June 30th, 2011
It is now officially July in Greenwich, UK which means the PFRE Photographer of the Month voting for June is over. The winner for June 2011 is Ron Kenny who works the greater Seattle area. Ron was assisted by Chad Douglas of Puget Sound Aerial Imaging. Ron says, “this image is a joint effort between myself and [...]
June 29th, 2011
Quentin Bacon and Scott Hargis teamed up to shoot a stunning classic mid-century modern home designed by Don Sandy in Orinda, CA. Quentin and Scott’s client is Michael Thompson of Sotheby’s International. The finished official marketing site for this home is www.92sandhill.com. This site is a great example of how to market upper-end home. Plenty [...]
June 28th, 2011
The title of this post is a tweet by Daniel Jalkut, of Red Sweater Software. Last week Apple released it’s long awaited Final Cut Pro X. The release has film editing Hollywood and broadcast pros (like the video editors at Conan O’brien) taking to the streets with pitch forks. Daniel’s tweet (Final Cut Pro X [...]
June 27th, 2011
For those of you that have Scott Hargis’s Lighting Interiors eBook or have been hanging out in the PFRE flickr group for any amount of time, you understand why Nikon SB-80dx manual flashes are THE small flash of choice for real estate photographers so move along, there’s nothing here for you. However, the questions I’ve [...]
June 26th, 2011
Peter Brandt posed a question last week about the Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 FX wide angle lens. Peter’s question was, “wouldn’t the Tokina 16-28 be a better lens than the Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8G ED AF-S?” Peter points out that the Tokina 16-28 is less than half the price of the Nikon 14-24mm and for interiors you [...]
June 22nd, 2011
Through his photographer/videographer, Heath Cowart, I recently met Paul Wilander who is a top producing broker in Brevard, NC. Paul opened his own real estate brokerage (Looking Glass Realty llc) in November 2010 with the aim at providing his clients with the most effective, cutting edge marketing available. Paul’s experience is that professional photography and video are the [...]
June 21st, 2011
I want to pass on another success story. Allan Mackenzie who is very active on the PFRE Video for Real Estate flickr group posted this video that he did recently. Allan’s recent post in the PFRE flickr group explains the whole back story on this video. While this video is not a property video, the [...]
June 20th, 2011
Marc Angeles, a real estate and architectural photographer working in the LA area contacted me several days ago to tell me he was a PFRE blog reader and to pass along his story of success in real estate photography in the LA area. I love passing on stories like this of how real estate photographers [...]
June 19th, 2011
I’ve come to the conclusion that all you need to track your business financials is a few good spreadsheet templates. Here’s what’s lead me to this conclusion. At beginning of this year at our house we went through a traumatic upgrade from a 2004 version of QuickBooks to QuickBooks 2011. My wife Levi, the accountant in the [...]
June 16th, 2011
Ian Adams, Australian Gold Coast agent that platinumHD.tv shot the risque videos for back in Feb and Mar of this year left a comment recently about the results of the videos. Despite what you may have thought of them, they did their job. The property is sold and the listing agents believe the videos played a major role [...]
June 15th, 2011
Mike Gardner from Malibu sent me one of his recent shoots of the Birdview Property that overlooks the beach at Malibu. Mike says that on this shoot he bracketed the white balance. That is, on each of the interior shots he made exposures with white balance set for the exterior (windows) and other exposures with [...]
June 14th, 2011
Joanna Michl and her partner who work the Southeast PA area (including Bucks Co, Montgomery Co, Chester and Delaware Coast) just showed me one of their recent videos. The video uses a concept I haven’t seen before. Joanna appears in the video and acts as a potential home buyer walking through the home talking to [...]
June 13th, 2011
Like Scott Hargis says, there are a gazillion ways to replace a sky. For real estate photography you want something fast and easy. Scott’s video tutorial is just that, quick and easy. You don’t even have to have a library of skies for this one! You just change the color of the clouds from grey [...]
June 11th, 2011
I want to pass along a TED video by Simon Sinek from a couple of years ago because it has some powerful ideas in for anyone creating and building a business. I think it is especially relevant to photographers and cinematographers that because this limbic brain that Simon is talking about, that makes decisions but doesn’t use language [...]
June 8th, 2011
Here is the latest property video from Brett Clements and crew of PlatinumHD.tv Propvid Australia. This is not your average property video. It’s much longer than most. Feature length compared to most property videos (7:38). But if you’ve been following Brett and crew you probably didn’t expect them to do an average propvid. Just when you [...]
June 8th, 2011
The entries for the June PFRE Photographer of the Month are now posted in the Photographer of The Month flickr group and are ready for your voting. You cast your vote by joining the Photographer of The Month flickr group and commenting on your two favorites. This month’s theme is elevated photos. Click on the [...]
June 7th, 2011
Sherry Keenan, of St. Petersburg, FL told me to day that the real estate photography business in St. Petersburg area is going very well and she has over 100 business cards of agents that she has made personal contact with and wants to start a drip email campaign to keep in contact with these agents [...]
June 7th, 2011
A very real issue in real estate photography is perspective distortion. It comes up all the time because real estate photographers use wide angle lenses which are famous for two types of distortion: Barrel distortion: This is a lens defect prominent in ultra-wide zooms where straight lines near the edge of the image are curved. [...]
June 5th, 2011
A real estate photographer on the East Coast recently told me they were having a hard time making a go of it. My initial feeling was that lack of success in real estate photography these days is likely related to one’s marketing approach since I hardly ever hear of anyone not getting enough business once [...]
