Take Your Best Shot
At Unique Homes, we review dozens of high-end properties every day. Properties run the gamut from under construction to just finished, overgrown and unpolished to professionally landscaped, and gutted to turnkey. Unfortunately, we often see that property photos also are quite varied, from vibrant and crisp to grainy, blurry, and too dark to discern valuable features. With nine out of 10 home shoppers beginning their search on the Web, according to the National Association of Realtors, a listing agent or homeowner often has just one shot, pun intended, to grab a potential buyer’s attention. With thousands of properties just a click away, an interested buyer will slip easily through the cracks if he or she is turned off by an unattractive listing photo.
By following several general, simple rules, you can set your property photos leagues above many that are already out there. In today’s digital age, it’s both easy and inexpensive to take advantage of using a digital camera (or borrowing one from a colleague, friend or family member), and you should always use the highest resolution setting possible in order to generate the clearest images. Remain as stationary as possible if you don’t have access to a tripod (i.e., don’t shoot a photograph out the window of a moving vehicle and by no means should you use your cell phone in place of an actual camera). Take different angles of the room or feature you are focusing on, which will provide you with several options to choose from later.
When a professional photographer is out of reach, additional alterations will transform your property photos from amateur images taken with an untrained eye to attention-grabbing scenes that paint your listing in its best light.
Lighting is, of course, of the utmost importance. Use natural light as much as possible and follow the tried and true rule of keeping your light source behind you as you photograph. When flipping through a magazine or browsing the Web, readers are drawn to color. If at all possible, photograph your home against a blue sky; otherwise, you run the risk of your white-washed listing photo being lost in the fray.
Staging is important, though the key is moderation—not too much, not too little. You want your home to look livable and comfy, while also able to lend itself easily to a new owner’s decorative style. Especially if you are paying for a professional photographer, an empty room will not do your home or your money justice. Small touches such as throw blankets or a few vases of colorful flowers will go a long way.
Remove unsightly objects. Think of how you would present your home if you were hosting friends or family. Hide away trashcans, pool vacuum hoses, maintenance equipment, any lawn signs, and any objects blocking the subject (or a portion of the subject) of your picture, such as a car that might not be blocking the entire home, but might prevent a hand-carved wooden front door from garnering its deserved attention. A photo of an otherwise welcome and tropical pool area is ruined by a pool hose floating in the water, which beckons the thought that the agent and/or homeowner was rushed and lazy in taking the picture.
Often expensive aerial photographs rarely tell even half of a property’s story and are not the best bang for your buck. Most buyers are looking for a property they can imagine themselves living in, even if only for a portion of the year. Because there’s only the slightest chance that a buyer will tour your listing, you want online or print photographs of the property to bring the buyer up close and personal. While an aerial might display your listing’s proximity to a body of water or its seclusion from neighbors, the picture will not give a prospective buyer an idea of what it would be like to enjoy a cup of tea on the wraparound front porch or to relax in a candlelit bath in the master tub. Often, aerials are shot from directly above the home. How often are you scrutinizing or showing off your home’s roof?
Finally, because a picture is worth a thousand words, we’ll allow the following images to underscore the tips described above. The first set of pictures was taken by the listing agent; the second by a professional photographer.
The objects in each set of photographs are almost exactly the same; the two people who took the pictures simply shot in different lighting conditions and from different vantage points. We’ll leave it up to you…in which sitting room would you rather enjoy a cup of cocoa beside a warm fire?
–Sarah Binder
