Photography For Real Estate

I recently discovered UK photographer Barry Beckham’s site. Barry has a number of tutorials and has one on HDR that will probably be of interest to real estate photographers. I found Barry’s site by way of the three part youtube tutorial he is using to promote his new HDR tutorial DVD. Here are the three [...]

I just got hold of some previously unreleased video of Scott Kelby, Matt Kloskowski and other attendees of Scott Hargis and Thomas Grubba’s LA lighting workshop that was held in August of 2008.

When you operate a digital photography business sooner or later you will be touched by a computer equipment failure. Whether or not the failure becomes a disaster and what it costs you depends on what precautions you’ve taken to protect yourself. Here are some facts about computer failures:

Despite your past experience, your computer WILL fail. [...]

I noticed that the Layers Magazine site has a nice tutorial by Sean Duggan on Exposure Blending In Photoshop. I did a post about a month ago that covered specific use of this general blending technique that covered dealing with  interior windows.
The thing I like about Sean’s article is that it nicely complements my post. [...]

When new real estate photographer ask me for DSLR recommendations I always recommend Nikon or Canon. I notice that the same thing usually goes on, in the PFRE flickr discusion group. The usual reason is that with Nikon and Canon you have more choices of lenses.
Now days there is another reason to stick with the [...]

Scott Hargis and Thomas Grubba are doing two more workshops in Chicago, on January 24th & 25th. Each day will be a stand-alone workshop (students sign up for one day or the other, not both). Fee is $275. To register for one of these workshops contact: scott@scotthargis.com
For those of you not familiar with Scott and [...]

There is a good thread in the PFRE flickr discussion group about considerations for making a real estate office presentation for the purpose of connecting with potential customers. There is tons of great advice in this thread about how to approach this method of connecting with prospective customers:

These meetings are all about personally connecting with [...]

Voting is currently in progress for this months PFRE Idol. See the photos here and vote here until December 1.
I also want to thank the sponsors cpgtours.com and iPropertyWebsites.com  and Michael Asgian for their generous support of the PFRE Idol contest.
I noticed that the other Idol contest (American Idol) selected a winner this week.

One of the basics of real estate photography that I find there is always a lot of confusion and misunderstandings surrounding is that of who owns the photos from a real estate shoot. Agents are sometimes surprised to find that they can’t do anything they want with the photos they get from a photographer and [...]

A reader sent me a listing for a high rise condo in midtown Manhattan. He was complaining that the interior photography quality didn’t match the listing price. Perhaps, but what bothered me more is the short abbreviated presentation of what appears to be a really grand property… it better be for $65M. It reminds me [...]

I was rummaging around on youtube and ran across this talk that Uwe Steinmueller (Editor of Digital Outback Photo) did about a year ago at Google’s PhotoTechEdu Day series. While Uwe talks about HDR in general I think you will find his HDR discussion useful in the real estate context.
Uwe has done a lot of [...]

I am taking another look at DXO Optics Pro because DXO recently did a release and a e-book subscriber suggested that I give DXO coverage in my book.
I have to say up front that I’ve had some resistance in the past to using DXO in the past because:

They charge twice as much ($249 USD) for [...]

Ever since I started shooting 360s in 2000, I’ve been on a quest for the ultimate, elegant real estate 360 tour design. For a long time I worked at designing my own. This was my last effort, but I’m not totally happy with it so I’ve never got around to converting it to Flash.
There have [...]

Michael Riechmann has some very in depth reviews of the Canon G10, Nikon P6000 and Panasonic Lumix DCS LX-3. I think Michael does a great job of sorting out and reviewing equipment. These three pocket cameras are probably the top contenders for light weight PAP cameras or if you are on a minimal budget a [...]

Today the Photography For Real Estate Flickr Group went over 2000 members. While this is not that big as flickr groups go (Strobist has 37,955 and Adobe Lightroom has 7,231) I think the amount of collaborative learning that goes on in this group is amazing. I hear stories almost everyday of how valuable people find [...]