Photography For Real Estate

It’s now October UTC/GMT and Mike Leyland of Cairns AU has won the voting for the September PFRE photographer of the month. Mike says: The house was a nominee for the HIA (Housing Industry Association) awards and had pretty awesome views. The bath was one of the numerous places from where you had clear views [...]

This morning in my local small town paper ran an AP syndicated story on front page pointing out how the in the US the upper-end real estate  market was recovering while everything else wasn’t: In America, it’s starting to feel as if there are two housing markets. One for the rich and one for everyone [...]

Tom in Seattle got me going on this subject last week when he was showing me a camera site where they are selling 5D Mark IIs for basically ~$1,000 USD off of the standard Amazon and B&H price. I recommended that he not bite on this ridiculously low price. It felt to me that the [...]

Today Allan MacKenzie showed me his recent project that he produced to promote the 60th anniversary of the Endeavour prize home. Some background: this special prize home was selected and purpose built to commemorate Endeavours first 60 years of service. Endeavour Foundation’s vision of providing opportunities for people with a disabilities was founded in 1951, with [...]

This weekend I talked to Russell “Rusty” Freeman who has been a long time PFRE reader. Rusty has been building and operating a real estate photography business in the LA for a number of years. Long time readers will remember many of the posts we’ve done about Rusty (just type “rusty” in the search box [...]

LA real estate photographer Russell “Rusty” Freeman has been a long time PFRE reader and contributor. Yesterday, Rusty sent me his video on “How to make Fresh Salsa & Guacamole”. Real estate photographers need Salsa & Guacamole too so I thought I’d pass this recipe on. I’m definitely going to try one or both this [...]

An article on Techcrunch.com reports that: ComScore’s August web video rankings are in, and this is for sure: Americans watch an enormous amount of online video content, with most of that taking place on — you guessed it — YouTube. There is several messages here for real estate photographers and real estate agents: Watching YouTube [...]

A shoot by PFRE reader Tim Furlong, Jr. of Louisville, KY is featured today in the US edition of the WSJ. I love this front shot! I think it is well composed and the colors really pop. It makes the viewer want to click and look through the rest of the photo set. The interior shots [...]

  Scott Kelby’s new book and seminar that is currently on tour are a great way to learn how to shoot portraits if you’ve not done that before or you just need a refresher on some modern portrait techniques. Then call up your local real estate office and make the managing broker and offer to [...]

Adobe Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements 10 are scheduled to be released October 3rd. I point this out because I think Adobe Photoshop Elements is becoming the Photoshop of choice for beginning real estate photographers. While I dearly love my Photoshop CS5 ($670 USD) and Lightroom ($210 USD) and there are many wonderful benefits of both, [...]

In yesterday’s post I explained that a real estate photographers success is highly dependent on building your business relationships with the top listing agents in your area. I got a number of questions about how to do this. There are very few businesses where you can make a list (names, phone numbers, email addresses) all [...]

Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto observed in 1906 that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the people. It turns out that what is now known as the Pareto principle or law of the vital few, shows up in economics, in business, and in almost every aspect of human endeavor. Yup, you guessed [...]

Estella Sneider showed me one of her recent shoots at 1380 Bella Oceana Vista in Pacific Palisades, CA. This is the Realtor.com listing. I think Estella did a lovely job! The photos have a nice crisp sparkly look and feel. I think she’s done a nice subtle job lighting it. This was a beautiful day [...]

I had a request last week to help an up and coming real estate photographer in the Seattle area learn how to make sure the views look great in his interior photos. He was lamenting that he had the opportunity to shoot homes with great views but he couldn’t pull the windows with his lighting [...]

I just discovered that late last month while I was on vacation, Kelby Media Group announced the launch of Light It a iPad magazine on lighting. Publisher Scott Kelby talks about Light It in this video and also has a Q&A about the launch on his blog. I downloaded the free premiere issue and I like the look [...]

I’ve been working on a set of YouTube video tutorials that I’m going to use to go along with the new edition of my Photography For Real Estate eBook. This weekend as I was working a Lens Distortion Tutorial when someone submitted a Master Bath shot with barrel distortion and the verticals off. Since the contest contestants [...]

John Quarles is a Realtor/Photographer/videographer  in Birmingham. AL. John has been testing various video hosting services recently so he’s been looking closer than usual at the stats from the videos he has hosted at different hosting services. He was a little startled to find that 75% of the visitors to his videos were IOS browsers. [...]

This is one of the best pitches for using real estate video that I’ve seen. Thanks to Brett Clements for putting it together and passing it on to us. Well over 80 percent of all real estate leads and sales come from the Internet. And video is playing an ever increasing part in driving those [...]

Brett Clements wanted to share an approach he used to get more work and exposure from real estate agents by filming real estate confrences. Brett says: One out of the box I’d like to share with you and our brothers in arms. We all get invited along to shoot conventions and conferences, with the dangling [...]