Real Estate C&C

TWright33 · May 7, 2014

I was contacted yesterday morning by a local agent that wanted me to shoot a house for her.

Where I live, this is an "expensive" house. It will be listed somewhere between $300,000-$400,000.

The home had no front yard due to the tornado. It was covered in down trees, and I have to fix some spot on the roof where they have some white plastic. Then clean up some of the side yard in the exterior pictures

I never used bracketing on my camera, so I didn't feel comfortable trying that route.

The house had so much ambient light that when I tried to add fill flash to some dark corners it looked funny.

All of the light bulbs where yellow so the flash looked even funnier. (I have a set of rogue gels in the mail)

Considering this was my first real estate job, I don't think I did terrible.

But I want your guys opinions.

TWright33 · May 7, 2014

sscarmack · May 7, 2014

I've never done Real Estate, but I did buy a house HAHA.

In the process of buying a house I've seen a lot of terrible photos. If I would of seen photos like these, I would of been thrilled.

Now from a photographers stand point.

You have a lot of color shifts and dark shadows, but you already know this.

Maybe setting up some continuous lights would help?

TWright33 · May 7, 2014

I have a couple more pictures that are loading.

The more I look the more things I see that need to be touched up.

Msteelio91 · May 7, 2014

$300K-$400K is expensive? Man... city premiums are getting out of hand. Shots look good. Way too many real estate agents that try and fail to use their own pictures...

TWright33 · May 7, 2014

Msteelio91 said:
$300K-$400K is expensive? Man... city premiums are getting out of hand. Shots look good. Way too many real estate agents that try and fail to use their own pictures...

Yes, in small town Mississippi that is expensive.

If I had to guess, the average home price here is around $130,000.

And that is with two incomes slightly over average paying for the home.

The biggest problem I see is the ceiling lighting is bad.

I know these will be fine for Realtor website purposes, but I want to really start nailing these.

Msteelio91 · May 7, 2014

$130k jesus... The 3-400k range is just average around here. That looks like a really nice home, love that glassed-in sunroom.

sscarmack · May 7, 2014

I bought my house for 74k. 3 bedrooms, 2 car garage, on 2 acres. Not a piece of crap either, pretty nice for a first home.

All depends where you live.

tirediron · May 7, 2014

Not bad; one common issue I see with almost all of them is under-exposed foregrounds. One of the best things you can do for this sort of work is get a bag full of speedlights, CC gels and triggers. The top row of images especially would have risen from nice to excellent with increased foreground exposure.

TWright33 · May 7, 2014

tirediron said:
Not bad; one common issue I see with almost all of them is under-exposed foregrounds. One of the best things you can do for this sort of work is get a bag full of speedlights, CC gels and triggers. The top row of images especially would have risen from nice to excellent with increased foreground exposure.

I agree, I was kicking myself for not making sure I had my gels before I did this.

What's the best method to try to light this way? Just put the speedlight on the floor with a gel or try to bounce off the ceiling in the area I need most light?

tirediron · May 7, 2014

It really depends on the situation; for the first one, that's probably exactly what i would have done; flash pointed vertically near the camera. in the bedroom image, near the bottom, I would have likely placed a speedlight image right, out of view in front of the hutch/dresser/tall boy so that it's light more or less mimiced that of the ambient. You DON'T want crossing shadows it at all possible. One other thought; it looks like you were shooting wide and tilting the camera a bit to get everything in. Consider shooting vertical panoramas to avoid perspective distortion.

Designer · May 7, 2014

Some shots have something near the margin that is distorted to appear larger. See the chest in #1, the door in #2, the drape in #5, etc. These are detracting from the overall room picture by making the other items appear smaller.

Try to get all photographs in the set to be about the same level of brightness.

I think I'd leave the rectangular fluorescent lights off, as they are not pretty.

TWright33 · May 8, 2014

tirediron said:
it looks like you were shooting wide and tilting the camera a bit to get everything in. Consider shooting vertical panoramas to avoid perspective distortion.

Yes, I was shooting at 10mm for every shot I believe (Give or take a couple mm)

I tried to keep the camera level to alleviate distortion, but I think a couple of shots I missed being just level.

Designer said:
Some shots have something near the margin that is distorted to appear larger. See the chest in #1, the door in #2, the drape in #5, etc. These are detracting from the overall room picture by making the other items appear smaller.

Try to get all photographs in the set to be about the same level of brightness.

I think I'd leave the rectangular fluorescent lights off, as they are not pretty.

Noted.

I tried to turn all of the lamps on in the house. I felt like this would make the home more cozy feeling.

There where lamps everywhere and some of them had blown bulbs.

I appreciate all of the input I am getting from everyone.