Common Real Estate Photography Mistakes Agents Make

It is understandable. You invest a lot of time in relationships, networking, studying your local market,   building your brand  , and a host of other skills necessary to establish a successful real estate presence. Who has extra time to spend learning the nuances of photography to boot? Anyways, with today’s technology, doesn’t a camera pretty much take care of itself? Even a cell phone is capable of high-resolution   HDR imaging  . Isn’t that enough?

Sadly, many agents seem to think so. And yet, the majority of home buyers come to the market through images on the internet, and every one of them is attracted first to a picture of a property. Or they are not. Which begs a question: what are those photographs saying? Since your potential buyers spend most of their time browsing through pictures in a listing, the images you post need to offer an accurate and appealing representation of a home. Still, all too often, poorly-planned and low-quality pictures drive down the chances that a listing will see the light of day.

Here are some of the more common photography mistakes made in real estate.

Shooting without a shot list

An all-too-common occurrence when wading through listings online is to find a property represented by eight, ten, maybe fifteen pictures. Too few to get a good feel for the place. At the other end of the spectrum, it is not rare to be overrun by a barrage of random photos – three or four dozen – that give no clearer an idea of what a property is really like. Unless you go into a photo shoot with a plan for the photographs you need to get right, you will as likely as not walk away with shots, too many or too few, that do not do the house – or your client – the justice they deserve.

Shooting too wide

In hopes of capturing as much of a room as they can, or of making a room look as large as possible (or larger), agents will often use either a lens that is too wide or a cell phone with the zoom set to its widest parameter. Every camera lens introduces some measure of distortion into a photograph. But the wider the lens, the more variance from reality. Wide-angle lenses (generally over 16mm) or camera lenses zoomed out too far produce what is known as barrel distortion, where the lines bow outward, away from the center of the image. The bent lines along the ceiling, walls, countertops, and other features are tell tale signs that an agent is trying to make a room look bigger than it really is.

Looking into the light

“Harry, don’t look into the light!” shouts one fly to another as they approach what the audience of A Bug’s Life knows to be a bug zapper. Unfortunately, Harry does not heed the warning of his friend. Many real estate agents do not heed that warning either. In an effort to capture the essence of a room and a view to the outdoors at the same time, amateur photographers point the camera lens toward a window where natural light is coming through. But without additional lighting sources – flashes or strobes – and professional techniques, shooting into the light will likely lead to pictures that are too dark or too light, with the wrong exposure and odd shadows. Instead, learn to use natural lighting to your advantage and shoot with the light.

Closing the curtains

To mitigate the problem of excessive natural light flooding a room, some will simply close the curtains or the blinds. But proper   real estate photographs  (especially those taken without adequate additional lighting) need all the help they can from natural light. Closed curtains will only make the space feel cold and dark, or otherwise filled with strange shadows. Open up the curtains and blinds to create as bright and cheery an atmosphere as possible, and learn to use the sun to your advantage.

Skipping out on color correction

Closely related to the need for natural light is the concern for color balance in your pictures. Different light sources produce varying colors of light. Natural light, for example, is far more cool blue in color than that from an incandescent lamp, which tends to be a much warmer orange. A fluorescent light may emit a greener hue. A   professional photographer  would likely use a powerful strobe light that overwhelms every other light source and gives each picture a consistent color temperature. You may need to turn off certain interior lights, change bulbs, or rely more heavily on natural light from the windows.

Editing pictures instead of portfolios

Another mistake that amateur real estate photographers make is to edit each photograph for a house independently of the others. This can lead to inconsistency across the listing portfolio. Once you capture images with consistent lighting, it is better to edit in batches using presets in post production. That way, you can make it feel like every room belongs to the same house and give each photo set a cohesive look and feel.

Capturing crooked lines

Color is not the only concern in your photos. The way you lay out the lines matters too. Vertical lines – walls and doorways, pillars and posts – should all appear, well, vertical. Of course, the same holds true with horizontal lines. None of your lines should be bowed or distorted because of your lens, nor should they be crooked because of your technique. And while crooked lines may be corrected (in some cases) during post-processing, it is far easier to mind them during the photo shoot. (Scans performed for a   virtual tour  , such as   Matterport  , are generally corrected automatically during the assembly of the tour. Not so with a still photograph.)

Obvious or overdone photoshopping and overprocessing

Too much tooling or retouching in a photograph is a sure sign to you that a home was not ready to be photographed in the first place, and to viewers that all is not as it seems. Better to remove items from the kitchen counter or the bedroom floor before shooting pictures. Laws prohibiting misrepresentation in photos are in place in many areas anyways. Overprocessing, while not illegal, is another problem that produces pictures with an unnatural look. Your real estate photographs should appear realistic and unretouched.

Ignoring other options

Standard still photographs are the focal point of a property listing. That said, you have at your disposal an array of other related marketing strategies and tools, such as   drone photography and   3D virtual tour  technology. These make for a suitable compliment to your 2D photo ensemble for the right property. And yet, too many agents write off these important and emerging additions to the real estate marketplace. Consider adding   aerial views  and virtual showcases to your listings. Your clients have come to expect such options.

Missing out on social media

Inevitably, the pictures you take for a listing will make their way into print advertisements like postcards and brochures. But what about posting those pictures to   social media  platforms regularly to create a buzz in your local market? All of the strategies that you employ to market a property should work in synergy to capture attention, generate interest, and, at the same time, promote your brand. Why not capitalize on Facebook, Instagram, and other sites to advertise your listings and your business?

Failing to inform your client

And what might you forget to inform your client about? How about how to prep their house prior to a photo shoot. The need to clean and declutter, or to keep the kids and pets out of each shot. If you want the session to go as planned, you need to let your seller know how to   prepare the kitchen  and the living room and the bathrooms. And if you want to use the pictures you take for any other purpose, like   highlighting your business  , you will need to go over a property release with them.

Doing it yourself

Too many agents do not seem to pay attention to what great photography looks like and what it can do for a property. Nor do they seem to concern themselves with what poor pictures can do to destroy a listing. The market is filled with houses represented by cheap cell phone pics that clearly detract from rather than add to their value.

It may well be that you can invest the time learning to stage, light, capture, and polish the pictures for your listings the way a professional would. It may also be that your investment should be in a professional photography service that can lend their expertise to help sell your properties. A professional service can also help you with extras, like   3D digital twins  , drone images,   twilight photography  , and more. As an agent, you need to be an expert in a lot of areas. But you do not need to be an expert in every area. Sometimes it just makes sense to allow someone else to be the pro.

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