created a very warm cozy feeling about each of the rooms!


Very well done!


Denise

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Thanks Denise. ;-)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Paul McSweeney

Very nicely lit Sean. Wish I could do similar.


Keeping with your lens instead of a TS, what about just keeping the
lens dead-level then cropping to get the desired apparent viewpoint.
Could you still get enough of the foreground in that way?


Paul.

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With some of the rooms, probably not. The rest--quite likely.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Bill W

I do this type of photography on the side....to
support my bad habits; buying photography equipment....and I have been
considering the 10-24 for small room shots, e.g. bathrooms and laundry
rooms. Bur after seeing your pix, I think I'll stick w/my pano head and
stitch (normally 2 shots are enough) pix together for the smaller
rooms.

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A stitched pano's not a bad idea...I may have to try that if the situation calls for it.

Good job on the photos. I know the local agent tend to show up with a typical point and shot camera and take the photos. The know the angles and the typical shots that buyers want to see. But they are sales agents and not photographers. A skilled photographer can put the right light on a home to show case it. The Wide angles, photo stitching, color/contrast adjustment a photographer brings in is no match for a real estate agent with a point and shot.


In my humble opinion the photographs are the cover by which the house is first judged by perspective buyers. If the photographs do not look inviting then that is a lose of a potential follow up and hopeful sale from an interested party.


Your collection appears to cover all the major points most like to see in a home . Comparing the listing photos with yours I see two totally different homes. Your photographs add that something special and inviting that would lean me to see this master piece in person. While the agents photographs make the home look cramped &amp; dark (at least compared to your vision) and most importantly nothing special.


In the past 5 years I have helped family privately sell a half dozen homes. The only think lacking with private sales is quality photographs which I did my best to help out. It is a market that appears to be growing although I am not sure how much money is in it. I would tend to think that for a agent who is asking anywhere from 2-5% of the value of your home they could spring for $500-1000 for high quality photo shot of the home or even have a professional photograph on a full time staff .

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jimr

In my humble opinion the photographs are the cover by which the house is first judged by perspective buyers. If the photographs do not look inviting then that is a loss of a potential follow up and hopeful sale from an interested party.

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I couldn't agree more.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jimr

I would tend to think that for a agent who is asking anywhere from 2-5% of the value of your home they could spring for $500-1000 for high quality photo shot of the home or even have a professional photograph on a full time staff .

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I hope so... ;-)

I just gotta say WOW!! on all fronts. First off BIG WOW!! for the way their agent completely screwed them over with his lack of knowledge of presentation. That house could have sold instantly had he known better.


And my second WOW!! to your photos Sean! Especially after flipping through the Agent's photos first. The difference in impression is astounding! I'm not bothered at all by the distortions at first glance...but that just might be the WOW factor still kicking in [;)]


I've come across these photographers who do interior and exterior architectural photography for just this purpose, but I'm thinking you'll get there in no time!!


-Tak

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TakahiroW4047

I just gotta say WOW!! on all fronts. First off BIG WOW!! for the way their agent completely screwed them over with his lack of knowledge of presentation. That house could have sold instantly had he known better.

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Oddly enough, the agent who has the listing is probably our most widely known local real estate agent. She owns her own real estate company, and her listings are everywhere. She was even the seller's agent when Amber and I recently purchased a home. To be honest, Amber and I didn't care for her very much (we had gotten a bad vibe from her based on a previous, unrelated meeting, and our vibe seems to have been in tune with reality). I like this family, and I want to see them happy--so I'm glad to rent myself out for a [very] reasonable fee if it helps them along...even if my not-so-favorite real estate agent gets a handsome commission.


If the home does sell quickly, and for something very close to the asking price, and that particularagent decides to request my services on other listings--I'll ask top dollar, and I'll be worth every penny. ;-)

Your photos made me interested in the house, especially at that price (I live in california :( ) The agent

I

Sean


It is unfortunate the house has been on the market for a year. If they had your pictures a year ago maybe that one buyer that wanted it would have come by already. If you really wanted to give this type of work a go at making money, I think all you would have to do is start putting the word out. Once a few use you, and see your quality of work you will have more than you know what to do with.


On another note concerning distortion:


You mentioned at the first you knew you would have some distortion. If you mean lens distortion, I would think that a little lens distortion wouldn

Yes, I was talking about lens distortion. For the most part, it doesn

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sean Setters

Yes, I was talking about lens distortion. For the most part, it doesn't bother me--but that means I need to be on guard to find out how many people it does bother. And, to be honest, someone who isn't a photographer may not be bothered with the distortion when a photographer would.

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It is real true, photographers will look at it differently. I had seen photographers use the distortion, or leave it in and use an extremly wide lens when doing real estate. I just didn't know if it was just a photographer that didn't know any better or if they just were going for that feel because some I have seen weren't to bad.


Personally if I were buying a house and looking at the pics I wouldn't mind the distortion, I know the walls don't colapse in like that. Me, I would be looking at how big the rooms are, the views out the windows, what the kitchen looks like. I would wonder as well how many people it would bother......You and I both know that a little time with DXO will fix it right up.


Also, I met a guy a while back in the camera store that was traveling cross country. He lived in California and for about a year he had been doing real estate photo's. He specialized in panorama views inside of houses and was using his 5D to do this work. He told me what he was charging, and on a good day he could make $200-300 dollars doing several houses. He was getting his sensor cleaned at the time, when they come back and told him that it wasn't dust on his sensor it was a bad scratch I felt for the guy. He just lost three weeks worth of wages. Not a big positive story to encourage you to jump in to doing real estate photography, but from what I have seen of your skill set on the boards I think if you aimed more to the higher end sophisticated client you would could do good. I would hate to think I was competing against this guy at 50-100 bucks per house.

as usual... very nice shots SEan.


one question.... how you preserve the warmth of the colors??? I mean flash more often than not cool down pictures but you always seem to get color temperatures spot on... how do you do it??? do you correct color temperatures in post???

I shoot in RAW and always adjust Kelvin values if necessary. However, for this shoot, I used a full cut CTS on the monolights and a full cut CTO on my shoe-mount flashes. The gels allowed me to balance my flashes to the ambient lights within a reasonable margin of error. Because the light was decently balanced, I could have done a global shift in white balance to neutralize the warmth of the predominately tungsten lights (color balancing using a grey card would have caused the tungsten lights to look white-ish), but I felt leaving the pictures warmer made the house look even more inviting.

As one who does a LOT of real estate photography, I've discovered the following:


1. Full frame


2. Time of day


3. Orientation (placement of house/room in line with the sun)


4. Full frame


5. Sigma 12-24mm f/4.5-5.6 @ f/8- widest rectilinear lens with almost no distortion at 12mm - the only thing this lens is good for.


6. HDR - bracketing manually with changes in shutter speeds seems to work the best - also try handheld speedlight aimed at different areas in the HDR exposures.


7. Did I mention full-frame?


Here's a few samples:


[img]/resized-image.ashx/__size/550x0/__key/CommunityServer-Discussions-Components-Files/15/8741.Kitchen2_5F00_horiz_5F00_1000.jpg[/img]


[img]/resized-image.ashx/__size/550x0/__key/CommunityServer-Discussions-Components-Files/15/6457.livingroom1.jpg[/img]


[img]/resized-image.ashx/__size/550x0/__key/CommunityServer-Discussions-Components-Files/15/5684.83HanoverAtrium2.jpg[/img]


[img]/resized-image.ashx/__size/550x0/__key/CommunityServer-Discussions-Components-Files/15/7776.photo_2D00_21.jpg[/img]


[img]/resized-image.ashx/__size/550x0/__key/CommunityServer-Discussions-Components-Files/15/3817.Kitchen1_5F00_crop_5F00_1000.jpg[/img]

Rob--why the emphasis on full frame?


By the way--I went back to the house and shot the bathroom I forgot to shoot the first time. It

I imagine it

Ah, gotcha. The wider, the better.

Sean -


Well, yes and no - the wider the better, of course. BUT...for any given focal distance (especially wide) the full frame sensor seems to give a better

Thanks for the clarification. ;-)

No problem. I