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Image source: Winston Wang

Selling homes in this difficult real estate market is already hard enough.  You don’t want to handicap yourself even further by failing to show off your listing in the best light possible.   Your Internet listing partner, whether it be your broker’s website, your local MLS, or any of the new dot coms such as Trulia, allows you to upload photos of your listings to your hearts desire.  Let us look at some photography tips that can get the “SOLD” sign up on the front lawn as fast as possible and keep the foreclosure gremlins away.

Look Beyond the Front Porch

Capture enough angles to give a good overview of the exterior, interior, and surroundings.  Beyond the obvious front view, a great property portfolio will include details of the kitchen, living room, bathrooms, and bedrooms.  If the toilet is made of gold and is Internet enabled, you should capture that for sure.  Okay, maybe such an item does not exist, but you get the picture right?  This will be appreciated by long distance buyers as well as web surfing home shoppers.  Are you awed by the view from the deck overlooking the ocean?  You definitely should capture that and other scenic views that make the property unique.  If the home is a phenomenal example of a particular type of architecture, you will want to zoom in on the embellishments to bring out the flavor.  A wrought iron ornament attached to front of the house may seem trivial, but it’s exactly these details that will make your photos stand out from the next listing that just has a general photo of the house.

Avoid High Noon

Ever wonder why postcards of scenery look so nice?  It is because many are photographed during the “magic hour”.  This is typically one hour before sunset and gives your photos a deep, warm glow .  If you can wake up early enough, you can also shoot around sunrise.  
Shooting at these times gives brings out the emotion of the house that a harsh overhead sun cannot.  After all, the home buying experience is an emotional one and not just a sterile exercise in mortgage finance.  Are you extra determined to make your buyers drool over your home?  Try shooting the part of the house at the time that is most likely to be used.  For example, shoot the breakfast area during sunrise while waiting until sunset to shoot the kitchen and dining room.  Have you ever washed the outside of a house before?  The thought of hosing down a house and watching years of dirt running down the sidewalk may not be appealing but this is exactly the trickery that professionals use to make a property look sparkly in a magazine.  If you are lucky, your firefighter friend can hose down the house for you using water from the fire hydrant.  Short of that, you can simply set your water hose on the mist setting and evenly apply a coat of water to the surface of the structure.  Alternatively, you can pray to the rain gods to make it rain or just wait until rainy season.

Get Rid of the Car

Nothing ruins a property photo than a car parked in front of the house.  Even if the car is an expensive luxury car that just came out of the dealer’s showroom, you will want to keep it out of the photo because it is distracting and you are selling the house, not the car.  When shooting the interior, raise the window coverings to let in as much natural light as possible.  Unless your second job is an architectural photographer, it’s best to avoid using the flash on your camera.  In addition, you should turn on all of the lights in the house.  Not only will it make the house look brighter and more spacious, this will make the recessed lighting and hidden cabinet lights easier to see in your photos.  This may be obvious, but if the house is messy and dirty, definitely send in the cleaning crew before taking any interior photos.

Use the Right Equipment

Having a secret fetish for film is okay, but do not let that stop you from jumping on the digital camera bandwagon and enjoying all of the fun that goes with it.  The days of laboriously loading 35mm film and driving it to the drug store to have it developed is going the way of the VHS cassette recorder. Camera manufacturers and software developers have made digital photography more accessible than ever.  In addition to picking the right digital camera, you also have to consider the “darkroom” equipment — computer, monitor, and software.  We will expand on this topic in a future blog, but for now, you might want to check out Realtor.org’s article on digital cameras.

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