Zappos.com has no problem posting 8 high quality photos of a $35 pair of sandals, yet most Realtors still resist spending a buck for high quality photos or videos for their $800,000 home they are attempting to market!

Realtors are NOT willing (and in some cases, able) to pay many hundreds or thousands of dollars for super high quality visuals to market their properties. That’s just a fact! Even with a $2M+ property, most agents can’t justify (or won’t) spending $1000 on photography or videography to market a home. Some might – most won’t. Especially in this funky economy.

I’m not advocating shoddy work. All I’m saying is to sustain a successful BUSINESS model, you don’t want to strive for mediocrity, but you do need to keep it all in perspective, or you will not make a decent living in this business.

Clearly if you’re driving to and from a property, spending 45 minutes on site and spending 4 hours in post processing obsessing over minute details that most people will never notice – for a $150 – it just doesn’t make sense to me.

All I’m saying is look at your audience and cater your business model and pricing to that specific audience. Obviously if you’re shooting for a glossy magazine or a book, you’re in an completely different league – and charging (hopefully) a completely different price to reflect that.

In most creative fields, the most successful are those who know how to market and know and understand their target demographic. It’s 70% business and 30% talent! Sad, but true. The most successful actors are those with the best agents, not the most talented. The most successful photographers are those with the best marketing skills and business sense – not the most talented.

I know that I am not even remotely CLOSE to being the best at what I do, although I am always striving to become better. It’s not about producing a mediocre product, it’s about producing the right product for the right price for this particular industry and application. There are far more people out there that are infinitely more talented and creative than I am – I’ll never deny that! But I DO know business, I DO know real estate (I’ve done online marketing for realtors for 15 years) and I also know that I work more consistently and make a far better living than the vast majority of photographers and videographers out there! And believe it or not, I have had an unlisted phone number for 7 years and do NO direct marketing to realtors in any form – and I still work every single day taking pictures and videos of houses.

That’s why I don’t spend a great deal of time on these forums obsessing about minute details that most CUSTOMERS never notice nor care about. I’m out shooting houses and making a living – all day, every day, all year unless it’s pouring rain – like today!

Regarding mediocrity, the word does not necessarily connote laziness or sloppiness (although many use the word to always imply “below average” or “poor quality”). It just means average, whatever average may be. I don’t know, perhaps the average for real estate photography is poor quality.

I think it is also worth bearing in mind that Fred’s business is heavily oriented towards videography. Videography for real estate is very new, pricing pressures may be very severe considering the amount of work that goes into producing videos, and the quality expectations at this time may generally be pretty low. As Scott suggests, with still photography for real estate there are clients who value high quality. I think the best advice I have seen is to find the point at which you are always slightly exceeding your clients’ expectations.

Here are two examples: Look at http://www.joebuissink.com/. Joe is a top level wedding photographer. If you read about him, you find out that he never settles. His goal isn’t photographic perfection but to perfectly capturing the story of the wedding. He’s done JLo’s wedding and Christina Applegate flew him and his crew to Paris to shot her wedding. Why, because he build a reputation for creating something special. Something that people clamored to pay for. Some will argue that we aren’t in the same business and I’ll say you’re wrong. We are all in the business of not only satisfying our clients but blowing their socks off.

A second example is easier. In this economic down turn, it isn’t Mercedes or BMW or Audi or Lexus who’s in trouble, it is Chevrolet, Dodge, Cadillac, and Chrysler all who make cars that are good enough.

I’m just sayin’

While i agree there is a need for speed, and certainly maybe spending an hour trying to remove a stray shadow would be a waste, I am not so sure ‘quick n dirty’ is the way to go either

When I first started and was trying to figure out how to price it out, one of the things I did was make HDR merges ‘optional’ I soon found out, ok, I spend maybe an extra 5 min or so on this shot to blend 2 exposures together, why shouldn’t this quality be available for every shot at a base price

And, I think some of the ‘details’ that only photographers notice is a little overstated too. Many people would have no idea why anybody would, for instance, want to pay 85k for a BMW when a Ford Focus will get you to point B for for 50k less – until they drive a BMW and understand what quality is and what they are paying for.

Honestly, the real estate market seems to be saturated with ‘good enough’ – almost every RE agent you talk to says his photos are ‘good enough’

I may be cynical here, but this original post sounds like it was written by a typical RE agent who doesn’t like high quality photos showing up in his area because it is putting pressure on him to ’step up his game’

http://www.famous-quotes.net/Quote.aspx?The_perfect_is_the_enemy_of_the_good

It says, “I believe Voltaire’s original point about “perfection”, specifically, rather than simply “better”, is that to attain a perfect thing, whatever that is, becomes infinitely more difficult as you near it. So, at some point, you have to cut your losses, and simply say — “Good enough”. This is not a justification for shoddy workmanship or laziness, for that certainly would not be, per se, “Good enough”. The point is more to know when to realize that any additional effort toward improvement would result in a negligible improvement, especially in comparison to the effort required.”