Photography For Real Estate

It’s been pretty clear to me for a long while that the Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 G ED ultra-wide lens is something real special. I got a chance to shoot with one at the Seattle PFRE workshop in April of 2008 for a short while and the review site I link to on the lenses page [...]

Last week, Rusty Freeman passed along a link to this site that has some nice replacement skies. I’ve added it to the Resource page. While on the subject of replacing skies it’s worth while bringing up the subject of how to do the replacement. As with anything in Photoshop there are many ways to select [...]

As a follow-up to the recent post on making DVD for Realtors, John Grow sent me this example of a continuous video that he created for an open house. John says: It was run as a continuous video on a big screen in the home during the open house.  We made 5 identical shows on [...]

Back in January I did a post on a sweet little iPhone application to help you find out where the sun or moon is at any given time in any geographic location. Well here’s another iPhone app that takes sun calculation to a completely new level. Unfortunately the price is a whole new level too. [...]

This success story is just too good not to pass along to readers! Rusty Freeman (Rusty@Studio ZZZ in the PFRE flickr group) is a studio photographer that works in the LA area and recently got into real estate photography. Rusty is a regular blog reader and purchased both of my e-books and has been following [...]

I was talking to Lee Jinks yesterday about his struggles deciding whether to purchase a Canon T1i or a Nikon D5000. I can appreciate his difficulty. These cameras are very close in specs. If you don’t have a backpack full of glass collected over years and you have to make your decision based on the [...]

Washington State expanding sales tax to digital products on 7/26/2009: Mike Martin sent me a link to some new sales tax rules announced by the Washington State Department of Revenue. To me this looks like Washington real estate photographers will now have to charge sales tax even if they don’t supply their client with a [...]

For many years I created little mini CDs with the tour of homes we listed on them for the buyers and sellers. Most sellers loved to get a copy of the virtual tour we used to sell their home as a keepsake of their home and occasionally buyers would ask for a copy as well. [...]

Andy Westlake over at Dpreview.com reviewed the new Canon TS-E 24mm F3.5 LII that was announced at PMA 2009. Andy concludes that: “The Canon TS-E 24mm F3.5 L II is a lens which, given its price, has high expectations to meet. The good news is that, in almost all respects, it succeeds – the build [...]

LA Times, July 16, 2009: Julius Shulman, whose luminous photographs of homes and buildings brought fame to a number of mid-20th century Modernist architects and made him a household name in the architectural world, died Wednesday night. He was 98. Shulman is considered by most to be one of the greatest Architectural photographers of our [...]

While cleaning up the blog I ran across the summary of a series of posts and discussions from two years ago on the subject of ethics. Two years ago this was a fairly heated discussion with opinions all over the map so what I did was attempt to summarize the general consensus of how readers [...]

Today HDRsoft announced Photomatix Pro version 3.2. This upgrade is available for download from: http://www.hdrsoft.com/download/win.html (Windows) http://www.hdrsoft.com/download/mac.html (Mac) The main updates in version 3.2 are:

Marketing is all about getting attention. The front shot of your real estate marketing photos are much like a fishing lure. Fishing lures are iridescent, bright and shiny so they stand out in a background where everything looks that same. Giving your marketing photos, especially your front shot, some punch is a good way to [...]

I’ve decided to make a blog page for the Realtor’s guide. Due to reader suggestions I now have three versions for the Realtor’s Guide for Using Photos: The original version with some editing thanks to  John McBay. This file was created with Smallest Size parameters so it would be small (108K). The same version as [...]

Here are some links that I think would be useful for real estate Photographers: Lightroom, Photomatix, and the Single-shot HDR- Here are a couple of videos (almost 50 minutes of video) on the details of using HDR by Ben Wilmore. Even though the content he’s using to demonstrate isn’t real estate the principles are the [...]

I just got finished creating a page on the blog to give a little more exposure to the PFRE Idol winners. I wanted to find a way to give more recognition to the winners of the PFRE Idol competition. I think it is a big deal to be selected by your peers, all over the [...]

I want to thank everyone that’s given me input on my Realtor’s Guide to Using Photos In Real Estate Marketing. I just put an updated copy of the guide up for download (click here to download). Although I did a post earlier on what this free guide is all about, just for clarity I want [...]

Alberto and Mia Dominguez have turned their passion for art, design and photography into a successful business in real estate and commercial photography on Vancouver Island in Nanaimo, BC. They are the official photographers of Homes & Living Magazine. Mia and Alberto both bring  a diverse creative background in art and design to their company. [...]

Congratulations to Dan Milstein (flickr handle: Chrome Dome Dan), of NY just voted by PFRE readers and flickr group members as PFRE Idol for the second month in a row! See this flickr thread for the detail voting results.

I was talking to my real estate photographer friend Kevin in Bellevue, WA yesterday. Kevin is the proud owner of a new 5D MkII and was telling me that he has been connecting with real estate agents by doing portraits for agents. He said he uses a  Canon 85mm L f/1.2 lens and two Profoto [...]