Best Practices for Taking Great Real Estate Photographs

I was recently asked, “how do real estate photographers take such great photos?” This generalization made me ponder, I began to think about “great” real estate photos I had seen recently and locally. Besides color profiles, watermarks, and individual style; there were many things I saw in common across the many photos I looked over. 

Firstly, for one who is just beginning today; I’d recommend a modern dslr, Many many years of technological advancement in cameras will not let you down and will probably make the practice much less intensive. You could grab a full frame dslr or a likely less expensive crop sensor dslr. 

When looking for lenses for photographing houses; think wide but not too wide, I’d recommend 16-35mm if you chose a full frame dslr and a 10-18 if you went with the crop sensor dslr. For tighter spots; I’d zoom to 35mm or 18mm, and that being said; it is in your  best interest to purchase a lens with zoom capability, it will save you money in the long run and will save you time while on the job. 

An excellent tool to bring ease to photographing houses is a tripod. I would recommend doing your research for tried and tested, sturdy tripods that are more than $100. Look for tripods that have a long, raisable, center post; saving the time and hassle from having to continuously adjust the leg heights. An additional tool; a tripod head.

 Look for tripod heads that easily and precisely level the camera.The goal of a tripod is to acquire a batch of images that are all level, and have a consistent floor to ceiling ratio. Look at the viewfinder when leveling, door trim or something straight to further align your camera. The addition of a remote shutter release will aid in consistent photos, even with a very sturdy tripod; it is likely you will move the camera by manually press the shutter release button.

Next, the important element of the camera’s settings. Every house is different, but here’s my general recommendation; Aperture priority mode and F8. This allow large depth of field, with everything in focus. The camera will decide the shutter speed, saving time from having to do it manually with every adjustment and room change and the tripod and remote, eliminates the worry of camera shake regardless of that shutter speed. 

I would leave exposure compensation at zero and stay in the range of ISO 100 -400 for the cleanest possible image. Although RAW is commendable in most niches of photography; real estate agents are working with websites that require smaller file sizes and don’t have time to download massive batches of files, have to convert, etc. Chose JPEG, but if your camera has an option of the size of the jpeg; choose the largest. 

The practice of bracketing photographs will help you immensely to obtain more dynamic range in each room, and also well exposed light coming in through windows. If applicable; adjust your bracketing settings to “continuous,” 5 images per shutter release and each 2 stops apart. I this is not possible on your camera; take about 5 images per room, each 2 stops apart (2.0EV).

Auto focus in a must, within settings chose to have the camera find focus within a wide range to aid in getting everything needed in focus. When setting the white balance; you should chose auto white balance, however; if the color is not right, you’ll have to change in manually, sometimes cameras get it wrong. 

When composing a exposure of a room; remember, raise the camera to about waist level and on the view finder, find a good balance of floor to ceiling ratio, right in the middle. There are cases in which you should disregard this rule; when avoiding obstructions, having to raise the camera to see the tops of countertops and avoid the bottom of the cabinets.

In every room; you should take a wide shot and a tight shot. Shoot from one far corner and then the opposing far corner to capture the entire room and any connecting rooms. In order to make each room look the largest you must shoot from a corner, entrance, or even outside the room. For variety, a few one-point perspective photographs are a nice touch. For example; showcasing a special material on the walls or floors. 

The kitchen generally needs the most photographs, shoot from every corner for all angles. Bedrooms and bathrooms require one photograph from the entrance. In the master bedroom; take two photographs from at least two angles. The bathroom is the only room it is permissable to allow the door and handle into the frame. 

To photograph the exterior of a home; you can bring the camera to eye level while it remains on the tripod. Take a photograph from the left front of the house, the center, the entrance, the right front and one from the street. Two wide shots of a backyard will give the perspective of size. Capture backyard attachments such as; patios, pools, and decks. 

Very important; Make sure the house looks clean and well organized. Make sure pillows look nice, curtains are straight, there’s no clutter, or anything unpleasant. 

The point of bracketing for every room helps us in post production. Using Lightroom you should upload 5 images of the first room,  and apply HDR merge. You’ve now got an image will great dynamic range and the editing can begin here. Take the merged image and an image from the original 5 that displays the window well exposed but the room very dark. 

In Photoshop; you can mask in the window or because all of your images are well aligned, you can simply cut out the window in the merged image and have the well exposed images underneath. Lastly, raise the exposure where needed and turn down colors that are arbitrary and don’t belong, you want each image as a clean and appealing as possible. Limit your exports to about 8000K or 8MB, this makes it easier and quicker for uploading, transferring and downloading. 

Test this out in your home, apartment or you friends or families home. You got this! Click here for more!