5 Tips for Eye-Catching Real Estate Listing Photography
The current real estate market is tough … and with good reason. There’s an abundance of properties and a dearth of buyers. And the buyers that remain are becoming more savvy, researching properties extensively online before enlisting the help of a Real Estate Agent. With all this online marketing for listings, quality photographs are becoming increasingly important for quick sales. Many photographers (myself included) are beginning to take advantage of this new market, but here are some real estate photography tips for do-it-yourselfers.
1. Stage and clean the house. This may seem obvious but it can really make a huge difference in the photos. If the house is occupied during the sale, make sure to de-clutter and remove overwhelming evidence of the residents (e.g., excessive family photos, litterboxes in high traffic areas, or toys all over the house). You may even want to remove and/or repurpose furniture so it’s obvious to the buyer what the best use of each space is. Make sure the house is spotless (this may be a good time to hire a cleaning service), in good order (caulk in any cracks and seams in trimwork, etc.), and possibly paint rooms neutral tones and hang some new curtains.
Once all the personal items are out of sight, invest in a few key colorful accessories, art, and/or mirrors to help dress up the most important rooms (kitchen, living room, and master). When you think the house is ready, invite your most design-savvy friend over for a second opinion and the last touches to make it perfect.
2. Get your hands on a high quality SLR digital camera. Let’s face it, your 5-year-old point and shoot digital camera is not going to do the trick for this job. You’re going to have to upgrade, and if you don’t have an SLR of your own chances are there’s a friend you can borrow one from. For those of you who are clueless when it comes to cameras, the most important features you’ll need are a wide angle lens (less than 20mm would be ideal for most models) and a large sensor size (full to 3/4 size are ideal). Download my free PDF on dSLR basics for more camera tips.
3. Shoot exteriors in diffused light. There is a common misconception that you need lots of bright sunlight to get the best pictures. That might be true for interior shots with low light, but for exteriors it can result in drastic and unruly shadows along with blasted out highlights. The sun creates a huge amount of light that can overwhelm your camera’s sensor, so to avoid this shoot exteriors with even, diffused sunlight. This will help show the important details of the exterior of your house and it will literally jump off the computer screen.
The best times to get this kid of lighting is first thing in the morning or late afternoon (if you really want a blue sky) or, even better, when there is an even layer of cloud cover. If neither of these scenarios are possible for you, see if you can wait for a cloud to pass over the sun. That extra 5 minutes of waiting could make the best picture for you.
Still don’t believe me? Take a look at these two exteriors, the first example with loads of sunlight and the other with a beautiful diffused cloudcover. I’ll let you be the judge:
Exterior Shot in Bright Sunlight
Exterior Shot with Diffused Sunlight
4. Use flash sparingly in interiors. It’s tempting to let the flash run wild while taking interior shots. In some small rooms such as bathrooms and bedrooms, this is the best option. But for large common areas, natural lighting will create the best “mood” for the shot. This can be difficult and frustrating at times, because with less light the shutter speed gets slower and there’s more chance of a blurry photo. In order to counteract that, follow these simple steps to get the best interior shots with natural light:
- Open all blinds and shutters and turn on all lights in the room
- Set your camera’s ISO to 400 or higher (no higher than 600 for most cameras to keep from getting overly grainy images)
- If your camera has an Aperture priority setting, use it and lower the aperture to below 5 or so
- While taking the picture, stand as still as possible and/or lean against a wall for stability
- Take multiple pictures, what may look sharp on your camera’s screen may turn out blurry when larger (you can also set your camera to take multiple shots per second to increase the chances of a non-blurry shot)
Again, you can download my free PDF on dSLR basics for more helpful hints.
5. Choose and edit your photographs carefully. Once you’ve taken all the pictures, load them on your computer and look at them as large as possible. Most listing services allow between 5 and 25 pictures, so pick 5 or 6 main images that represent the house best (this usually includes the front of the house, main living areas, and sometimes more exterior shots depending on the status of the lot). The rest of the images should show every room of the house and can also include close-ups of your home’s best features. You want to highlight what makes your house special, and the details are what people will fall in love with.
Technically, for pictures that are going up online, you’ll want to resize them to 72 dpi and under 640 pixels for the width. If you have image editing software, adjust the lighting so all the pictures look bright (but not so much that you lose the details). For printed pictures, keep the images at 300 dpi and about 1000 pixels for the width.
One last note … try to take all the pictures in landscape format (width greater than height). Not only does this create better uniformity in the images, but it’s the format that shows best on computer monitors.
Good luck and happy clicking!
