Photography For Real Estate

Steve Mather, of the Mather Team in Cleveland, OH, sent me this photo of his low tech, DIY elevated photography rig. Steve calls it his 9.5 foot tripod. He’s bungied his tripod to the top of a fiberglass step-ladder. Steve says it’s stable enough to shoot brackets for HDR/Exposure Fusion. I think it is well [...]

Guest post by Lee Jinks of McAllen, TX: I recently evaluated a 21-foot Wonderpole from Polepixie that is particularly suited for Pole Aerial Photography (PAP).  The thing that makes it suited for PAP over other Wonderpoles is that it’s black.  Okay, that doesn’t mean you can’t do PAP with a Wonderpole of another color, but [...]

I have been eyeing the Eye-Fi Pro X2 SD card for a while now. The idea of having wifi build into your memory card is kind of cool. The feature that pushed me over the edge to buy one is the promise of wirelessly tethering my 5DMKII to my iPad. This video at fstoppers.com demonstrates the way [...]

Guest post by Lee Jinks of McAllen, TX: Pole Aerial Photography (PAP) has gained popularity over recent years, but until lately, entry into PAP required a major investment and/or some serious engineering.  Today there are various low cost products available to those wanting to attempt PAP.  The most economical approach is with a low cost [...]

I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to realize how simple it is to see what your point-and-shoot camera at the top of your PAP pole is “seeing”. The basic problem is that with the simple PAP rigs that I’ve described in the past (here and here) , like the polster system, is [...]

Nik who is a PAP enthusiast and a member of  the PFRE flickr group sent me some links on the Polester from www.longshotcamerasystems.com which is a PAP rig that looks like it would be a great for real estate photographers. There are a couple of benefits of the Polester: It’s off the shelf. You get the [...]

I’m a big advocate of using a painters pole to get some extra elevation on your front exterior shots (see: this this post and these posts ). You can use a light weight camera and a painter’s pole, that you can find in any hardware store, to get your camera 10 to 15 feet in [...]

Looking for some good information on elevated photography? Aplanding.com has got an active forum that discusses photography from radio control helicopter and airplane, kites, lighter-than-air, full size aircraft and masts. The forums at aplanding.com are a great place to find parts and advice for building your own elevated photography rigs. As long time PFRE blog [...]

I’d like to welcome a new PFRE blog advertiser, The Elevated Photography Company. Their new ad is just below the Tourbuzz ad on the left side-bar. The Elevated Photography Company is located in Broward County Florida, in the greater Fort Lauderdale area. The Elevated Photography Company is both a manufacturer of elevated photography systems and [...]

I got lots of feedback on yesterdays front shot post. The shot to the right is by Marcus Diddle of the Columbus, OH area. Marcus said he shot this standing on the back of his Honda Element, with his Canon T1i mounted on a 6-ft mono pod, fully extended above his head. Besides being a [...]

I love to find Realtors that appreciate the importance of PAP and a great front shot. When I do, it feels like my preaching and ranting about front shots is paying off. As I’ve said many times, the front shot is THE most important shot for marketing purposes. Not only because Realtors have to use [...]

As Vince de Sefano, of Dingley, AU describes in his blog post, there are two basic kinds of PAP (Pol Aerial Photography) systems: A point and shoot mounted on a fiberglass or aluminum pole. A pneumatic mast that mounts on a vehicle. There are some off-the-shelf systems of the second type but they cost in [...]

In my last post on PAP I described the absolute simplest PAP configuration, a small lightweight camera (Canon G9) on a 16 foot painters pole. I use this configuration a lot for front shots. Martin Kimeldorf sent me link to a video tutorial by John Park, on how to use some basic radio control parts [...]

Yesterday I was standing in a line (with my G9 in my pocket) listening to a recent TWIP podcast in which Alex Lindsay and Stu Maschwitz were talking about the two latest G9 contenders just announced. I’ll spare you another rant about my Canon G9 but a fact that hasn’t escaped camera manufacturers is that [...]

I couldn’t resist posting this shot taken by our workshop sponsor Stephen Armstrong of Open2View.com from the Holiday Inn parking lot during one of the last sessions of the day. Stephen says he had his mast up about 60′ (not its full height) for this shot. Stephen, we are all at the window looking back [...]

Today I’ve been testing my PAP (pole aerial photography) equipment because this weekend I have to shoot a new listing we have where the home is sited well above the street and there may not be room to use my usual technique of standing on the roof of my pickup. I thought it would be [...]

A week ago I did a post about how real estate photographers should get to know the stagers in their area and work together promoting each others services. One of the reasons is good agents use stagers and these are the very same agents that are likely to appreciate good photography. So why not promote [...]

Just after my post this last week on Paul Deines Pole Aerial Photography (PAP) rig I was thinking about what production DSLR would make a good PAP camera. The Canon 40D immediately came to mind because I’d heard good things about it and most of all it has a LiveView LCD screen. That is, if [...]

Paul Deines, real estate photographer in Denver, CO sent me an example of some PAP (Pole Aerial Photography) that he’s done recently inspired by some previous posts we’ve done on this subject. Paul says, “it’s really making a difference in my exterior photos. Using this technique, I can shoot over cars parked in front of [...]

Scott Hargis pointed out an interesting little piece of gadgetry. The Zigview S2 lets you plug a remote viewer with a 40′  extension into the eye-piece of many digital SLRs. This looks like an easy way to put you camera on a long monopod or mast. It looks to me like this remote viewer and [...]