Photography For Real Estate

The shot on the right, of my son’s 1890 Dutch Colonial farm house with a complicated lacy skyline is what I use to test masking techniques and Photoshop masking plugins (click on the image to see a large version). I’ve added the garish Spanish blue sky just so it’s easy to see how the details [...]

Yesterday Mike Martin pointed out to me that Adobe has announced Photoshop Elements 8 for both the Mac and Windows. Here’s the press release. It appears that Adobe has finally synchronized the Windows and Mac version. For years the Mac version was always behind the Windows version. This new version of PSE is going to [...]

This last week I was helping Clay Baldwin, in Houston find a way to create a presentable, professional looking website for his real estate photography business without spending a bunch of money while he was getting started. Clay is using phanfare.com for tours but needed a way to present his contact information and services so [...]

It’s hard to miss the new wide (1280 pixel or 1024 pixel) format PFRE. Last week I hired Peter Spannagle ( blog customization consultant) of yourcustomblog.com to help me fix the problem I was having with the real estate photographer directory. Along with fixing the directory and some long time widget problems Peter suggested that [...]

Marcus Newey pointed out an interesting new remote device that will do HDR bracketing the way you want. Some of the features are: Replaces and extends manufacturer-specific remote controls. Allows for unparalleled flexibility with automatic >30 second exposures in “bulb mode” – even in HDR sequences. Advanced easy-to-configure “Time-Lapse Mode” with optional sequence start delay. [...]

The outage that the real estate photographer directory had last week (the page wasn’t down, I just couldn’t add entries for a few days) confirmed my fears that the size of this kind of static directory page is limited. The size is limited by the maximum available memory on the PFRE blog’s WordPress server. I [...]

You’ve probably heard about micro four thirds style cameras. There is a lot of anticipation of the Lumix GF1 that will be out soon. Micro Four Thirds is commonly referred to as a 4/3″ type or 4/3 type sensor (inch-based sizing system is derived from now obsolete video camera tubes). It’s area is 30–40% less [...]

I came across this video (sorry about the ad… first time I’ve seen ads on youtube videos) by Patrick Norton and Roger Chang of Revision3 the other day that besides being a decent basic introduction to HDR talks about an  open source HDR processing application called Qtpfsgui. This is the first time I’d heard of [...]

VISUAL ACOUSTICS, the documentary film on Julius Shulman, is going to be distributed by Arthouse Films. The DVD release should come in late 2009 or early 2010. Julius Shulman, the Architectural photographer, who died in July at 98, is considered by most to be one of the greatest Architctural photographers. Here is a list of [...]

John Quarles, a real estate photographer in Birmingham, AL passed on this great idea for giving your clients a good reason to not leave you to go with one of those $49 discount real estate photographers. John uses the Slideshow Pro director version to store all slide shows for all his clients on his web [...]

Using flash with HDR is becoming a very common technique. In this video real estate photographer Michael James demonstrates how he uses a Visual Echoes Better Beamer Flash Extender to light dark porch areas in exterior shots. While Michael is demonstrating this technique with HDR, there’s no reason this technique has to only be used [...]

Last night when attempting to ad another entry to the Real Estate Photographer’s Directory I discovered that I can no longer edit the directory page. So until I get this problem fixed I’m sorry to say I have to temporarily stop accepting directory registrations. The problem is do the fact that the directory page has [...]

One of the challenges of real estate photography is to prepare photos for upload to the local MLS in such a way that the uploaded photos look their best. A related consideration is that you’ll want the photos to also look great on your client’s broker site as well. One of the evils you’ll have [...]

Back in mid-August when I sent out the latest update to the Business of Real Estate Photography e-book update John Driggers of Adelaide, AU pointed out to me that he likes to read the PFRE e-books on his computer screen which is a horizontal format. Since the PFRE e-books are a vertical two column format [...]

Ever since the release of the Canon 7D I’ve been trying to understand the differences between the 7D and the 5DM2. In the process, I ran across Stu Maschwitz’s (visual effects supervisor for Sin City and The spirit) blog ProLost. Stu has a great post that goes into detail on the 7D and how it [...]

First of all, thanks for all the input and ideas from everyone. Besides all the detailed comments on the previous posts, I’ve exchanged a lot of e-mail and flickr mail with people on the subject of a subscription forum site. I appreciate and respect everyone’s input and ideas.

You may have missed a valuable idea in the comments on my post on tapping into neighbor interest in listings. It’s worth another post. The essence of the discussion is, another powerful way to get exposure with the neighbors around homes you shoot is with a rider sign on the For Sale sign or on [...]

The 20% discount on all PFRE blog products (e-books and real estate photographer directory registrations) during August has been very popular so I’ve decided to extend the sale through Sept 30. The 20% discount will automatically be applied at checkout to all purchases.