New disciple of the real estate photography game…
So there I am, a predominantly Automotive photographer sitting in an office full of Real Estate agents for reasons I’ll leave out for now, when I let slip that I sorta know how to handle a camera. Next thing I know one of them is convincing me to shoot their next listing. Not taking it too seriously, a few minutes later I happily forgot the whole conversation.
Fast forward a week to this morning when I get a phone call from said real estate person, asking me if I can shoot a property for them THAT MORNING.
Master Bedroom
“Sure!” I say thinking “how hard can it be?”.
So I jump on Flickr to do some quick research on technique, gear, etc, and found the Photography for Real Estate group. And MY GOD some of those guys are good at this stuff. My jaw literally dropped. Everything I’d seen on real estate sales websites had seriously been with a P&S and was nothing compared to what I saw there.
Suddenly I didn’t feel so good.
So I went out and shot what I will conservatively refer to as “a cat poo smelling dump”, with little more than an hour and a half worth of reading up on how to actually do this stuff, in 32 degree heat (that’s Celsius, folks) in a house that smelt like cat poo and had no air conditioning. I kept saying to myself “you gotta start somewhere I suppose”.
Main Exterior Shot
Talk about getting dumped in the fire (or is it trial by deep end?). I also created a new line item for my invoices called “toxic exposure fee” which doubles my standard rate. As for shooting, I tried two techniques while I was shooting because I didn’t know what would work best. I set up a tripod, composed and shot 9 frames for HDR. Then I went about lighting things with strobes because it’s something I sorta know. The strobed stuff turned out much better so I think I’ll be sticking with that.
Anywayz, after all of that I have decided that this Real Estate stuff is something I’m interested in doing more of and I have a new found respect for it. It really is an art-form within an art-form.
In this post is 3 of the photos from my shoot. None of them are ’staged’ apart from me moving the odd chair, TV cable, etc. In fact I didn’t even learn that term until 3 hours after I’d finished. I’ll definitely be putting more effort into staging the next one. They all have lots of things wrong with them, so feel free to rip into me in the comments. I can take it. 
on January 31, 2010 at 10:37 am
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Congrats on getting the gig! Its good to see you well on the way to being a successful photographer. Kudos to you
on January 31, 2010 at 8:56 pm
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You did well. It is hard. Harder than people realise and you nailed it. Well done!
on February 3, 2010 at 11:56 am
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I’ll have to get you to photograph my house
on February 18, 2010 at 10:22 am
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As usual you have made a bad thing good. ‘Staging’ is a good idea. As a past Real Estate person i would ask that the handbag on the kitchen counter should be removed.
Your outside shot is very good. Making properties look like they don’t smell and have bad neighbors is an ‘ART’.
You will do very well with your creative eye.