Chances are you’re phobic.

Don’t feel bad about that – many of us have phobias of one kind or another. Mine is the completely rational fear of living my nightmare – the one involving town centre toilets with glass walls.

I imagine that yours, judging from some of the photos you use to promote property, might be the fear of learning how to operate a camera. Why else would so many agents photograph the source of their living, (their clients’ properties), with a one-click gizmo that looks as though it’s fallen out of a Christmas cracker?

Why would I think this is what happens?…

Many agents – maybe 80% of you – produce photos that aren’t up to scratch insofar as they don’t show their properties at their best. Look through the portals if you don’t believe me. There you’ll find properties photographed with all the skill of a 59-year old, like me, surfboarding at Newquay for the first time. Also, I’ve seen the kit that many of you use and if you want to know why it’s not good enough then just ask. How do you expect to attract the market’s best buyers, (the few with access to money who will pay the optimal price), with photos that are less than excellent?

You have only to take a hard look at the expertise with which 20% or so of your competitors present their properties – those who use professional photographers or know their way around a suitable camera – to see why the best-looking homes usually end up with them to sell and not you. So why aren’t you rising to that challenge?

Perhaps you’re comfortable being a part of the crowd – the 80% whose property photos are possibly hindering sales rather than helping them. Maybe you’ve lost your ambition to be the best in your industry. It’s also possible, however, that you actually are phobic, or at least think yourself incapable of learning; and so subscribe to the theory that you can’t teach old dogs, (especially spotty ones), new tricks.

Whatever the reason for your reluctance to learn, perhaps now that we’re in a tough market it’d be a good time for you to review your thinking. Learning how to operate a camera really isn’t the big challenge that pipe-smoking professional photographers in anoraks and sandals would have you believe. And we’re not exactly talking here about you gaining the ability to produce spot-lit works of art that’ll hang in a chic, white-walled central London gallery. All you really need as a professional property marketer is photos that are correctly exposed, sharp, have good colour and adequate thought given to angles and composition. Fortunately, the skills to achieve these objectives are easily learned.

Since writing my articles on photography for Property Drum last year I’ve travelled around the UK spending a day at a time, (sometimes two days where Photoshop training was needed), teaching agents and other photographers how always to get the best possible shots of exteriors and interiors – and, thus, how to improve their own image as property professionals. How might your professional image be affected? Well, my theory is that if you can’t be bothered to get the photos right then there are probably other tasks you won’t be bothered to do properly either? I don’t think the logic unreasonable and I doubt that those with better homes to sell would disagree.

Throughout my travels I’ve detected an almost tangible polarisation of professional standards between agents. For example, in December I was in the New Forest where I worked with a team of really enthusiastic, highly motivated estate agents who already took pretty good photos, but had the desire to excel in the way they presented their properties. In stark contrast, their competitors in offices across the road from theirs had in their window a shoddy display of out-of-focus, under-exposed images sporting a variety of bizarre colourcasts ranging from orange to purple. I thought it interesting and inspirational but strangely sad that the already good agent should want to get better, but the terrible one should be content with standards that had a long way to go before they could be called mediocre.

Taken by Spencers New Forest on their Training Day

Ask yourself, if you were selling your own good-looking New Forest property, which of those two agents would you want on your side – particularly in this market? Would you care that the less able at marketing offered a lower commission rate, or would you want to instruct the agent who would show your property off and achieve a sale at the optimal price? Also, which of the two agents is most likely to survive in a difficult market? After all, once you’ve bought your camera kit and training, and your property marketing becomes palpably the best in the area, your pro-rata running costs are going to be the same as those of your inferior competitors!

Taken by Spencers New Forest on their Training Day

Training is one thing – it can take you from good to better (or even brilliant); and it can take you from terrible to good (or even brilliant). But training on its own is worth nothing. You can take a horse to water but you can’t make it think. Desire and determination are the drives that lie behind whether you succeed or not – and I can’t teach you that – although I do try.

I well remember the training I was given by the Prudential following my sale of my second estate agency to them back in the late 1980’s. Their desire was that others and I should promote the sale of life assurance by parroting to our unsuspecting applicants a two-page script, which of course I never learned because I wanted to sell life assurance as much as I needed an aperture in my cranial cavity. I lacked that particular desire. But as an estate agent, your lack of desire and drive and skills to attract the right houses and buyers could prove fatal to your business – especially now. Whichever way you look at it, your photos, bad or good, say something about the property you’re selling AND you!

The need to train doesn’t just apply to photography, but to everything you do. David Rockefeller – one of the wealthiest people in the USA said, “Success in business requires training and discipline and hard work. But if you’re not frightened by these things, the opportunities are just as great today as they ever were.” And I absolutely believe that to be true. Equally, on the opposite side to that coin the saying goes that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”. Fear really is all that stops us from achieving great things. That said, there’s no way I’m ever again using a town-centre loo – not ever.

Training can, of course, be applied in many different ways. I recall that the commencement of my career in estate agency consisted of two years undertaking menial tasks before I was let loose on the public; all the time listening to what went on around me in the office; all the time learning. Today estate agency training is mostly formally provided in training suites and lecture rooms. Certificates are awarded and increasing store is placed in them. Training is now, therefore, very much on the profession’s agenda. But why isn’t there more emphasis on learning the one tangible skill that can win you the best instructions, and help you attract the best buyers – the ability to make your properties look outstanding  -  the very best they can look – everywhere you promote them?

Have you ever wondered how to photograph the views outside of a room at the same time as the interior itself? How best to photograph interiors – so that you record the best features of the room and the ceilings aren’t bright orange (unless they were painted that way of course)? Do you know what the flash gun is for and how to use it to get the best results, and how do you make sure that all of your pictures are as sharp as a 5-blade razor? If your curiosity gets the better of you and you’d like these answers then, contact me now. Take a look at www.doctor-photo.co.uk, and my other site, www.hello-photo.co.uk as well as www.propertyphotographyblog.com to find out how I can help. You’ll not regret learning how to improve the presentation of your properties – and that’s a promise