17 Real Estate Photography Basics | Things I Wish I knew From The Beginning 

I hope when I start in real estate photography you'll review some of my work :)

Just make sure the room you record your audio in is sound treated and you'll be fine.

I think it was probably just turned up too much. Sounds like it was clipping. Easier to record lower levels then crank it up in post!

You're speaking into the side of a cardoid mic. It's designed to reject off-axis sound like that.

I've been a professional recording artist and producer since the 1960s. And, when I switched over to "home" recording, the biggest problem I had was getting my recording (input) levels correct. I finally figured out that I had to record my spoken word audio (for my podcast) at around -12db. I could then boost the "gain" (volume) and add a little compression to reach a final level of about -7db. Listening to the audio on this video indicates to me that you may be having the same problem I had. Hope this info helps. Feel free to contact me if you'd like to discuss this further. Regards...

Thank you!

I,m a professional real estate photo editor? If u need please contract?

I disagree with this philosophy. I always set my camera height relative to the highest surface in the room, such that the angle of the surface is reasonably consistent. usually a foot to about a foot and a half above the highest functional surface. so, for example, living room shot is 1.5 foot higher then coffee table, kitchen shot if 1 ft higher then island / counter, bedroom shots are 1 ft higher then night stands, laundry room 1.5 ft higher then top of dryer etc. This works because people are subcontionaly primed to feel comfortable lower in the living room because youre sitting on a couch, they are primed to be more comfortable higher in the kitchen because they are usually standing there. The highest surface in the room typically dictates this because it's the most convenience height for it to be functional where it is.

@@homewardboundphotos drinking this in, as well as the advice from the op. I was told about 4-4.5ft. I haven't jumped into yet, but I want to. Brushing up on different techniques

That sounds like an overly thought out reason that customers will never notice or appreciate. General consensus is chest height, and adjust higher for kitchens etc to cut out the bottom of upper cabinets.

Glad I could help you! Good luck getting your new career going!

True, but usually a lens is sharpest at f8-f11 and begin to lose sharpness over f11 and especially noticable at f22. So everything is probably in focus at f22, but not nececarilly sharp. It's a good idea to check up tests on this at the lenses you use. And also if you need to use long shutter speed at every photo because of f22 it is going to be a pain in the arze. Especially if you are HDR bracketing with one very bright image, and especially in the evening, I guess a balcony shot in the evening with HDR, f22 and 100 ISO would take minutes at those settings :P

@@mangomariel this is true.

True, I always stress out when there is a kid in the house while I am taking pictures. Some parents are not very present.

@@mangomariel I straight up tell clients when i'm shooting nobody else on that floor, especially kids and pets. My time is worth way to much to be fucking around with peoples bullshit. And if you slow me down to the point where you're going to make me late for my next shoot sorry its getting shot as it is, and you can deal with it or pay me $100/hr to photoshop fix it (if that's even possible).

Thank you!

How did you get your first client

@@grandeurcinematics My first client was back in 1996. I was a custom home builder, and i was already a professional photographer black-and-white film camera. I would photograph the homes we built and process the photos, then run them to Ebby Halliday's real estate office to put the photos in their listing binders. That's the way it used to be done before the internet became a viable resource. That's why people would have to go to a real estate office to see what was available in the community. Eventually, in 2001, I bought a Nikon D1 and then a Nikon D100. I had a friend who owned a helicopter, and for 200 bucks an hour, he would take me up to get photos of homes I had photographed previously. I got into business with a moron out of Austin, Texas in 2001 that turned out to be a terrible decision. Then, a year later, I was so mad at him that I taught myself HTML, ColdFusion, javascript, and SQL server. Within 6 months, I had a fully functional, self maintaining business platform that served me flawlessly until 2018. I was able to focus almost all of my time on photography. The software that I built ran my business automatically. everything from bookkeeping, inserting URLs into realtor.com, infacing into NTREIS and complete order processing. Now, to answer your question, to get my business jumpstarted, I would photograph homes and provide all of the photos for 30 bucks. I didn't make a dime for almost a year. In fact, I ended up getting divorced over it all. The actual month of my divorce in 2006, I hit two grand slams. I had the number 3 and number 5 top real estate agents in the country contract with me to do all of their photography. six months later, the number one agent in America at the time contacted me, but he was under investigation with the FBI for fraud, so I turned him down. Jim Streigel. You cant make this stuff up. Then eventually another agent became the number one realtor in the world, Ben Cabalero requested a meeting. I hired two new people but that deal fell apart after three weeks. I personally bit the bullet and worked for free. I will tell you period, you WILL NOT get rich doing this. PERIOD! You can do pretty good if you teach classes and things like that, but you WILL NOT get rich photographing homes alone. I personally photographed over 11,000 homes from April 1, 2003 to December 31, 2018. Theere were days that I photographed as many as 21 homes in one day, 16-18 homes in one day was not uncommon. I never went to bed. I would be up all night, night after night preparing to deliver the previous days photos by 10am. I usually had them out and delivered by 8am and back on the road again. I had 4 apple MacBook pro laptops running and processing photos non stop. I would never do that again, it almost killed me. Now, I only shoot high end properties and my rates are very profitable. But, now, i am retired. Hope that helps. Again, you wont get rich doing this. If you are able to make a living, you have done well. I would buy a new camera about every 6-9 months because they would wear out that fast. I finally learned how to disassemble my D200 cameras and replace the shutters.

that's y i gots me a 16TB raid array on a 10gbe network. so all my computers will virtually never run out of data. XD

@@inyhwhwetrustgreat comment!

It also allows you the rare opportunity to show what you can with a bad situation!

I either go back home to upload if I can or do them all at the end of the day. I’ve tried Starbucks and other places several times but they just don’t have fast enough upload speeds

Isn't the file size very much pain to work with? f you do HDR bracketing? It's a great camera tho, and one of the best image quality, having high megapixel is great for cropping to.

Thanks! I'll keep it in mind!

In lightroom you can just use the white balance selector eye drop (W) on a thing you know is white, usually a wall. It is really easy, I always shoot auto WB

Thanks! It was someone that reached out to me. I have editors reach out to me all the time and I’ve tried a few of them

Haha I’ll try to get 40 for you next time!

you have 2.6 million photographs in your portfolio... so since 2006 you've shot and edited an average almost 400 photos per day, every day, for 20 years... you can't be serious.

I use the Adobe suite. Lightroom, Photoshop, Premiere. I don’t use any presets or luts. I’ve tried to but always end up adjusting it after anyways

You’ll like the camera! I mostly use the “standard” color profile. I know most people will say to use the neutral color profile, and I have before, but I find that the standard produces a good color and I don’t have to tweak it much. Just raise the shadows and adjust color a little.

@@AlexSerrao Thanks! I'm really excited about getting the camera! But since things are so expensive lately because of the dollar value (I live in Brazil), I'm waiting for a good opportunity in a used equipment :) Thanks for sharing your settings!

I personally pay $0.50 for single exposure photos and $1 for multiple exposure. I think anywhere in that range is good. A little more for a great editor is normal too

I use the 17 - 40mm for all my indoor shots. I do have a 14mm but try to use it as little as possible as it creates some distortion that I have to fix post shoot. Too much work.

I deliver in a 3x2 ratio. I think that’s typical suggested mls ratio. But check your local mls on that.

All real estate mls services use the 4:3 photo format. We provide three sets on delivery, set one has been cropped to 4:3 center crop at 1024x768 at 80% jpg in a marked folder called “mls”. Then a second set at 3:2 at 3000x2000 at 90%, then 1 large front photo at 100% for printing. If you only send them 3:2 format images, the mls service “squeezes” the 3:2 format photos to fit a 4:3 display size, thereby destroying your effort to make your photos look great. Also, the mls services dumb down the quality to 60% in order to save space. I don’t see them changing this any time soon.

If u a professional real estate photo editor Please contract me?

My MLS is 3x2. I would check your local association and see

All real estate mls services use the 4:3 photo format. We provide three sets on delivery, set one has been cropped to 4:3 center crop at 1024x768 at 80% jpg in a marked folder called “mls”. Then a second set at 3:2 at 3000x2000 at 90%, then 1 large front photo at 100% for printing. If you only send them 3:2 format images, the mls service “squeezes” the 3:2 format photos to fit a 4:3 display size, thereby destroying your effort to make your photos look great. Also, the mls services dumb down the quality to 60% in order to save space. I don’t see them changing this any time soon.

I think they are both really good. I started with a Sony a6000 as well. I don’t think switching to the m50 will gain you anything though. I’d personally stick with the a6000 until you’re ready to upgrade and then get a nice full frame camera.

Sony, Sony, sony

Dropbox is what we use right now. It's not my favorite but it works

Yeah that’s a great question. Those are tough scenarios with lights that are so different. You can definitely edit it and get a good image with the lights on in that situation but it’s more difficult to edit. If the lighting doesn’t effect the overall amount of light in the room then I would probably turn off one of those lights

I duplicate the photo with different color temperatures in post production, layer them both in photo shop, add a hue saturation mask over one of the images and add a yellow/orange hue, then apply a mask over the top one and brush out the mask exposing the adjusted image below. The same can be used for twilight photos to increase the impact.

Just shoot two photos, one with the lights on and one with them off. Layer them in photoshop and change the the one with the lights on to lighten on luminance which ever works better.

I made the mistake of shooting a balconny in the evening with a heat lamp (red light) thinking that the light from the heat lamp would be better than no light because there were so few outside lights. I thought it would be good to show the heat lamp for atmosphere, and more light = more info I thought But the images I got back from the edit team were insane, the balcony was peach-orange and the outside view was pear green. They messed up the hue real bad . I could do a better job myself, but noticed that it was very tricky, I had to open Photoshop and do a lot of color replacement brushing. would probably have been better to turn off that lamp and just use long expousure. This was extreme tho, like 1500 kelvin red light on balcony, inside was 3000 kelvin lightbulbs, and outside who knows 6000 + ? It was late. I think the edit team just did an overall color temp and hue adjustment to cool the red, which made the outside way too green. Would be way better to double or triple layer, mask and reduce each temperature differently. Newer versions of Lightroom lets you mask and auto-mask much easier with AI masking, and lets you customize brushes with temperature and hue and color effects. So probably Lightroom is really good for this. A linear gradient or radial gradient mask for lights and windows is really good. I think the difference between a 3000 lightbulb and a 4000 light bulb is smaller, and easier to balance. Outside is often 5500 and you have to balance that any way. But if you have an extreme warm light bulb, or an extreme cold fluorocent you could probably turn it off to save some editing time. Luckily for me I don't do the editing so I usually leave most on, but definitly be more aware of the heat lamp.

Starts at $225. Our average shoot is over $500 with add-ons

Trueeeee, the sellers are often stressed out and ask too many questions, that stress can infect you.

Done is better than perfect my friend. Had some audio issues that day

You're not going to die because of a scratchy audio track on one video, maybe grow up a little bit?

​@@AlexSerrao love this! If you hadn't posted it because it wasn't perfect, we wouldn't have this super helpful video! Thank you for this wealth of information.

If only I could. Realtors hate that though from my experience

​@@AlexSerrao i did my first Airbnb shoot with all the lights off and i cringe when i think about it. Definitely would have looked more "warm and inviting" if I'd left the lights on.

You’ll need help!

@@AlexSerrao i dont and i can easily do this on my own