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While I haven’t discussed real estate photography here much during the last several weeks, I have been extremely busy photographing houses. The market has definitely picked up and I now photograph at least one or two houses a week - even though I currently only work with two agents!
While I am happy that I made the switch to HDR, I have still been working on getting the colors right and improving my photos. In this post, I will discuss some things I have learned during the last few weeks.
Lesson 1 Windows do not always need to be the correct temperature
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Posted 3 weeks, 3 days ago at 12:53 pm. Add a comment
As many of you know, I have switched my real estate photography to HDR. It has taken me a bit of time getting used to it but I do like it much better. In particular, I am able to shoot houses quicker - which makes a difference now that Nelya is getting a lot of listings!
Recently she got another listing and I went out to photograph it. There were two main goals I hoped to fix.
- Fix the reflections on the floor from the windows.
- Improve the view from the windows.
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Posted 2 months, 3 weeks ago at 1:16 pm. Add a comment
One nice offshoot of my first take with HDR is that another agent asked me to shoot one of his listings. Of course I obliged and was determined to fix some of the things I didn’t like with my earlier shoot. In general, I am pleased with the results.
One thing that I am pleased with in these shots is that I did not blow out the windows as I did before. In my first attempt I was a bit lazy and just set the camera to bracket the exposures. This time, I metered the windows and then metered the darkest part of the room, then took a shot each stop in between. I like the results of this much better.
Of course, there are some things I would like to improve.
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Posted 3 months ago at 12:27 pm. Add a comment
After a number of disagreements with my wife on how to light real estate photos, naturally my wife won. Therefore, we came to an agreement that she gets me a copy of Photomatix and I start taking pictures in HDR.
Being not familiar very much with HDR, I used one of her listings that is coming up to try it out. The listing is a foreclosed property and has promise but needs a lot of work on the inside.
I must say that I am quite impressed with the new version of Photomatix. It is easier now to create images that aren’t as fake as they used to be. I also like the RAW file support and the ability to create an HDR shot from a single RAW file, which is fun to play with. They even added support for the 5D Mark II, so they are definitely on top of things. Continue Reading…
Posted 3 months, 2 weeks ago at 12:54 pm. 1 comment
At the same time I had the opportunity to try out an Alienbees light for real estate, I also had the opportunity to try out two lenses I have been thinking of.
I currently use the 16-35mm 2.8 II for all of my real estate photography, mounted on a full frame sensor. Therefore I was very curious to see what the 14mm can do as well as the tilt effect of the TS-E 24. The following shot used the 16-35.
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Posted 7 months, 2 weeks ago at 2:14 pm. Add a comment
To be honest, I was a bit upset at my last real estate shoot. I didn’t think the pictures came out very well and a number of my coworkers agreed. There were numerous problems with them such as
- Not correcting for verticals
- Blown out areas from the flash
- Shadows
- Some parts of the photos were too dark
I had a number of theories on how to fix these issues, but for the lighting my idea was to purchase an Alienbees light and an extra Pocketwizard MultiMAX and use it as a third light. One of my coworkers offered to stop by the house with a lot of the equipment that I am looking to buy someday so I was able to get a good look at what it can accomplish and whether it will solve some of my problems.
One note before I show these shots. When we took these photos, we were mainly trying to see what the lights and lenses were capable of and what issues we may have. We did not correct for verticals and I did not Photoshop any of these pictures. In this way you can get a good idea what the equipment did without seeing what it looks like after Photoshop.
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Posted 7 months, 2 weeks ago at 2:04 pm. Add a comment
This weekend, I had the opportunity to shoot my first property over one million dollars (1.243 million to be exact). The property is in a hot neighborhood and is priced hundreds of thousands below its competition, so I was excited to finally shoot a house like this. The house was also the largest I have shot to date.
Of course, I actually had the ‘opportunity’ to shoot this house twice, as my original pictures taken at night turned out so bad that I needed to reshoot. The following is what I learned from this shoot. Continue Reading…
Posted 7 months, 3 weeks ago at 2:20 pm. Add a comment
On Thursday I receive a call from Nelya at work. She had finally received permission from the bank to list the house! “Great”, I replied. “We can photograph it this weekend”.
Of course, we didn’t have until the weekend. The property had to be listed that day. The real estate world does not wait for photographers, so I managed to beg a 40D off of one of my friends (I am still waiting for the 5D Mark II) and I went to the house that night to photograph.
It was that night that I learned how not to photograph a house.
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Posted 7 months, 3 weeks ago at 2:15 pm. Add a comment
Recently I have started playing around with multiple off camera lights with my real estate photography. I use a Canon 580EX and 580EX II triggered with three Pocketwizard MultiMAX units.
By the way, my wife wanted me to mention that this home has already sold, but if you would like to discuss selling or buying a home with her you can contact her from her web site.
The first light is rather easy to place. Typically I attach it to a silver umbrella, then sometimes bounce it off a wall or aim it straight at the room but reduce the power. Sometimes this is enough to light a room. For example, in this room I wound up using just this one light - which was to the left of the camera.
The tricky part comes with what to do with the second light. First, I have come to realize that the second light isn’t always necessary. For many pictures, it is best left turned off and to the side. However, there are times when having the second light really helps.
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Posted 8 months, 2 weeks ago at 1:17 pm. Add a comment
OK, I wouldn’t exactly call this technique “new” because I suspect a large number of real estate photographers already use it, but for me it is new. Before I get into explanations about the workflow, here is one of the shots.
First the basics. This is not an HDR shot and was taken in a single frame. I used a single flash with this shot, although very soon I will move to using multiple flashes triggered by Pocketwizards. The agents that have seen this so far really like it, though I suspect some photographers may not like the effect. Continue reading for the workflow I used.
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Posted 1 year, 1 month ago at 4:15 am. Add a comment
