Archive for June, 2008

Lighting Workshop For Architechural Photography – LA Area

June 30th, 2008

Learn how to light real estate and architectural interiors like the pros, using off-camera speedlights.
Bay Area interior/architectural photographers Scott Hargis and Thomas Grubba will conduct a full-day workshop on Saturday, August 2nd, in Santa Clarita, California (greater L.A. area). This is a very hands-on workshop; bring your camera, your wide-angle lenses, and speedlights, and [...]

The Good News and The Bad News For Real Estate Photographers

June 30th, 2008

The good news is that current market conditions are such that good real estate photography is needed more than ever to sell homes. The bad news is that even many experienced listing agents are having a hard time financially. This was driven home to me recently when I heard of several top listing agents that [...]

4 Basic Principles For Choosing a Real Estate Lens

June 26th, 2008

Several times a week I get asked if the “kit” lenses that come on low-end Nikon and Canon DSLRs would be good for real estate shooting. The answer is no they are not wide enough. More importantly the question reveals that the person asking doesn’t understand several of the basic principles for choosing a lens [...]

Interior Photographer Wins $12M Verdict!

June 25th, 2008

Via: Thomas Bliss’s IAAP site and Carolyn Wright’s Photo Attorney blog:
“Liz Ordonez-Dawes, an accomplished architectural and interior design photographer, recently was awarded more than $12 million dollars for copyright infringement of seven photographs. In brief, the court found that the defendants distributed Ms. Ordonez-Dawes’ photos of high-end houses to various third parties for advertisements to [...]

You Can Get Help With Real Estate Photo Editing

June 24th, 2008

Ever been forced by circumstances to shoot a real estate front shot with a vehicle sitting in the drive way? I have; I see cars in the driveway of real estate front shots all too much. They distract from the purpose of the photo. But I also understand that you can be forced to choose [...]

Goodbye Caterina and Stewart and Thanks For flickr

June 20th, 2008

Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield, flickr co-founders, are leaving Yahoo. Their resignation is just part of the brain drain that is going on at Yahoo. Yahoo, who purchased flickr in 2005 for $35M is currently going through a corporate upheaval during the last few months. Hopefully this won’t have an effect on our hugely effective [...]

Box.net: Great Way to Deliver Images to Clients

June 20th, 2008

I know some readers are aware of box.net but I realized recently that all real estate photographers that need a quick and easy way to deliver the results of a photo shoot to clients need to know about box.net. For an example of how it works either click here or on the image to the [...]

Petition Against Orphan Works Legislation

June 19th, 2008

About a month ago I did a post highlighting some background on the The Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008 legislation pending in the house and senate. Thanks to Carolyn Wright over at photoattorney.com I just noticed that there is a petition to sign registering sentiment against this legislation.

New Tour Provider Cpgtours.com

June 18th, 2008

There’s a new tour provider that launched recently – cpgtours.com.
Their tour design is clean and elegant. They are primarily setup for single agent use but are working on features that would more easily accommodate selling to real estate photographers. Mike Cole from cpgtours said, “…we really hadn’t thought of selling directly to photographers. Right [...]

New Process For Choosing Real Estate Photographer of Month

June 15th, 2008

I’d like to start a process that gives broader participation in choosing the PFRE photographer of the month. I think this would make this award much more meaningful and significant if the choice was made with in a more collaborative way than just me sitting here in my swivel chair making a unilateral decision based [...]

IttyBiz.com a Home Based Business Resource

June 13th, 2008

Real estate photography is essentially a home based business. In talking to real estate photographers I find that the area they need the most help is in the business and marketing area. Its easy for creative people to be over focused on all the creative, artistic and technical aspects of photography and not spend enough [...]

Real Estate Photographer Directory Price Increase

June 12th, 2008

As of June 13 I’ve raise the price of being listed in the Real Estate Photographer Directory to $60 a year. The reasons are:

I’m getting so many directory listings that maintaining it is using up too much of my time. I feel like I have a tiger by the tail and it’s about to [...]

News For Real Estate Photographers

June 10th, 2008

Lightroom Exchange: “When you look for plugins and addons to Adobe products, most users would be encouraged to go to the Adobe Exchange site. This is where developers would add and advertise their product, be it free or commercial. Up until recently this wasn’t possible for Lightroom users, but now we finally have a Lightroom [...]

How to Do Masking For Sky or Window Replacement

June 10th, 2008

Doing quick Photoshop masks for sky replacement or window replacement on interior shots is a frequent need that real estate photographers have.
The crux of creating such masks is that the mask edges are never clean and simple. Like the image in my demonstration video, the mask between the sky and the foreground can be complicated [...]

Meet Sylvia Guardia M: Real Estate Photographer of The Month

June 9th, 2008

Those of you that frequent the PFRE flickr photo discussion group lately may recognize this photo and other images that Sylvia has been posting.Sylvia lives in San Jose Costa Rica, is 25 years old and graduated in Photography from the Veritas University, Costa Rica in 2004. Her web site is: www.sylviaguardiam.com.