Archive for October, 2009

So What’s In Your Real Estate Photography Gear Bag?

October 28th, 2009

Scott Hargis has a good video that walks you through what he takes to a real estate photography shoot. He covers cameras, lenses, and all his lighting equipment. Very informative! The one bit of gear that Scott doesn’t explain in this video is how his shirt works. Scott’s wearing a state of the art optical [...]

Save Some Cash On A 16-35 f2.8L II Wide angle Zoom Or Other Canon Gear

October 27th, 2009

If you’ve been browsing around on B&H you may have noticed that there’s some instant cash rebates for a lot of Canon gear. Here’s an example. There is a list of all the cash rebates on the Canon site since they are all manufacturer rebates. The rebates are all good 10/12/2009 through 1/16/2010. Since my [...]

PlanOmatic Tours: Optimized For The iPhone Or Desktop Browser

October 26th, 2009

I ran across PlanOmatic today. It’s one of the first tours I’ve seen that will recognize if it’s being browsed by an iPhone and adapt it’s display to the iPhone browser and screen size. This is an example (www.12thestrand.com ) of a PlanOmatic tour so you can see what it looks like in an ordinary browser. [...]

8 Rules To Bootstrap Success In Real Estate Photography

October 26th, 2009

I had an insightful conversation last night with a highly successful portrait photographer (lets call him Jim) that has been struggling, unsuccessfully, during the last 12 months to break into real estate photography. Even though Jim’s real estate work is jaw dropping good, from what I could tell he has just not connecting with the [...]

Nocturne: Vincent Laforet and Stu Maschwitz’s New 1Ds Mk IV Video

October 24th, 2009

Here is something for your weekend entertainment. Watch it while you can; Vincent took the movie down from his site at Canon’s request. Apparently Canon wants it only on their site. But it’s still up on Stu’s blog. Stu and Vincent used a prototype Canon 1D Mk IV to shoot this. Stu says this was [...]

What Real Estate Photographers Need To Know About QR Codes

October 22nd, 2009

Whoa! Did I get an education today! A couple of my Kiwi readers (Neville and Martin) put me on to the subject of QR (quick response) codes. This is some of the coolest stuff I’ve run into in a long time. It all came out of my post yesterday about mobile phones being important in [...]

Lightroom 3.0 Public Beta Available For Anyone To Try

October 22nd, 2009

The Lightroom 3.0 Public Beta is available for anyone to try out. It should be understood that this is what it says… a beta version. Adobe does this with Lightroom so they can get feedback from photographers before they do a final release. The features in the final release may vary from what’s in the [...]

Look At How Top Agents Are Marketing Buyers With Mobile Phones

October 21st, 2009

I want to pass along another example of the importance of mobile devices because two weeks ago when I suggested that buyers may stand out in the street in front of a listing and look at photos of the inside of the listing I was amazed by how many readers thought that this was an [...]

TourFactory: A Example To Study To Tune Your Marketing

October 20th, 2009

Today, because I used to be a agent or have used Tourfactory products in the past, I got a promotional piece of “bacon” from TourFactory. Bacon is not to be confused with Spam because it’s much tastier than Spam. Anyway, here is the whole piece. Because I think it is valuable to analyze and learn [...]

Alternative For The Old Classic Nikon Manual Flashes

October 19th, 2009

I was having a discussion with reader “Uncle Louis” the last few days about alternatives for inexpensive manual flashes. Louis was complaining that he was having trouble finding the old Nikon classic manual flashes (SB-80dx and SB-26) that are so popular with real estate photographers. For the new comers, these flashes are popular because they [...]

What Is Your Real Estate Photography Sharpening Workflow?

October 18th, 2009

Last week I got a request from Karl Hoelscher, who would like to know what techniques people are using to sharpen real estate images. So I’ll start off by saying that I depend on Lightroom 2 for my sharpening needs. Before Lightroom 2 was released  for many years I used PhotoKit Sharpener, by PixelGenius. PhotoKit [...]

Real Estate Illustrator Adds Real Estate Photography To His Services

October 17th, 2009

One of the greatest enjoyments I get from doing this blog is hearing stories from readers of how they have been able to build a successful real estate photography business. About 35% do real estate photography full time and about 47% do real estate photography part time. I hear from many folks that are using [...]

What You Need to Know About Free

October 13th, 2009

Last week Leandro Suarez a real estate broker in Mendoza, Argentina that I’ve been helping get started photographing his own listings ask me if there was some where that did free virtual tours. I believe Leandro’s question grew out of the post I did a while back on free websites. At first I was a [...]

Scott Hargis: Nobody Will Take You Seriously If Your Verticals Are Converging

October 11th, 2009

Scott Hargis just put up a excellent tutorial on his blog on how to keep your verticals from converging. Scott’s main point is if you are not diligent about keeping your verticals from converging, nobody will take you serious as a professional interior photographer. Scott goes through a step by step  8 minute tutorial on [...]

Realtor Photo Guide Updates: What All Agents Need To Know About Photos

October 10th, 2009

I’ve posted updated versions both the English version and the Russian version of the Realtor photo guide. Andrey Khrolenok who did the Russian translation inspired me to do this update. Andrey reduced the font size in the Russian version so there is room for photo examples. He also overlaid each photo example with a red [...]

Can Users View Your Tours From Mobile Devices?

October 7th, 2009

Mobile devices are becoming increasingly significant as a tool for home buyers and and agents. Here are a couple of facts that suggest the trend that is occurring with mobile devices: Smartphones now account for more than a quarter (25.8%) of worldwide traffic according to gizmag.com August figures with the Nokia N70 leading the pack [...]

Meet The Real Masters Of Light

October 6th, 2009

NEW YORK — The next time you snap a digital photo and post it to flickr, you can thank the three men who won the Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday. They helped develop fiber-optic cable and invented the “eye” in digital cameras — technology that has given rise to film-free photography and high-speed Internet service, [...]

Check Out The New PFRE Fluid Content Column

October 6th, 2009

OK, check this out this new look! Based on all the reader input that I got last week when Peter, my WordPress guy, moved the blog width to 1280 and 1024, I had Peter do a refinement to make the blog center content column fluid, based on the browser window width. The way the blog [...]

Work Fast, Cut The Corners That Don’t Matter to Anyone But You

October 4th, 2009

New PFRE Idol: Mario Restrepo – San Diego and Baja, Mexico

October 2nd, 2009

Congradulations to Mario Restrepo who has been voted PFRE Idol for Oct 2009 by the PFRE flickr group. Mario services all of San Diego County, CA and Northern Baja, MX. We featured Mario’s 360 work on PFRE back in May of 2008. Mario is a very accomplished 360 shooter. Mario says: Hello Everyone, To start, [...]