Archive for the 'Basics' Category

Adobe Photoshop Elements 9: Everything Real Estate Photographers Need

December 6th, 2010

I’ve always been amazed by how many full blown Photoshop features you get in Photoshop Elements for around 1/10th the price of Photoshop CS5. The new Photoshop Elements version 9 released in Sept of this year takes this concept to the next level. PSE9 now has layer masks, content-aware fill, refine-edge, and improved panorama stitching. [...]

Do You Know Your Local MLS Photo Copyright Rules?

September 27th, 2010

Last week I got a question about MLS copyright rules. It reminded me that I haven’t talked about this subject in over a year. I’ve done a lot of posts on this subject in the past but I think It’s worthwhile bringing it up again. The basic issue is this: MLSs syndicate all their listing [...]

Are You Up to Becoming a Dynamic Duo?

September 14th, 2010

I believe the current high unemployment rate is creating an opportunity for some of you well established real estate photographers out there that are complaining about the amount of work they have to do! You could become a “Dynamic Duo”. In 4+ years of doing this blog and talking to hundreds of real estate photographers no one [...]

Eight Ideas For Starting Out With Real Estate Video

September 6th, 2010

I talk to a lot of agents and real estate photographers that are struggling to get started using video to market their listings  and themselves in a meaningful way. I’ve been talking to to John Sembrot the last couple days who was generous and brave enough to share his first try at doing video with [...]

The Miracle of Optical Triggering For Real Estate Photography

August 23rd, 2010

In the last few weeks I’ve had several questions relating to the basics of optically triggering flashes while shooting real estate. Scott Hargis did a post on PFRE  three years ago that is a concise summary of how to approach off camera flash when shooting real estate. However this post doesn’t mention the miracle of optical triggering [...]

Preparing A Home For A Real Estate Shoot – What Can a Photographer Do?

August 13th, 2010

Getting a home owner to prepare their home for a photography session is essential to getting good results but it’s more difficult to get through to some homeowners and agents than others. In my experience about 2 out of 10 homeowners require some special help in this area and some agents are prepared to help [...]

Why Good Photography Sells Homes Faster?

August 8th, 2010

I was a bit shaken last week when a regular reader said, “a friend just put her house on the market and I was checking the PFRE blog looking for some of the articles about why good photography sells homes faster but no luck“. I thought I had proven this proposition beyond a reasonable doubt but perhaps I [...]

Bare Essentials For Creating Real Estate Video

July 25th, 2010

Back in early July when I did a couple of posts on real estate video Scott Cooper made a comment on a post I did about a year ago on The Bare Essentials for getting Started in Real Estate Photography. Scott is getting started in real estate video and wanted me to do a post [...]

Ultra-Wide Lenses Need to Be Used with Restraint

June 20th, 2010

A reader recently told me, “I know you don’t think the 14mm (full frame) lens is suitable for RE work, but I have found that to be quite the opposite! I have the Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8 lens (the finest lens I have ever owned hands down for RE work!!) & I use it @ 14mm [...]

A Walkthrough of Google Analytics

June 13th, 2010

Steve Hong has a really nice walk through of Google Analytics on the PFRE flickr group that is worth while going through. Everyone with a web site or blog should be using Google Analytics. It’s free and easy to use. The way it works is you sign-up for a free analytics account and then for [...]