Sound Shooters: Real Estate Photography

By Joel Dames

If you want to be a real-estate photographer, get to know a listing agent. The listing agent is the seller's agent. The buyer’s agent has no interest in your photography services.

Perhaps the best place to meet the listing agent is during a weekend open house. Most of the day they are sitting around waiting for someone to walk in and if no one is there, most will be happy to chat. Offer to do a shoot free. You can use the images for your portfolio.

Another option is to contract the broker at the office the listing agent is attached to. You can ask if you can give a presentation on real estate photography at one of their meetings.

Real-Estate Photography 101

Learn all you need to know for a presentation in two downloadable books by Larry Lohrman: Photography for Real Estate and Business of Real Estate Photography.

Most of the information in these two books can be found on his blog. This is The Place to hang out for real estate photography. If you are starting out and need the basics, go to: The Real Estate Photography 101 Category. 

Photography For Real Estate Flickr group is where group members post images to the group photo discussion area and give feedback to each other and carry on group discussions. It is like attending a free 24/7 real-estate photography workshop with the best real-estate photographers around.

Lens

Even for a large room, a wide angle lens allows you to fill the frame with the room. A popular lens for real-estate photography for the Cannon camera is the 10 - 18mm lens ( about $249 ) on Amazon. I use a Tokina 11 - 16mm lens ( about $440 ) because of the wide 2.8 aperture.

I love the ability to open the lens wide to achieve bokeh, where everything is blurred but the subject, because I use this lens for many projects besides real estate.

Some photographers use small speedlight off-camera flash. Flash gives the room a bright sunlit consistent color. An HDR capture without flash may likely have a warmer ambience. But if you don't like the warm colors generated without flash, you can adjust in post processing.

High Density Resolution (HDR)

I took three to five exposures for each room and put them together in an HDR program called Photomatix.

Smaller house HDR

Larger house HDR

It is not a hard program to work with and once you get the hang of it, it is addictive. You can create warm colors as I've done in these two images, or you can go for a surrealistic effect. For real estate images, though, you want to keep images looking real and untouched as possible.

Real-Estate Photographer for Hire

One of the largest U.S. companies hiring real-estate photographers is right here in Seattle. Vicaso supplies the real-estate clients, paying you to go out and do the shoot. You choose how many hours per week. No post processing is necessary. Fill out their online application. 

Joel Dames Photography

Photo Booth - Not Just a Tiny (Open with huge background), Portraits, Events, Bar/Bat Mitzvah, Weddings, Albums

Update: Original article did not have the smaller house photo.