Yesterday I came across a brochure presenting a new upper end home that just came on the market in our area. The photography was stunning. Large, beautifully exposed, bright, crisp photos of nicely lit interiors were printed on 100 lb glossy paper. Several of the shots took up full and half of an 8.5x11” page. This brochure was easily the best done photo brochure that I’ve seen.

After drooling over the photos for a while I thought about finding the online version of these photos so I could show them to the readers of this blog. I found some of the photos but they are so small and disappointing they are not worth showing. Even though many of the online photos are professionally done some of the exact same photos printed on the brochure they are a disappointment because they are so small (many are just 3x2”). The reduced photo size completely removes the impact and excitement of the brochure.

For me this experience demonstrates some important trends in real estate marketing photography:

1. The impact of a photo is highly related to its size. That is, large high quality photos create high impact in what ever medium you are using. Small photos don’t have the same impact.


2. Websites in general still don’t complete with flyers and brochures for creating impact and excitement with photography because they restrict photo size.


3. Websites typically restrict photo size because in the recent past internet users didn’t have bandwidth enough to easily view large photos. There are exceptions such as www.buildatour.com that uses 800x600 photos.

Even though virtually all real estate websites currently restrict photo size most consumers of real estate photography that I’m aware of have high speed cable access. So what do you do about this contradiction? I believe as consumers of real estate websites you should use every opportunity to get real estate website operators and virtual tour providers to increase the size of photos. The choices of virtual tours you use are one way to get larger photo sizes than the standard real estate websites. So choose virtual tour vendors that give you large photos.

I host my own virtual tours so; I’m going to start using full screen tours. For example this is the format that I’m going to use for my virtual tours.

Back on my April 24 post on Styling and Staging I a pointed out that interior photos of empty rooms should be avoided. If you are the listing agent you should convince the seller not to have empty rooms. If you are the photographer you should convince the listing agent to not shoot empty rooms.

Marc Lacoste gives a great example of what a difference a little furniture can make in the feeling of a room. About the before and after example above Marc says, “Bring your own furniture: I shot today an empty flat. It's depressing, very hard to project yourself in living inside it.We bought some folding chairs and a bench, so I bring them, a Matisse reproduction, a ficus benjamina and a portmanteau. I placed them around the scene a bit, and shot.It's not gonna look like it's inhabited, but it's much more easy to believe you can live in it.I have to bring a carpet and a Coffee table next time.”

As this example shows a few folding chairs, a print on the wall and a potted plant or two can make a big difference in how the empty room feels.

Marc Lacoste of Nantes, France contributed an important technique in a comment on yesterday’s Helicam post. I think it is important enough to repost so no one misses this discovery. Marc says, “I've found a trick for getting a high point of view, fast, cheap and suitable for crowded locations. I extend my tripod the max, set a ten seconds timer for the shutter, grab the feet of the tripod and stand it arms extended over my head. The camera is 4 meters tall and there is an interesting perspective”.

This is a remarkable difference in raising the position of the camera by 4 meters. The feel of the image changes from a “down in the bushes” feel to a Helicam” feel where you can see much more of the attractive features of this home. The difference between not being able to see the tile roof to having the beautiful orange tile roof as a major part of the photo is striking.

Marc, thanks for sharing this great technique!

More news from Tabb at nwaerialphotography.com. Tabb has now well on his way to perfecting the process of creating spherical panoramas for his Helicam. Tabb sent me this example shot today. Tabb uses a Canon 5D suspended under the Helicam with a Canon 15mm wide angle lens. The Canon 15mm lens is produces a really crisp, sharp image. Tabb says this particular QuickTime VR image was stitched from 24 shots with PTgui. Anyone who has stitched handheld panoramas can appreciate the difficulty of producing this kind of image from a Helicam! Great job Tabb!

I know a many readers of this blog are photographers rather than real estate agents. I recently ran across Carolyn E. Wright’s PhotoAttorney blog which appears to be a good resource for legal information for photographers.

As a real estate photographer there are legal considerations associated with photographing people's homes. One example is that the external shot made for a listing that is going to be placed on a MLS becomes public domain once the property is listed on the MLS.

One question that comes to mind is if you photograph the interior of someone’s home does the photographer have the right to use those interior photographs to advertise his or her business without getting a signed release from the home’s owner?

Another question relates to virtual tours of peoples homes. Some people are concerned about the security risk of having detailed interior photographs of the interior of their home posted on the internet. Is their any risk in this area for photographers? That is could a photographer that shot the virtual tour be legally responsible for harm done to the home owner as a result of having their photographs of the interior of their home on the internet?

Hmm. Maybe I’ll pose these questions to Carolyn.

A classic effect used by photographers for many years is the vignette effect. That is to use a vignette of focus or vignette of light to draw attention to the subject of the photograph. For external home photos the vignette of light technique frequently works well. The way this works is that the viewer’s eye is attracted to light areas in the image. So if you subtly darken the outer edges of an image and make the subject of the image lighter the image the viewer’s attention is naturally drawn to the subject of the image. I used this technique on the image above.

Here’s how to create a vignette of light with Photoshop or Elements. After you’ve corrected and sharpened your photo create a levels adjustment layer that makes the photo slightly darker. Then with a soft, fairly large brush erase the area of the adjustment layer you want to draw attention to. Where the adjustment layer is erased the image will be lighter. You can adjust the opacity of the adjustment layer to control how dark or light the overall vignette effect of the adjustment layer is.

There are two new articles published this month by the National Association of Realtors (NAR) on the subject of Virtual Tours that are of interest to anyone involved in real estate photography.

The first article titled “Create grade A shows” by Jack Cotton published in the May issue of Realtor Magazine. Cotton says “I can’t overemphasize the need to high-quality photos in a virtual tour. If you have the time and money, consider investing in a professional photographer who has the best equipment to do the job.” He also emphasizes the need to use a good wide-angle lens and an external flash. He must be a reader of this blog! Cotton says, “The external flash allows you to equalize the outside light and lets any views of a yard or mountains show up in the windows, creating a dynamic shot.” He goes on to say that although great photos make a critical first impression the photo descriptions are critical in making the home seem more appealing. Unfortunately this article is not online so I can’t give you a link to it.

The second article by Mike Antoniak is online. This article reviews some of the recent new tour features like satellite images, visual commercials (movies), high definition zooming, interactive floor plans and do-it-yourself audio recording.

Notice the funny looking pattern in the blinds on yesterday’s photo I posted. This is called a moiré pattern and it’s caused by too much sharpening for the particular image. The sharpening process creates a pattern in the image that can combine with existing patterns in the image to create a moiré pattern. See www.mathematik.com/Moire for a great example. Patterns like these are frequent occurrences in interiors and exteriors. The horizontal pattern of on exterior home siding is creates this situation. Notice the similar moiré pattern in my Apr 27 post in the siding of the yellow house.

All I did to the image above to eliminate the moiré pattern was to reduce that amount of the of sharpening.

Digital image sharpening is a deep subject but for real estate photography there are some key things to be aware of.

Your camera does some sharpening in the camera before you even get your hands on the image. Most cameras allow you to set how much sharpening is done in the camera. Understand what you camera is doing for you in the area of sharpening. Those of you shooting in RAW mode have the option to adjust the sharpening when you convert from RAW to JPEG or TIFF.

The typical time you will need to sharpen your image is when you downsize it. After you downsize an image from the size it comes out of your camera to the size you will upload to the MLS or other website you should consider sharpening. The best way to sharpen is to use the Unsharp Mask in the filter menu of Photoshop Elements or of you use Photoshop CS2 the Smart Sharpen filter. There are three numbers to set when using the Unsharp Mask: Amount, Radius, and Threshold. Just consider these magic numbers. If you are sharpening for the web use Amount=200 to 300, Radius =0.3 and Threshold = 0.
To get the amount right slide the amount slide to the max and back off until it looks right.

For sharpening an image that’s going to be printed, like a flyer or brochure, use Amount=225, Radius=0.5 and threshold = 0.

Lately I’ve been running across bad looking photos on listings and even on Real Estate agent sites and marketing materials like the one above. I created the ugly image above by downsizing a 400 x 166 jpeg to a width of 200 pixels and sizing it back up to its original width. I think trying to enlarge images is the basic mistake that people make. When you enlarge the image like I did above sharpening doesn’t fix the problem.

Guidelines for keeping your images high quality:

1. Keep a master file of all your images that is full size, just as it comes out of the camera.


2. Make copies of the master file to downsize.


3. Typically it’s a bad idea to increase the size of an image because the photo editor that is doing the increasing is making up pixels. That is, making guesses based on the surrounding pixel.


4. Photos that are uploaded to the MLS and other website should be at least 400 pixels wide. Most websites will automatically downsize for you if needed.


5. Photos that are used on the Web need only be 72 dpi. More resolution than this is wasted.


6. Use as big a file as you can get away with- hardly anyone has a low speed internet connection any more.

Have you ever had a need to give a client photos on a CD? We do this for all of our selling clients and many buying clients. Sellers like to have a copy of photos and virtual tour as a keepsake of their home their leaving and buyers like to have a photos CD to show their friends and family. This is a product opportunity for Photographers.

The way the photo CD should work is all one should have to do is stick the CD in the drive and the photo display interface should automatically be displayed. A CD that works this way is called an “auto-run” CD.

The easiest way to create an auto-run photo CD is to put all the photos you want to have on the CD into a HTML photo gallery. You can make a HTML photo gallery with Photoshop Elements, Photoshop or many other graphics programs. One popular gallery program is a Flash gallery called SimpleViewer available for free at: www.airtightinteractive.com/simpleviewer.

Create the photo gallery in a separate folder. To make the CD auto-run you’ll need an auto-run utility. There are many but the one I use and like is called AutoRun III by www.typhoonsoftware.com for $49. Once the photo gallery is created in a folder, run AutoRun III and tell it which file to execute to display the photo gallery (usually index.html or something similar). After AutoRun is finished all you have to do is copy the folder that has the photo gallery and special AutoRun files in it to a CD and you’re done. Now the photo gallery will start up when you put the CD in a PC CD player.

For CDs I use little mini Pocket CDs called “Cool Pocket CD-R” by Memorex. They are 3.25 inches in diameter and will hold 210 Meg. I put a photo of the front of the home on the CD cover and a sticker on the back that has all my business card info on it.

I’ve been talking to a number of people in the last few months about their use of virtual tours. I’ve also been trying to decide what the next step should be for the virtual tours that I create myself.

The conclusion I’ve come to is that virtual tours are an opportunity to use full screen images and to go above and beyond what’s available on MLS sites and all the public real estate sites. There are all kinds of technology available for the web that can go beyond the small photos and relatively mundane marketing that is used by most sites. Of all the virtual tours I’ve experimented with in the last few years the most popular with buyers and sellers by far are full screen spherical (also called cubic) QuickTime panoramas. There is nothing like floating in the center of a room and looking in any direction you want.

There are currently three technologies that allow presentation of full screen immersive spherical images:

1. QuickTime VR by Apple


2. SPI-V by Aldo Hoeben which is based on Shockwave


3. ImmerVision by the company of the same name based on JAVA

There are downsides to each one of these technologies based on the fact that not all PCs have the required software installed and the relative difficulties of users downloading what they need to view the spherical panoramas. However, there are enough people with the required software that I think it is well worth using full screen spherical panoramas.

I was asked recently to review a virtual tour by a virtual tour vendor. The tour had photos of empty rooms, photos of the garage, photos of a hallway and photos of the exterior with no landscaping. The problem is what to do when you need to sell an empty home or new construction. Photographs of empty rooms usually look terrible unless the space itself has some interesting aspect.

You need to remember that real estate photography is not documentary photography. That is, you are not simply documenting the property; you are trying to make it look attractive so someone would want to purchase it. I recommend that real estate photographers and agents work with interior designers sometimes called staggers who can move in furniture and décor items to decorate a home to make it look good. This service may seem expensive but it usually pays off in the long run for the seller.

Another variation of this problem is lived in homes that have too much furniture or furniture that does not present well. Let’s face it, not all home owners have a good sense of home decorating. Many times home sellers would be better served if they just move out and have their home professionally staged. Solving these problems is of course ultimately up to the real estate agent and owner the home. However, it’s the job of the photographer to raise the issue to who ever is having you photograph the home.

A photographer can do a lot to improve the look of a home by simply moving around furniture and making sure clutter is out of photos. Many times I spend half of my time moving stuff out of shots. That’s OK; remember your job as a photographer is to do what ever it takes to make a home look good in the photographs!

Have you ever had difficulties getting a great front shot for a real estate photo? I have that problem all the time. I keep wishing I had a “jetpack” that would let me hover 50 to 100 feet off the ground so I can get good angles to shoot from. The best I’ve done is stand on the top of my truck.

There’s another way. Hire a photographer that has a Helicam. That’s a radio controlled helicopter with a camera mounted on the bottom. The above photo is by Tabb Firchau of www.nwaerialphotography.com . Tabb has a electric helicopter with a Canon EOS 5D mounted on the bottom and for around $350 he will get the best possible exterior angle for you. Tabb also shots video, panoramas and spherical panoramas with his Helicam.

It turns out there are many aerial photographers around the world that use low altitude remote controlled aircraft to shoot stills and video. A directory of photographers that provide this service is at: www.helicam.org.

Back in my March 7th post. I introduced the subject of blending two images together each exposed for different parts of the room as a technique for dealing with the problem of burned out windows. This technique is generally referred to as Contrast blending or HDR (High Dynamic Range). At the time I suggested the DRI plug-in for Photoshop Elements and Photoshop from www.fredmiranda.com/software. Mark in Seattle pointed out an alternative for this plug-in called Photomatrix from www.hdrsoft.com .

There are actually several alternatives for doing HDR/contrast blending. So I thought it would be worthwhile to do a recap the methods I know of:

1. Manual contrast blending using layers – see Michael Reichmann’s blending tutorial


2. HDR processing in Photoshop CS2 – see Michael Reichmann’s HDR tutorial


3. Eric Krause’s contrast blending actions and tutorial


4. Fred Miranda’s plug-in


5. Photomatrix from www.hdrsoft.com

When doing something that demands the highest quality and control using layer masks (method 1) is hard to beat but this method can be time consuming.

As Michael describes in his tutorial, the HDR function in CS2 (method 2) is the “holy grail” of HDR but for simply handling bright windows in real estate photography it’s like using a sledge hammer to crack eggs.

I’ve never used Eric Krause’s free actions (method 3) mostly because of their relative complexity.

I use Fred Miranda’s $20 plug-in (method 4) quite a lot for panoramas because they are so quick and easy.

I tried out Photomatrix (method 5) and it appears to give as good results as Fred Miranda’s plug-in but it is $99. It is far more adjustable but I haven’t decided if it’s worth the extra money yet. I need to try it out with more than two images and with some large panoramas. The examples shown on the Photomatrix website ( www.hdrsoft.com ) are quite impressive.

When you are choosing a camera to use for real estate photography mega pixels are a relatively unimportant factor these days. That is, any digital camera you purchase in 2006 will have more than enough mega pixels to do everything you need to do. Yet I continually see people that recommend cameras to real estate agents obsessing about mega pixels.

The reason this is true is that 99% of the use for real estate photographs is for website use or small page size flyers. The typical application that most people think a large mega pixel count is required is for magazine or large brochure creation. In this application you typically need images that are 300 dpi.

I use the image above (the front and back of the folded brochure) as an example of how you get by doing large image 300 dpi printing with a camera that has 3.1 mega pixels. This is an 11”x17” 2 page folded brochure made from an image I shot in 2000 with the CoolPix-995 I was using for real estate photography at that time. I shot in the mode that created a TIFF file and only enlarged the image slightly to fit the 11x17 page. My point is that if I can create an 11x17 300 dpi brochure with a 3.1 mega pixel camera (designed in 1999) you’ll have no problem doing this with any camera on the market in 2006 that have much higher mega pixel counts.

This two page folded brochure is something we do in addition to flyers for the upper-end homes we list. We have them inside the home so only people being shown the home can take one. I print them on 80 lb glossy paper at Kinkos on a large laser printer. They cost between $3 and $4 each but impress both sellers and buyers. We find they are well worth the cost for upper-end homes.

Marc’s comment on yesterdays post raises a significant point about keeping the camera level so the walls are parallel with the sides of the photo. That is, if you shoot from eye level while standing up straight there is a natural tendency to angle the camera down because the camera is higher than all the furniture. This causes the film/sensor plane to be sloped forward which is what causes walls to not be parallel with the edge of the photo.

The solution is to shoot lower. If you shoot at belt or stomach level the camera will naturally be level front-to-back because there is no longer any reason for pointing the camera down. I find myself on my knees when shooting all the time just to keep the camera level. Another solution is to keep the camera on a tripod with a bubble level in the hot shoe. This way you level your camera once and it’s going to stay relatively level from shot to shot. Since I use the hot shoe for my Canon ST-E2 Speedlite Transmitter having a bubble level doesn’t work for me. I just keep watching the verticals in the view finder and then fine tune the verticals with a vertical guide in Photoshop when I’m editing.