# Real Estate Photography Critique



## wsmith96 (Jan 15, 2014)

One of my friends, who is a real estate agent, asked for my help this past weekend to photograph a new listing that she has. I'm not much of a "real estate" photographer, but I told her that I would help her our free of charge for the opportunity to learn. I'd like to ask the professional real estate photographers to provide a critique of my first attempt so I can grow as a photographer.

I made use of my T1i, 17-55, and 10-22 to take the photographs. I also used 2 x 430EX II's and an ST-E2 to provide fill light. Now, I received my second 430EX and ST-E2 2 days before I was to shoot this home, so I had effectively zero learning time. My friend was good with me experimenting with my setup and understood that she wasn't getting "professional" level shots, but I thought that they were good enough for an MLS listing. 

The house on the other hand was not a very attractive house and had been vacated. I was hoping to be able to stage the home a bit, but this is what I had to work with. Just to give you an idea, the agent even told me that it was okay for me to not take a picture of the front of the home because of the over grown foliage and ugly front door. Therefore, I did as she asked and skipped the front of the home.

From my first experience, here's what I learned:

1. My tripod absolutely sucks - I got a sunpack tripod as a gift and found it to be a pain to set up and adjust. I don't normally use my tripod for my other photography so I never really noticed it's short comings. If I start doing this a little more, I'll change that out. I should have at least brought my monopod, but all of my shots are hand held.

2. I should not have messed with the speed light transmitter and just dealt with the single flash. Now granted, I did get it to work, even around corners and I felt I did a decent job for my first time setting flashes manually, but I needed to be comfortable with that setup before I do that again. I wasted a lot of time with on the job training. 

3. Radio triggers are the way to go. At work, my company replaced part of their bonus program with a points program that you could use to purchase items from an awards website. Luckily they had some canon gear on there. I was looking for something that I normally wouldn't buy for myself and I had my eyes set on a canon ring light. When I went to go get it, it had been removed from the options, so I opted to get a second flash and the speedlight transmitter. They did not have the RT options available or I would have started down that path. Though this will work for what I intended to use it for (simple home studio for kid portraits), it's got some problems with real estate photography. I do know that the best solution is radio triggers, but I didn't have any at the time of my appointment.

4. Bring shoes that are water proof. In the early morning I went out across the property to take some landscape pictures of the property (5 acres). My shoes were soaked in 5 minutes.

5. Expose for the windows and fill in with flash. I thought my room shots with windows worked out okay by doing this. 

6. White balance can be a bitch when every other light in the home is soft white, bright white, fluorescent, warm white, etc. I edited in lightroom to the best of my ability. I think I got the pictures relatively consistent on white balance across the home, but it took me half a day in lightroom to fine tune them.

7. when using wide angle lenses, you'd better learn perspective correction, or at least make the center lines vertical in your pictures. I understand that tilt shift lenses work great for this, but I don't have one and wasn't going to purchase or rent one for this one time affair. I did not do a good job on this in my post process, but will work to improve my techniques. I ran out of time and had to deliver what I had.

8. be better prepared to remove distracting objects, or find ways to hide them. It's easier to hide them when there is actually something in the house. In my case, it was the lazy wiring job the folks did to distribute tv cable from their closets to the bedrooms. 

So this learning experience was invaluable to me. I delivered the pictures to the agent on time and she showed other team members of the agency. She said that the feedback from them was positive, so I may get additional paid work, but who knows. 

If you have a moment, could you please provide some constructive criticism on my work?

Thanks!

Wes


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## wsmith96 (Jan 15, 2014)

More:


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## wsmith96 (Jan 15, 2014)

and more:


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## wsmith96 (Jan 15, 2014)

cont'd


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## wsmith96 (Jan 15, 2014)

cont'd:


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## wsmith96 (Jan 15, 2014)

cont'd
bathroom and cedar closet


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## wsmith96 (Jan 15, 2014)

cont'd


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## wsmith96 (Jan 15, 2014)

cont'd


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## wsmith96 (Jan 15, 2014)

contd


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## wsmith96 (Jan 15, 2014)

Thanks for your feedback!


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## privatebydesign (Jan 15, 2014)

For a first try you did very well.

Couple of glaring things I'd work on, get all shots level and square, you have some really funky angles going on. The viewer will almost always assume room corners, door frames, windows, walls, and cupboards are perpendicular to the floor. Also, try to tell a story, a visual walk through as it were, if you see a door in one frame walk through that door to the next frame, your series looks like a random series of images with little continuity.

I moved from third party radio triggers and six 550EX's to the 600 RT system and couldn't be happier, well worth the investment, but the 550's and cheapo Yongnuo radio triggers did well for years and the 600's just make life a little easier.
If you can't light the whole room in one go, light it in sections then open as layers and layer mask the well exposed section of the room in each layer. Flash did ok here, but where the lighting is an important part of the room ambiance it is very difficult to use effectively.

Varied WB; the addition of the WB adjustment to the brush tool in LR was a life saver. Make huge brushes that can cover the entire mismatch in one go but turn the % down and gradually work it in.

Tripods, I worked a cheap aluminium Manfrotto 055XPROB for years, but get a geared head if you intend to work at this more.

Here is a quick edit for squaring up one of your images.

HTH. 

P.S. This is the real estate photographers interior bible http://photographyforrealestate.net/lighting/
This is the most active real estatesite out there, their Flickr group is very active and helpful. http://photographyforrealestate.net/


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## wsmith96 (Jan 17, 2014)

@ PbD,
thanks a lot for your feed back and for the edit of my picture. You are right, I do have my angles all over the place. I re-edited a couple of the photos below to correct for perspective and distortion. What do you think?

I also agree that the RT system would be great to use, but where I'm at right now, I can't justify the expense. If I get better using what I have now and start getting more referrals, I'll invest in that system. BTW, how many speed lights do you typically use? 

I did have a blast photographing this home. When I get another, I'll post what I did so you can see how I improved. 

Thanks again!

Wes


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## dcm (Jan 17, 2014)

I would ask the realtor for some links to homes that she thinks were well photographed and study what they did. Always better to get an idea about what the customer likes to start - it eliminates some of the guessing. Then practice shooting your own place - how would you want it to appear in the MLS book.

I agree with the comment about context/continuity. Rather than shooting from the door to a dead corner, it helps to go stand in the dead corner and shoot towards the door. I also prefer some photos with an angle of view > 90 degrees so I can see all of the walls in one shot from the corner. 

On my APS-C 550D I have used an 8-15 fisheye at 10mm and defished. On my FF 6D I used the wide end of the 17-40. A little fisheye can go a long way, so I try not to overuse it.


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## Canon1 (Jan 17, 2014)

A couple of tips. Always shoot from a tripod with a level setup. Ideal height is about chest high. (Higher around kitchen counters and lower in bathrooms). A big one: try to include two corners of the room in the same frame. This will give the room perspective and not s feeling that two walls run out forever on either side. Practice tips and advice you get from others in your oen home. Practicing new tdchniques on the job is a bad idea. Just a few to get you started.


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## wsmith96 (Jan 17, 2014)

dcm said:


> I would ask the realtor for some links to homes that she thinks were well photographed and study what they did. Always better to get an idea about what the customer likes to start - it eliminates some of the guessing. Then practice shooting your own place - how would you want it to appear in the MLS book.



That's actually a great idea. Thanks for the feedback and suggestions. Inside the home I was using a 500D (T1i here in the states) with a 10-22 with it mostly at 14mm. I was looking at DXO's website and from what I could see from the measurements for that lens/camera combination for sharpness was about 14mm @ f5.6-8, so that's the settings I used. Next time I'll compare 10mm and see if the quality is the same - it may not make much difference for an online posting where the picture size is 1024x768.

Thank you for the feedback!


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## wsmith96 (Jan 17, 2014)

Canon1 said:


> A couple of tips. Always shoot from a tripod with a level setup. Ideal height is about chest high. (Higher around kitchen counters and lower in bathrooms). A big one: try to include two corners of the room in the same frame. This will give the room perspective and not s feeling that two walls run out forever on either side. Practice tips and advice you get from others in your oen home. Practicing new tdchniques on the job is a bad idea. Just a few to get you started.



Agreed on practicing at home. I'll be doing that this weekend. I have tried a few times but have been embarrassed to post pics because shortly after I clean up my house, my two kids destroy it. I believe they can't live without their stuff littered from room to room. :-[

My tripod has two bubble levels on it, but I don't trust the setup because the quick release system that's on it (it's sunpack and I can't find a way to change the head - http://www.rakuten.com/prod/sunpak-platinum-plus-7500-pro-tripod/211117344.html ) makes the camera not level even though the tripod is. I'll be investing in a bubble level, but not sure how to add it and keep my flashes going. I'll just need to look and see what's available. Do you have suggestions? For now, I'll have to eye-ball it when using the tripod.

Thank you for the advice on camera heights per room!

Regards,

Wes


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## trof2 (Jan 17, 2014)

I've been put in similar situations as you and would like to offer a couple tips from experience.
I don't know how to help those exteriors. Shooting towards the house would be a good idea because it give your a sense of scale and reference. Wait until later in the day. Maybe clone stamp some of that patchy grass?

These are a few really simple changes that will make your interiors more legit.
1. Get a couple CTO's (or a set) for your flashes to avoid the blatant flash appearance. If you forget it the day of the shoot or are left with an unbalanced image for some reason, you can always take in to PS, duplicate layer, color correct, and blend the areas. The latter is a bandaid solution that works as a last resort.

2. The harsh cast shadows from the flashes are very easily ameliorated by rotating the head 180 degs, and bouncing off the wall behind you. It gets a bit more diffuse. And never have more than 1 dominant light with cast shadows in the scene, otherwise things start looking weird, especially in an unfurnished scene.

3. This is a personal preference, but I like to open up a little to get more ambient light, and use it as a dominant natural light in the space. That generally makes the space feel a bit more airy and is more "architecturally honest". The flashes only fill the shadows at that point. 

Not bad.


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## wtlloyd (Jan 17, 2014)

First off, you've done an impressive self-analysis for a first attempt, your bullet-points are all spot on
jpegs #34 and 39 are very good in terms of lighting multiple rooms within the view point, and lighting around objects that throw shadows
Ya, as commented, get those verticals vertical! better yet, why don't you play around with the manual lens corrections in lightroom. you can do wonders to correct what your setup failed to achieve. Try fiddling with the vertical and horizontal sliders.

Lastly, composition. Look, I know you want to show as much of the room as possible. We all do. But take a look at your interior shots. Every one, you've got your butt jammed up against the corner of the room, shooting to take in as much as possible. More information is better, right? 

NOT! Start throwing away volume and concentrate on quality - show just the very best each room has to offer. 
Not to mention, a series of photos, all taken from the corner of the room, are immediately obvious and worse, boring. Mix it up. You'll never square up your shots until you come out into the center and shoot 90 degrees out instead of 180. Or, why don't pros just use a fisheye all the time? That's what you're trying to do by shooting in the corner - pick a view and settle for less...more often than not, it ends up being more.
Lastly, go here http://scotthargisphoto.com/blog/ and get either his e-book or his video series. That's all you need to launch.


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## RiceCake (Jan 17, 2014)

Some good tips here! I think you have made a great first attempt, especially when you consider the rather unappealing subject you were given to photograph. Judging by your learning points, you already know the technical and composition aspects that make a good photograph, so I'll just share some tips I've learned. 

1. Try to be conscious of angled objects at the corner of the frame. Personally, I don't like having door ways, cabinets, windows, etc. that run at an angle near the edges of the frame (like Koppe Bridge Rd--24.jpg where the doorway is wider at the bottom than the top, or Koppe Bridge Rd--29.jpg where the top of the shower looks bigger than the bottom). All angle issues are magnified with a wide angle lens. If something is running out of the edges of the frame at a weird angle, I usually will re-compose to either get rid of it, or change my angle to match the edges of the frame (like Koppe Bridge Rd--23.jpg where the cabinet is perfectly parallel to the edge of the frame). Typically there are many things at the edges of your frame, and you just have to pick which is most important to align with. I don't have a tilt-shift lens, so I physically move my camera up or down to get doorways to align with the frame (like the left edge of Kitchen1 that I attached). 

2. Experiment with lighting techniques to eliminate the harsh shadows, contrast, and white-balance that flash is known to produce. If you have tons of gear, you can position flashes to evenly light the whole room with no falloff at the end of a large room. I personally can't afford much lighting equipment, so I had to change my technique to get even lighting across the frame. This is the technique I used for all of the photos I've attached: http://youtu.be/p84oRb5tj3g

3. Try to find the least appealing corner of a room, and set your camera up in that corner. This means that it will not be in your picture, and you will be capturing the best elements in your field of view. Typically it is better to have doors, windows, fixtures, etc. in your photo rather than an empty corner of the room. 

4. Don't forget to capture some details. Once you've captured the foundation of your 'story' with a bunch of wide angle shots that give the viewer a feel for the space, try to go in tighter on interesting details that draw your attention (in my example I loved the symmetry of the dining table, so I filled the frame with it in Kitchen2). 

Most of all, have fun and never stop asking questions or experimenting! I started to experiment with indoor panorama's, which is how I got the first picture that I attached (Kitchen.jpg). This is a total of 20 shots put together! 4 different vertical angles for the panorama, and 5 different exposures for each angle to achieve the HDR. I never could have achieved this if I listened to what everyone else said (pano's never work indoors).

You're off to a great start!


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## BoneDoc (Jan 17, 2014)

The 3rd and 5th shot could really get me to buy this house. 

IMHO the landscape is this house's best asset, and the more you can shoot it in favorable light, the better it would be. Great first effort though. Even if there are such thick folliage on the front of the house, you might still be able to find an angle that would hide it (think farther away and shoot mostly landscape with a bit of the house in there). 




wsmith96 said:


> One of my friends, who is a real estate agent, asked for my help this past weekend to photograph a new listing that she has. I'm not much of a "real estate" photographer, but I told her that I would help her our free of charge for the opportunity to learn. I'd like to ask the professional real estate photographers to provide a critique of my first attempt so I can grow as a photographer.
> 
> I made use of my T1i, 17-55, and 10-22 to take the photographs. I also used 2 x 430EX II's and an ST-E2 to provide fill light. Now, I received my second 430EX and ST-E2 2 days before I was to shoot this home, so I had effectively zero learning time. My friend was good with me experimenting with my setup and understood that she wasn't getting "professional" level shots, but I thought that they were good enough for an MLS listing.
> 
> ...


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## Canon1 (Jan 17, 2014)

wsmith96 said:


> Canon1 said:
> 
> 
> > A couple of tips. Always shoot from a tripod with a level setup. Ideal height is about chest high. (Higher around kitchen counters and lower in bathrooms). A big one: try to include two corners of the room in the same frame. This will give the room perspective and not s feeling that two walls run out forever on either side. Practice tips and advice you get from others in your oen home. Practicing new tdchniques on the job is a bad idea. Just a few to get you started.
> ...



With a WA lens it is really easy to see level when looking through the viewfinder. Get the height where you want it, then look at architectural lines. It will be level top to bottom when the vertical lines (door frames, wall corners, etc...) are parallel with each other. If they angle towards or away from each other then you need to tip the front of the lens up or down. Same goes for tilt left and right. You basically want to "square" up as much as possible so that lines look square and level. This way you don't lose image data when you correct perspective in post and have to crop. 

A trick for shooting exteriors. When light isn't good, at a little warming to the WB. It looks more sunset-ish even when the light doesn't agree. 

White balance can be a real tough one when inside. Conflicting light sources confuse the camera. (Different temp from natural vs florescent vs led vs inca etc...) Try natural light shooting only when available and use longer exposures on the tripod. If the DR is too huge try bracketing.. Just remember that the more editing you have to do, the more work it is, and the more you will need to evaluate the value of your time and charge appropriately. Just don't undervalue your time. Marketing is the biggest expense for a realtor when selling a house. With EXCELLENT images, there will be more prospective buyers and realtors will sell property faster. Expensive photos up front can save thousands of $$ in marketing if you have a house on the market for many months or years! (Market yourself!)


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## Hillsilly (Jan 18, 2014)

Coming from a different perspective as a property buyer rather than a seller or photographer, the properties that catch my attention are those that look warm and inviting. Places that I want to live in. Your interior shots are fine. They're functional and wouldn't dissuade anyone from taking a closer look. But there is always ways to improve.

I like lighting. RiceCake didn't mention this specifically, but if you look at his images, the interior lights are all turned on and play a prominent role. I find this a very nice look and a real attention grabber.

As Canon1 suggests, tweak the white balance to warm the images up a little.

The outside photos work ok, but could be improved. Perhaps a different time of day would have shown the property at its best potential. A great sunset in the background always work well - especially when you have so many interesting things in the yard. (But then, how much time do you spend on this when you're not being paid?) But the right image will quickly change buyers thoughts from - "ok, its got a big yard", to "I want that!".

I'm surprised they didn't want photos of the exterior. Just thought I'd mention that the latest trend over here is to display a photo at sunset with all of the the interior lights turned on and visible from outside. Every house looks great that way. I know many people Photoshop a sunset in and also merge multiple photos to get the perfect look. In taking the photos of the property, you'd use flash on the exterior in selected places, which you'd then blend in to give you a well lit, beautiful looking house. But that goes back to how much time do you want to spend on this project?

The other big trend is aerial photos (eg via quadcopter / go pro - another excuse to be buy one!). People also use long extension poles to elevate a camera for an interesting perspective. The serious guys use trucks in which the extension pole is integrated into the back, providing a very stable and secure platform which can be remotely operated.

But your self-critique shows that you know what you are doing and I haven't got much more to add.


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## Sella174 (Jan 26, 2014)

Some excellent advice here regarding the technical aspects. However, presentation is just as important. The interior photos are cold ... I'd have emptied my own closet and shelves for props. Add some chairs, tables, etc.


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## Canon1 (Jan 26, 2014)

Sella174 said:


> Some excellent advice here regarding the technical aspects. However, presentation is just as important. The interior photos are cold ... I'd have emptied my own closet and shelves for props. Add some chairs, tables, etc.



This is a great point. Great images start with great subjects. 

The realtors I worked with hired home stagers as well. This is an added expense for the realtor, but again, attention to these details sell houses faster. Buy a book on home staging... and convince your realtor to buy one too. 

Just remember... you are a photographer. You don't move dirty dishes, or pick up dirty clothes or stage homes... You photograph them. Any additional input should cost the realtor an uncomfortable amount of money to make sure homes are ready when you arrive. 

I went to one house that was a disaster. The realtor cleaned every room before I shot it, and I had to help move furniture around. It took 4 hours to do a 45 minute job. I charged the realtor 4x the normal price for images with my time detailed on the invoice. I never went to another house with that realtor that wasn't ready for me...


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