Great property photos are essential if you want to make the most of your listing. They can increase the number of tenant enquiries you receive by up to 400%. But how do you go about taking great property photos yourself? Here's how...
Preparing your property
Arguably the most important part of taking photos of your property is preparation: make sure the rooms are set up in a way that makes your property appear spacious and desirable. A big part of this is de-cluttering. Removing any unnecessary items on tables, work surfaces, and things piled in corners. This will achieve three things: makes your property appear bigger; makes you appear professional; makes your property appear more desirable. If necessary, re-arrange furniture so it makes the most of the space in the room – the more flooring on show, the bigger the room will appear. However be careful when removing: tenants expecting to have a clear room will be unpleasantly surprised if there ends up being a room full of furniture.
Picking your shots
There is a benefit to taking photos both during the day and during the evening. Whilst swathes of daylight can make your property appear warm and inviting and are better for the vast majority of shots, night time photos can show of some particularly impressive spot lighting, or show tenants how evenings spent in the property will look. When taking photos during the day, pick the time when the sunlight is streaming directly into a room, rather than casting shadows off the window frames.
Taking your photos
To make the most of your property, you need a decent camera. Our professional property photographers use hi-end DSLR cameras, fitted with a wide-angled lens – perfect for opening up your property, whilst capturing it in detail. Now you don't necessarily need such an expensive set-up to do it yourself, but we wouldn't recommend taking them on a phone.
Here are the 6 top tips when taking the photos:
1. Make sure your camera is parallel with the ground when taking the photo – images that are offset look unprofessional and haphazard. Best bet is to use a tripod.
2. Stand at one diagonal of the room and face the other. This means you can capture the room's depth.
3. Only use a flash when taking shots of a particular item, ( such as your newly purchased 42” oLED TV). It lights a full room too unevenly, but can provide emphasise for items in the foreground.
4. If your property doesn't get a lot of natural sunlight, set your camera's exposure time for longer, so it lets more light in. This will brighten up your property.
5. Avoid blurry photos – not only do they look amateur, they obscure any detail you might want to get across – keep your photos crystal clear and focussed.
6. Avoid taking photos straight into the sun – they will bathe your photos in sunlight, but so much so you won't be able to see anything else.
Editing your photos
Even if you take on board all the tips above, it's not guaranteed you'll get perfect photos. There are many photo-editing tools available; some very expensive (Adobe PhotoShop), some free (Google Picassa). The most common tools you'll need are brightness, contrast and rotation settings (all available in Picassa): contrast to improve the definition of items in your property, brightness to adjust the lighting and rotation to make sure all photos appear parallel with the ground.
Take on board these tips and you should have some pretty great property photos. If you'd like our professionals armed with DSLRs to put their equipment to use on your property, give us a call on 0333 240 1220 and we'll arrange a suitable date and time.
Some really good advice in this article. Thanks for all the photography tips
Regards
Steve
One important thing to remember when taking a shot of the front of the house is to give the front door a new lick of paint of too. Really makes the house look more inviting and allows potential buyers to enter with a open mind.