Comments on: Real Estate Photographer Web Portfolios

By: JaneHaas

JaneHaas — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 04:34:21 +0000

I currently use printroom.com as my portfolio for all of my photography – i’ve found that the realtors love looking at more than just architectural photography and seem pretty impressed by my photos of famous blues musicians!
Here’s the Printroom.com site: http://jhphotos.org/

I think it’s pretty easy to navigate and is fast loading. Plus photos can be purchased from the site. One thing I don’t like is that you have to have a price on everything, so you can’t just display photos – so I made all the photos on the architectural page $900. I’m working on my own website now to feature only architectural photography and will add a link to the current site for photography purchases. The hardest part is deciding how many and which photos to add. I have over 1000 architectural photos now!

By: Dawn Shaffer

Dawn Shaffer — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 23:53:19 +0000

As I have time I’m assembling “room-specific” slide shows of homes we’ve done virtual tours for. Kitchens; Great Rooms; Foyers. Should people wish to see the virtual tours of those homes, I can link directly to those.

Oh my, so many projects, so little time. Now that I’m putting it in print, I guess I’d better complete this project!

By the way, here’s a fun one that I just completed:
http://www.realtourvision.com/tour/RE/tour.view.new.php?utl=RE-4935-K6IFIS-02

Dawn Shaffer

By: Vince DeStefano

Vince DeStefano — Wed, 30 May 2007 22:59:20 +0000

Its all about smoke and mirrors! You can appear to look like a very big company for not much money. There are even services where you can get a fax number that goes to your email address for about $4.95 per month. You can also have a 1300 number that diverts to a mobile phone for only a few bucks a month. There are other services where you can appear to have a receptionist who answers your phones. I think if you appear to be a big stable company the agents will have confidence in using you, knowing that won’t disappear a month later. I have even written a company profile for my business. It’s very professional and outlines who we are, where we are going and what we do. I have this on both PDF and hard copy. At the end of the day RE photography can be very lucrative if done correctly, So its worth spending some money on marketing and add the finer details to your bussiness.

By: Cherie Irwin

Cherie Irwin — Wed, 30 May 2007 22:04:31 +0000

Without a doubt, you should absolutely have your own domain name. You should also have an professional e-mail address that reflects your domain name. I can’t tell you how unprofessional it looks to use a hotmail or yahoo e-mail account. I see agents do this all the time.

Let’s face it, the latest surveys from the National Association of Realtors estimate that around 80% of homebuyers are using the Internet to begin their search for homes. While agents need to portray themselves as being technilogically savvy to convince a seller that they can utilize the Internet to market listings to the fullest extent, they also need to show buyers that they can efficiently navigate the Internet to help them find a home. That being said, if an agent fully grasps the importance of branding and utilizing the advantages that the Internet, they will expect you to be even more advanced in your capabilities…thus, they will be more apt to align themselves with others that will help them look good. If you don’t look good on your own, they will be skeptical about hiring you.

By: larrylohrman

larrylohrman — Wed, 30 May 2007 15:55:53 +0000

Yes, I agree, domains and websites are so cheap there is no real excuse for having one. I just recently purchased “photographyforrealestate.net” for $9.95/year (at verio.com) where I have my other sites. For another $11.95/mo you can get plenty of space to post Lightroom galleries.

By: Scott Hargis

Scott Hargis — Wed, 30 May 2007 14:04:45 +0000

I think that to be taken seriously as a photographer, you have to have a domain name. Using smugmug or flicker as your portfolio host just implies to clients that you’re a hobbyist.

By: Vince DeStefano

Vince DeStefano — Wed, 30 May 2007 12:15:46 +0000

I have set up a gallery2 page at http://www.propertysnaps.com.au/othersnaps

The good thing is that you don’t need to do a bulk resize of you orginal images, cause it does it for you.

Its also a good way to distribute your images to your clients, although I use 4images for that, a modified version.

By: Marc Lacoste

Marc Lacoste — Wed, 30 May 2007 08:21:19 +0000

I didn’t know about that upload feature of gallery2, this is brilliant! Flickr does uses a similar feature, too.

By: Marc Lacoste

Marc Lacoste — Wed, 30 May 2007 08:16:12 +0000

There is a number of web2.0 portfolio services: http://del.icio.us/tag/portfolio+tool

like http://www.carbonmade.com/ , http://www.slidez.net/ , http://www.leafletter.com/

By: Vince DeStefano

Vince DeStefano — Wed, 30 May 2007 07:52:44 +0000

Some good tips there larry, I got my first portfolio together by going to display homes and asking if I could take some photos and I would send them to them to use. I made a lot of contacts this way.

In regards to portfolios, I think you really cant beat having a simple website with some contact details, a blurb about your services and a portfolio page. You can get a cheap hosting account these days for about $4 bucks a month or even less, You can get a .com domain name for about $8 bucks. So if your seriouse about real estate photography you definatly wont mind spending some money. There are also some great free open source album packages around such as jalbum, 4images, coppermine or gallery 2. Just to name a few.

I think gallery2 is great because you can download a small file to your registry that allows you to upload photos directly from windows (my computer) you just click “publish files to web” and follow the prompts, it even resizes them for you!