The housing market continues to be hostile to sellers. If you’re in a position where you want to rent or sell a house, condo, or other residential property, you need to know how to take good digital photos. The best way to get people interested in your home or rental is by listing it online with incredible digital photography to show off the home’s finer points. Most of the tips that will help you capture the home at its best are relatively intuitive for someone who understands still photography, but there are a few aspects of shooting homes that are different.
The four elements you need to understand are lighting, camera positioning/shot composition, and staging. These are common aspects of almost all photography, and you have to handle these elements differently when shooting the inside versus exterior of the home. One of the most complex things about describing the best way to manage them for home digital photos is that the context, meaning the shape of the room, its contents, and the presence of windows, influence how to set up the best shot. In general just remember that every photo you use should make the home look warm, clean, appealing, livable, and they should be visually clear.
Lighting
People have varying ideas about lighting. Some say you should draw the blinds for indoor shooting to reduce contrast. Others suggest shooting early or late in the day with the light is less direct and keeping windows behind the camera. You can handle lighting a number of different ways depending on the room. Generally, your goal is to have enough light to show the important details, enough contrast to make them stand out appealingly, and enough balance of contrast so everything is visible without intense dark or light spots.
If you have windows that get a lot of light, it is best to shoot early or late in the day, because then you can include the windows in the shot without them unbalancing the lighting. This is true both indoors and outdoors. And the light at that time of day tends to paint everything in warm tones that disguise imperfections. If you can’t escape harsh lighting, another option is to turn on all the lights in the house to help balance out the contrast. You have to be careful with your white balance settings when using two different light sources to keep colors natural. A bounce card, or really any moveable large white surface, can be a very effective tool in this situation to help soften shadows.
Camera Positioning
You want to use a tripod if you can so that vertical lines of the building don’t get tilted. The effect is off putting. Also, you should move your camera around so that it’s shooting straight forward, instead of turning it or tilting it up or down. This helps preserve perspective. Some people prefer to shoot from one corner to show two walls with a bit of floor and ceiling, while others suggest the middle of the room to get just a small portion of the two side walls, with the focus on the back wall. You have to experiment with a room and its light to figure out what works bests. But remember that keeping the shot simple and realistic helps minimize distractions. Be wary of creating a “caged-in,” shoebox feeling. Be sure that interesting details of the home get included in the shot, as opposed to just phoning the camera at each room.
With exteriors, you want to minimize dead or negative space. That means don’t show too much sky. Wide angle shots are good, so use trees and other details around the house as extra elements to fill the frame instead of the sky. Also, be sure to shoot with the sun behind you as much as possible, as opposed to pointing into the sun. Attempt an up-angle and straight shots for both the interior and exterior to see if you can create interesting angles and perspective.
Staging
Boring photos are boring, no matter the subject. Don’t let an empty room make your house look dead. Whether you stage with furniture and accessories or people, bringing life, color, and personality into a shot will help people imagine themselves living there. It doesn’t have to be cluttered, and you should certainly clean the home before shooting. A kitchen or dining room table will look better with a centerpiece, a couch better with cushions, and an entryway more realistic with plants or an occupied coat hook.
The most important thing with home digital photography for sales is to be patient and experiment. Plan on spending more than one day on the project, so you can really observe and capture the best light the home gets and still have time to review your shots and figure out what angles and staging worked best. Apply that to a second round of shots to be sure you get your home looking its best. You can’t sell a home that you can’t portray in a way that interests people in coming to see it, so the digital photos you use are very important.
Tags: digital photo, digital photography
