10 Steps To Better Real Estate Photography – Step 2
Know The Purpose Of Each Shot

A thousand apologies for the delay in posting the second part of this ten-part series.  I’ve been very fortunate to have a busy shooting schedule these past few weeks, but the drawback has been very little time available for this  blog.  Still, it’s a good challenge to have and I hope it continues!

With that said, let’s talk about the second concept behind good real estate marketing photography:

Know The Purpose Of Each Shot

This second tip is a bit on the theoretical side, but if you’ll stick with me you’ll find that the last eight are very “nuts and bolts, do this” techniques.  And if you’ll keep this one in mind while you’re using the rest I really believe you’ll get better results – and that should mean more showings!

I’ve spoken and written often about the need to think of yourself as an advertising photographer rather than a documentary photographer.  Instead of creating a visual list of all the rooms in a home, we have to think about which features will have an emotional impact on the prospective buyer surfing through dozens of competing homes on the web.  I don’t want to be redundant by repeating everything I’ve written previously, but I do want to share two thoughts tht I keep in mind during the process of shooting every home I do, regardless of price or size.

First, what are the features in any room or space that will appeal to buyers?  Large windows, fireplaces, granite countertops and beautiful wood floors are good examples.  You know what these features are because they’re the same features buyers tell you they’re looking for in a home.  Light, bright and airy?  Open floor plan?  Spacious kichen?  Luxurious master bath?  Find the features you know will evoke the same response in a web viewer that your buyers have when they see them in person – then make those features the center point of your photographs.  If a particular room or space doesn’t seem to have anything going for it – a small secondary bedroom or a plain vanilla hall bath for example – you have to ask yourself whether a photo will help sell the home.  Remember, just because we can now post up to 25 images in the MLS doesn’t mean we should.  At the risk of sounding like a broken record, we have to think like marketers.  Each photo has to do something to “sell” the home.

The second part of this tip involves understanding the four types of images that you can take of the interior of a home: space, flow, detail and point of view (POV).

A space shot is what most of us are used to taking – a photograph of a specific room or space (like a living area in a home with a very open floor plan).  Typically we try to shoot space shots as wide as possible in an effort to show how large the room is.  Several of the remaining tips will help you accomplish this goal of making a room look as spacious as possible.

This is a shot I like very much for it’s simplicity and fairly bold geometry.  It’s a small dressing room off the master bedroom of a Brookside home.  Something about the room attracted me – the windows and way the morning light was pouring in perhaps – and I thought it might be attractive to a buyer as well

Flow shots are becoming increasingly important.  Surveys have shown that buyers surfing for homes to visit want to see not only the individual rooms or spaces within the home, but how the home “flows”.  They want to know more about the relationship of one space to another.

This example shows the foyer of another Brookside home, as well as the location of the dining room and the staircase to the second floor.  (This shot also shows some of the architectural detail that I thought a potential buyer would be attracted to.)  Good flow shots mean literally getting outside of the “box” mentality!

Here is another example of a flow shot – this time of an Overland Park side-to-side split level home that had been remodeled beautifully into a very warm space with a contemporary feel.  In a larger view of this image you can see more clearly the flow through the entire main level of the home.  The kitchen you see at the top of this post can be seen in the back part of this image.

The benefit to being able to use up to 25 images to market a property in the MLS is that we can now afford to use detail images.  These are images of small details that might have a large impact on buyers.  Examples include beautiful front doors, lighting or plumbing fixtures that are above the standard, deep, intricate crown moulding, window seats, gourmet appliances – the same details that make your buyer-clients react when you show them a home in person.

In this case you can see that I’ve ignored most of the room and focused primarily on the unusual fireplace.

Point of View shots are typically just space shots taken as though the viewer was actually seated in the home.  The camera becomes (literally) the eyes of the buyer.  In a living or family room, I tend to take these shots over the top of a sofa or love seat, including just a bit of the cushion to provide a frame of reference.  Here I thought it would be fun to show the same kitchen as above, but from the perspective of someone seated at the bar!

That’s it.  Understand the purpose of each shot – which is to appeal to the emotions of a prospective buyer, to cause them to linger over the image and ultimately to make them include it on their list of homes to be seen.  Keep this in mind while you consider space, flow, detail and the POV perspective and you’ll serve your seller clients well by doing everything possible, visually, to get more people in their home!

The next eight tips will be short and to the point – specific things you can do, regardless of the type of camera or software you use, to improve your real estate marketing images.