Real estate listing photos are critical for piquing interest in buyers. But how do you take professional-looking pictures that accentuate a property’s best features? Read on to learn how you can take beautiful, compelling photos that will put your home’s best foot forward.
Get the Right Gear
To take quality real estate photos that frame your property in the best light, you need the right equipment and the ability to shoot in manual mode. This includes a wide-angle lens of up to 24mm, which will allow you to capture an expansive area of each room inside a single frame while stretching and elongating to make space seem larger.
Although it isn’t essential, a tripod is a good idea for less-experienced photographers. Because it’s steady, a tripod allows you to use very slow shutter speeds to utilize the ambient light. It will also help ensure that you are always shooting from the correct height with each photo, in every single room.
Prepare a Strategy
It’s a good idea to make a list of all the essential rooms, so you can spend some time preparing each one for your photoshoot. Declutter and depersonalize, so it will be easier for prospective buyers to imagine themselves living in the home. Try to determine each room’s best feature and use that as the focal point for your photos.
Shoot at the Right Height
For real estate photography, you should always try to shoot at around five feet. This tends to provide an ideal view of each room. If you go too low or too high, it can give a distorted view of the home. This is another reason why it’s a good idea to use a tripod for real estate photography.
Ensure Optimal Lighting
Natural light is generally easy to photograph, and a tripod will allow you to use slow shutter speeds to make the most of any ambient light in low-light environments. Even if a home already has a lot of great natural light, however, you should still turn on the internal lights to give the home an inviting warmth.
When shooting indoors during the day, the outdoors will usually appear brighter than the indoors. Unfortunately, you can only expose for one or the other. In these situations, it’s best to take two exposures: one for the outdoors and one for the indoors. Then layer both images in Photoshop, and brush back to create a perfectly exposed view out windows.
Consider Vertical Distortion
When setting up each shot, make sure you frame each photo so the vertical lines of walls and doorways are straight. Since wide-angle lenses can distort vertical lines, you may need to fix this in post-processing.
Choose the Right Settings
With real estate photography, it’s best to get everything in sharp focus by using an aperture of around f8 to f/11. You should also be sure to use your shutter speed and ISO to balance your exposure. If all this sounds like a foreign language to you, it may be better to hire a professional.
Your real estate agent should be able to connect you with a qualified photographer who can take beautiful photos that will frame your home in the best possible light. On average, most real estate photographers charge around $200 or less for homes less than 3,000 square feet. For larger houses, they may charge from $250 to $500.
Depending on your experience using a camera, it may be worth it to spend a little money to avoid the headache of a DIY photo shoot and ensure that you have professional pictures that elevate the look of your home.
Keep Your Editing Simple
Modern editing tools create a world of possibilities that can drastically enhance – and ruin – photos. Real estate photography is no place for fancy filters that give buyers unrealistic expectations that fall flat the moment they walk in for a showing.
During the editing process, resist the latest trends and go for a clean edit that remains true to real-life colors. If you decide to add a little contrast enhancement for some extra oomph, use moderation. When it comes to impactful real estate photography, subtlety is key.
Thinking of selling a home? The Wheaton Team can help. With more than six decades of combined experience, our knowledgeable team specializes in residential real estate throughout all of El Paso County, including Colorado Springs and the Tri-Lakes area. Let us guide you through each step of the selling process, so you can get a price that meets your expectations.
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