Real Estate Photography | Choosing the Right Real Estate Photographer (Palm City, Stuart, Jupiter Island, Sewalls Point)

Don't miss the slide show at the bottom of post

So as a realtor you've come around to the idea that to be competitive in the market you need to have better photos than you've been taking with your iPhone. You don't have to look too far these days to find someone who says they are a 'real estate photographer'... AND they have a drone! wow, let's shoot some listings. Hold on...slow down.  Just because someone has a good DSLR camera and a drone does not make someone a real estate photographer....or at least not a good one. There is so much more that goes into producing really top level professional real estate photos so let's look at some of the things (mistakes) I see every day:

1. crooked walls/crooked horizons....a wide angle lens (which is a must) is going to tend to make the walls bowed or not parallel with the edges of the image....a good real estate photographer would never give a client an image with crooked walls like that. They would a. know their camera well enough to get it right in the shot or b. correct it in Photoshop. Same is true for the drone shots...horizons should be straight.

2. HDR = YUK HDR...high dynamic range...oooh sounds fancy. It's just a gimmick....it basically blends several images to get all the lights and darks. Why do I have it and never use it? Because, even when carefully used it produces an image that to me looks 'dirty'....whites are not white...they are more like a gray tone and colors don't pop like they should. Not sure how to explain it other than it looks like you didn't hire a pro. If I put a top real estate photographer image next to someone who used HDR you would clearly pick the better image.

3. details...of course we all know about clutter, toilet seats left up etc. but how about those spinning ceiling fans, the flash caught in a picture/mirror....I've even seen the photographer in a mirror on one where the person was a 'professional'....ugh, really? Finally, have the images been resized for the MLS properly? If not, the MLS will compress the image by 30-60% destroying the image quality.

4. if they do have a flash (which is a must)...it should never be on the camera...rather it should be on a stand and there should be at least 2, 3 or even 4 of them.

5. Especially in Florida the views are so much a part of our living, so the windows shouldn't be 'blown out'/overexposed....a good photographer will balance the interior exposure with the exterior using a mix of lighting the interior space and blending that image with one for the exterior in photoshop...definitely not a beginner level technique done correctly

 

Great real estate photography is really about a combination of the shoot (camera, lighting, photographer's eye, details etc.) AND, just as critical, the post processing (making the image pop, true colors, straight lines etc.).

As I always say, you don't have to use me...just use someone as good as me or better. ;-) But if you would like to book....772-332-6464 or kaunishetkiphotography@gmail.com

 

real estate photography serving palm city, stuart, florida, jensen beach, hutchinson island, jupiter island, sewalls point