July 31st, 2011
It’s now August 1 in GMT so the voting for the July PFRE Photographer of the month is over. Congratulations to Dave Rezendes of Dave Rezendes Photography, Inc. of Honolulu, Hawai’i who was voted PFRE photographer of the month for July. Dave’s stunning image is of a home in Honolulu designed by Long and Associates AIA, [...]
July 29th, 2011
Brett Clements sent me a prerelease of a video he is working on. Bret says, “I’m working on a very different type of real estate video at the moment. I don’t normally show ‘roughs’ but I thought it might be nice for you guys to see how we concept up a piece.” Brett promised to [...]
July 28th, 2011
I’ve been talking to a lot of real estate photographers just starting the business recently and the subject of a portfolio website comes up as one of the very first subjects of discussion. Your portfolio of real estate images is at the center of your marketing. Your website is just an accessible way to present your business [...]
July 27th, 2011
Last week Dave Baxter, in upstate New York, told me that he was inspired by all the talk here on the blog about Exposure Fusion and wanted to know which camera body would be the best for shooting auto exposure brackets (AEB). While I knew that the recent Nikon DSLRs would shoot 8 EV of [...]
July 26th, 2011
Thanks to Michael McCreary for pointing out this recent article on helimalibu.com. UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) technology is evolving very fast. The UAV the Helimalibu.com guys use is a rig worth about $20,000. This is typical for a UAV that will carry a DSLR. To me this seems far too expensive to be a practical [...]
July 25th, 2011
Even though Russell Brown, the long time Photoshop evangelist uses the Nik HDR Pro Plugin in this tutorial to illustrate how to move away from over saturated and super sharpened HDR images. This is very appropriate for real estate photography and I believe the workflow he uses could easily be used with Photomatix or other tone mapping [...]
July 24th, 2011
Heath Cowart of Residential-Photography.net showed me this property video today that he just finished shooting. His client Jennifer Merrell of Steve Owen and Associates and her broker in charge came up with the concept and Jennifer directed the video. Heath said: Both Jennifer and Jeremy Owen, her broker in charge, are excited about using video [...]
July 21st, 2011
For those of you holding back on the upgrade to Lion I thought I’d report that my two upgrades have been reasonably painless. I have a MacBook Pro which I upgraded mid-day Wednesday, the day of the release, and a iMac which I updated overnight Wednesday night. While I can’t say I’ve really have tested [...]
July 20th, 2011
Just incase you didn’t notice, last Saturday HDRsoft released version 4.1 of Photomatix Pro. Here is a list of the new features from the HDRsoft.com site: Ability to select a region on the Tone Mapping/Fusion preview and replace it with a source photo. A “Selection Mode” option on the Preview window lets users select one [...]
July 19th, 2011
It’s been a busy last 7 days here at PFRE. It is clear from talking to people that there are a number of real estate photographers that aren’t making enough to pay their bills. This was a very hot subject and the post resulted in a bunch of requests for help from people working to get [...]
July 18th, 2011
Several weeks ago I did a post on Michael Thompson’s listing in Orlinda, CA. I mentioned that the still photography was done by Scott Hargis and the video was done by Quentin Bacon but I neglected to point out that that the extensive time-lapse in this video was done by Thomas Sidney McCallum and his [...]
July 17th, 2011
The following post is by Suzanne Feinberg. She and her partner Brad run Powervision360 Productions in the Phoenix area: This is a very tough market for real estate photography right now, or is it? Some people are claiming great success. One of our vendors is claiming that he has buyers of his products that are [...]
July 16th, 2011
For regular readers this video needs no introduction, but for those new readers or those of you that may have missed their earlier videos (this one, and this one) that PlatinumHD.tv did for Neo Property. A little back story may help appreciate this video. Adrian Jenkins (the boss in the white coat) and Ian Adams of [...]
July 13th, 2011
I’d like to publicly thank Suzanne and Brad Feinberg for their generosity in volunteering to help me coach real estate photographers in getting their shoot prices up to a level where they can run a viable business. There were several real estate photographers that took me up on my offer to help them get to [...]
July 11th, 2011
I had a discussion today about twilight shots and why to do them so I thought I’d recap the fundamentals. First of all, doing a twilight shoot is almost always a special trip so most real estate photographers list a separate price for doing a twilight shoot. Here is the collective wisdom from the PFRE [...]
July 10th, 2011
Recently I talked to a young entrepreneur/photographer, Mikael Hautala of Tampere, Finland. Mikael says, “In Finland nobody makes video tours but I’m going to change that”. He says that in Finland most real estate agents are in the habit of shooting their own still photos but appear to be willing to pay for video walk-throughs. [...]
July 8th, 2011
As a result of the post I did yesterday taking a poll on the lighting techniques that real estate photographers use, a couple of readers asked, “what is Exposure Fusion?” The short answer is: Exposure Fusion (EF) is a slightly different way to process bracketed images just like you would shoot for HDR. Exposure Fusion [...]
July 7th, 2011
Since I’ve been working on updating my Photography For Real Estate eBook I’ve been thinking about the changes that have been going on in real estate photography lighting the last few years. Back in 2008 I did a poll of what lighting techniques real estate photographers were using. That poll (the 6 poll down on [...]
July 6th, 2011
Everyone is stoked about Google+ and it looks like it has some very cool features. But, Scott Bourne, over at photofocus.com, has a great article that professional photographers should read before posting photos on Google or FaceBook. Were you aware that when you post photos on Google and FaceBook you are granting them rights to pretty much [...]
July 6th, 2011
This is A reminder that we are accepting entries for the July PFRE Photographer of The Month voting. This month’s theme is Interior shots with a breath taking external view. The image to the right is one of the first entries. For details on the contest and how to submit see the PFRE contest page. [...]
