These days unless you’re selling property in central London where the upper end of the market is on fire (yes, I know, but I started writing this a couple of weeks ago), you’re likely to need to exploit every trick in the book to get your home noticed by the best available buyers. You could, for example, throw in with your sale a free Ferrari or Mini but that little trick was done to death in the ‘70’s; or you could make your home a raffle prize, but that’s not a new idea either and let’s face it, raffles are a bit down-market and much better suited to raising funds for the village hall roof repair.

One part of the world that’s light-years ahead of the UK and even the USA when it comes to getting property noticed is Australia/New Zealand. Not everything they do would likely be well-received by the UK market,  (not yet, at least) – if you want to see what I mean take a look at this,,

Professional property photography has played a huge part in their advance and you’ll see from the above example that video is catching on in a big way too. If the UK market goes the same way as theirs, (and why wouldn’t it – we’ve followed them and the USA for the past 40 years to my knowledge), then over the next five or so years we’ll see our market becoming much more aware of how excellence in property marketing (getting homes noticed) leads to improved selling prices and more sales opportunities.

Why is that? Why would anyone bother to spend time and money on professional property marketing and why would that lead to a better selling price?

In short, your home is in a beauty parade on the portals and in the newspapers and magazines. Once someone has plugged into a portal and said where they want to live, and defined the price range and type of home they’re looking for, they’ll be presented with dozens of homes, if not hundreds, from which to choose. So you need something that makes your home stand out from the competition – and the most obvious device for this is a property’s photography. A huge part of professional property marketing involves producing images that show property in its best light; your property’s images can make the difference between buyers clicking on your home’s details – or not… You need your photos to not just show your house, but to show it off! You NEED buyers to click on YOUR property’s listing. In particular, you need the ONE buyer who would value your property higher than all the other buyers to be MOTIVATED to make a viewing appointment. Otherwise, if instead they skip over your listing, perhaps because the photos are under par and haven’t grabbed their attention, then you’ll have missed out on achieving your optimal selling price.

My Vendor Doesn’t Understand Me

If your objective is to sell your property for the best price in the shortest time then your agent and you need to understand your buyer: mostly they’re busy and work harder and for longer hours than others in Europe. At least 75% (87% in Australia) of them, therefore, search for property on the Internet using all manner of portals. They are very price-savvy and time is at a premium. Your potential buyer needs your agent (and you) to smooth their path, oil their wheels and make it really easy for them to decide to come and view your property before they go to someone else’s. Very few people have the creativity or the time to spare looking at bad photos and trying to imagine what a property might look like with a modicum of effort. So, if you really want, really really want the best price, then (there’s no kind way to say this and there are no shortcuts either) you have to deliver your property to the majority of buyers, at its best, on a plate! And your property’s photos absolutely MUST reach out and grab your audience’s attention by the eyeballs. This is a reality that country house agents such as Knight Frank realised years ago – they use only the best photographers – and yes, I love working for them.

Success is In the Mind

One of the biggest reasons for our antipodean cousins being so far in advance of the rest of the world as property marketing professionals is that they are culturally predisposed toward winning – they hate losing, (one word – Ashes); also they know that salesmanship alone is not enough when it comes to getting the best price for their properties. They are very much marketing-oriented, always at the cutting edge, looking for new ways to get their properties ‘out there’. – whereas in the UK, we’re much more out of the ‘if it’s not broke, why fix it’ mould.

Very rarely will a house sell itself for the maximum possible price; and when it comes to squeezing the optimal price from a house sale, it takes more than a winning way with words and having a trustworthy estate agent. What property marketing professionals have to do is build desire in a completely honest way – by knowing who their buyers are, knowing their needs and then by showing them appropriate properties in their very best light so that they’ll WANT to view; but in order to do this, even for homes more humble than that shown in the video, a process is involved – and it’s a process that involves you – the vendor…

…(Sister Article: Pointers to Help You Achieve Your Best Selling Price)

It is most definitely the case that some UK estate agents are catching up with the importance that property marketing, design and professional photography play in achieving the best result for sellers… see these chaps:  http://www.domusnova.com/ by way of example.

But as an intelligent vendor you will realise that even brilliant marketing will not alone send you laughing all the way to the bank. It might seem obvious, sadly for many it isn’t, but (with the possible exception of homes that are being sold for refurbishment) every seller needs to make sure that their house has been properly prepared for marketing (I’ve placed a link above where I’ve expanded on the reasons) – just as you would clean and polish your car if you were selling it.

And your home absolutely has to be prepared correctly for the photography because it will be those images that will either attract or put-off your potential buyers. Think I’m exaggerating about the quality of photography by UK agents, there’s even a Twitter site dedicated to it – take a look here: http://twitter.com/#!/BadEstateAgents.

Now take a look at how the Aussies present their properties online :http://www.mcgrath.com.au/ John McGrath’s reputation has extended worldwide. We should really be learning from what he’s doing and from what other leading Aussies and New Zealanders are doing – because that’s what we’ll be doing in 5 or so years from now. Take a look at the quality of their photography for an idea of what professionalism in property marketing looks like.

So, what kind of preparation is needed if you want to achieve the best possible selling price?

First, The Blindingly Obvious – apologies but it’s clear that not everyone sings from the same hymn-sheet when it comes to preparing to sell – (sadly)

• A positive attitude to selling will help. If you’re going to sell and if you want the best price, then it’s a good idea to stop thinking of your house as just a home and start thinking of it also as a ‘product’ that you’re going to put to the market.
• If you want to be sure that you’re presenting your property optimally, seek outside professional advice – perhaps from a home-stager.
• Starting on the outside – gardens should be neat, weeded and, if you have lawns then ideally they should be stripey, (especially for the photos)
• Your front door should be in good shape – your eventual buyer will be gaining their second impressions of your property right there. First impressions will have been gleaned from the marketing!
• Where possible the rest of the decor should also be clean and well presented
• Watch out for repellent smells – especially animal odours
• ‘Land mines’ (as I call them); more readily recognised as animal poo, should be removed from gardens
• Windows should be clean. Interior and garden should also be clean and tidy
• There’s a fine line between charming objet d’art and clutter. You need to be on the right side of that line. Consider putting belongings into storage if necessary.
• Private papers, newspapers, almost anything made of paper needs to be out of the way – unless it’s Country Life/Horse and Hound or Viz (if your market is pop-stars)
• Same for plastic – particularly in the bathroom and kitchen. Washing up liquid bottles, bad; Molton Brown bottles in the bathroom, very good.
• Towels – neatly folded and nice colours – if you don’t have those then you’re better not to have them out on display

• Beds can be attractively dressed for not a lot of money
• Dining table could be laid for the photos – if not a full dinner service then, perhaps, a bottle of wine and some glasses.
• If you have a country property, a few vegetables in a basket, or a cottage loaf and some peppers etc etc will help set the scene
• Ditto garden tables – Gingham tablecloths, coloured glass, jugs of squash, nice bottle of wine, glasses etc – all can make for excellent lifestyle photos.

• Carpet stains – ideally there shouldn’t be any
• Light bulbs should all work – especially for the photos. Dud low-voltage downlights really stand out like a sore thumb when they’re not working
• If you know that you’re not going to be around when the photographer calls to photograph an exterior, then curtains are best left open

Another Way You, as the Property Owner, Can Help Yourself

Don’t rely on the estate agent being good at photography. Very few are. That’s not a slight against agents, it’s an observable fact – see  the Twitter link above. Agents are mostly sales people – very few are also photographers.

Only a very few agents will have the courage to say this to you. Mostly they will not want to place themselves at a disadvantage by telling you that it’s a good idea to spend money up-front on your property’s photography. If you put yourself into their shoes you’ll understand their reluctance – they know that there’s always an agent who will claim to be professional at marketing property, who will then take bad photos on his compact snapper, or send someone really cheap to do the job for them – but the result will almost always be that their photos will not do justice to your property and you won’t, therefore, attract the attention that’s necessary for you to achieve the best price. For most people, you’re selling what’s likely to be your most valuable asset. Kelloggs don’t sell Cornflakes in brown paper bags, they use brightly coloured boxes – so why would you risk marketing your valuable property (even if it’s ‘just a small flat’ worth £50k, or £100k or £250k, (all of which sums make your flat more valuable than Cornflakes)), with photos that make your home appear like the bottom deck of Noah’s Ark following a nasty storm?

Property photography done well requires the right equipment, lenses that are designed for the job, knowledge of how to take the best photos and, most importantly, how to process them. Photos straight out of the camera are rarely at their optimal. Most agents do not know how to process photos so that they look the best they can look. Why would they?

Aussies and New Zealanders are largely now in the mindset that professional property marketing is just as much an investment as their homes are. Hopefully this little article will have made you aware of why that is, and what you can do to make sure your home gets noticed, so that you won’t miss out on the best price when you come to sell.

With the Promote this is no longer a problem. Instead, it’s simply a case of programming the Promote via its liquid crystal display, telling the camera the length of exposure required for the middle of the required range  and pressing the start button. You can even programme it to lock up the mirror for ultimate stability. Simples.

The Promote can also be used for time-lapse photography and as a normal cable release. If you’re looking for sharp HDR/blended/fusion photos then this is one gadget you’ll be pleased to have in your kitbag. It’s not exactly cheap but it has saved me lots of time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMTWLDvQB74

It just so happens that photographs are the most visual way to grab the attention of the best buyers; and, all other things being equal, the better the photos, the more potential buyers who will be attracted and therefore the better the price etc etc. So, for me photography is a means to an end – which isn’t me saying I’m not interested in photography; in fact I’m very interested in learning from the best and for that reason I spend a tremendous amount of time reading, learning and watching. I’d like to introduce you now to some of the people who have influenced me in one way or another. I very much hope that you’ll also take an interest in what they’re doing – you might be surprised at how techniques that are used by wedding photographers for example, might translate in some small way to property photography especially when you’re able to maintain an open mind – it’s being open to ideas and learning that enables you to grow…

First up is Sean McHugh of http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/. I’ve never met Sean but his website is an amazing resource for anyone who wants to take their images to the next level. You’ll find there techniques for HDR, averaging exposures to reduce noise, tutorials to help your understanding of White Balance and so on. If you’re really looking to improve your images then Sean’s site is a great place to start. If you want to see HDR imagery undertaken in a way that’ll inspire you to do the same, take a look at his gallery. You might from these think, for example, how night shots of some properties would be an improvement on how they look during the daytime. Think about those houses with south-facing gardens for instance, that’ll never look great during normal daylight hours because the Sun will be behind the front elevation throughout the day. Especially if they have garden lighting, might a shot at dusk look a million times better? Sean’s HDR tutorial will cost you nothing except your investment in time. I really encourage you to take note and try it out.

I found Chantal Christo recently and thank all that is holy that her studio (Cherry Red Studios in Camberley, Surrey http://www.cherryredstudios.co.uk/ ) is only a few miles away from me. I went there to learn about studio lighting but I was immediately struck by her ‘think on your feet’ approach to getting the best shot. She increased my confidence enormously and encouraged me to try techniques I’d thought about but had never actually done in case someone who knew better should laugh at my feebleness. (Yes, I really am a fragile petal )  But you know how it is in the photography world – there’s always someone who will criticise but they won’t tell you how to improve. Chantal’s the complete opposite.

Chantal’s a relatively young woman but she’s driven. I often think that portrait photography must become really challenging to photographers who have limited options in the way that they might shoot in-studio. If you look at Chantal’s work you’ll see she has flair and consistency; however the real Chantal isn’t revealed until you see her ‘off-piste’ images which she uses to develop her profile as a first rate fashion photographer. The top image in her slide above is, in fact, the result of a collaboration between Chantal and a digital artist who took her stunning airport photo and created from that an air-crash scene that’s just amazing and breathtaking at the same time. But at the root of everything she does is Chantal’s attention to the use of light. If you want to learn how to use light creatively then beat a path to Chantal’s door.

I went on one of Martin Wilmott’s http://martinwilmott.blogspot.com/wedding courses a few years back and I’ve attended a couple more courses since. Martin’s also a brilliant photographer but the main benefit from my time with him was learning how to keep it simple. To be honest, if you saw him out on the street he wouldn’t strike you as a typical photographer. He doesn’t wear an anorak, neither does he smoke a pipe, and there’s no white scarf wrapped around his neck either. In fact he trained as an Army photographer so you’d expect him to be someone who ‘does it by numbers’; but instead Martin’s a little firecracker who sees and shoots with energy. On one of Martin’s courses you’ll see him one minute behind a bush, the next flat on his stomach looking for angles. Simple shots, great quality (correct settings) taken from different angles – he taught me how to see – that’s what I learned from Martin. Martin’s courses can be found here: http://www.martinwilmottphotography.com/

Again, if you’re setting out to photograph property there is a temptation to over-complicate your shots when what you actually need is simple composition taken, often, from different perspectives; you also need great lighting – you’ll learn this from one of Chantal’s studio courses; and of course, Sean McHugh’s site can provide you with raw knowledge. Knowledge is power – it’s up to you how you use it.

I like interior lights for their ability to create pools of light and depth through the shadows they can help create. But the other side of the coin is that if you’re not careful you’ll achieve what I call “the blatted-halo effect”, which isn’t a great look, and wherever these occur you really need to take measures to control them if you want your photos to look better than amateurish.

Their cause is the massive difference in light values between the darkest areas of the room and, of course, the lights themselves. If you were to expose for the lights themselves the exposure for the room would be far too dark. Alternatively, exposing for the room will usually mean that the room lights will become over-exposed so that the area that directly surrounds them – whatever they reflect off of – will contain little or no detail: the dreaded blatted-halo.

I have an interiors’ work-flow now from which I tend not to deviate very much, which allows me to take a pretty good interior photo even under very challenging conditions including those very high contrast shots that I’ve shown in the gallery; these gallery photos show examples of very dark rooms with a small number of bright lights. These lights serve to provide very localised lighting. They don’t really provide even levels of light throughout the room, rather they provide very bright pools of light to very localised areas – therein lies the difficulty.

However, the method that I used to produce these two photos isn’t for the faint-hearted; it takes time – a lot of it – and patience in abundance. But before we take a look at that in a future post, here are a couple of useful tips that might get you out of trouble if you want to live the simple life in the meantime.

• If the lighting is on a dimmer/rheostat switch, turn the lights down to a lower setting and see whether this improves matters. Decreasing the light levels will mean stretching the camera’s abilities to a lesser degree – and you will have much less work to do in post-processing with a much greater chance of a professional-looking image.
• If internal lights are creating halos and there is no way to decrease their strength – the lights are so bright that there is no detail in the or the light reflected off of surfaces close to them – consider turning them off altogether.

Some interior lighting can prove a positive benefit to your photos on most occasions – low-voltage ceiling spots are an example, especially when they’re set into the ceiling. When they’re IN the ceiling the light they emit is cast downwards and not onto the ceiling itself, so there’s little or no halo effect from which the photo will suffer. Standard lamps and table lamps too can be very helpful – especially when you’re able to move them slightly away from a wall so that any light they cast onto the wall’s surface is lessened and in consequence detail in the wall isn’t lost. What we’re looking for is pools of soft lighting, not small areas of lighting that is very harsh.

If there are any other interior lighting tips from other photographers please feel free to add them in the comments section.

I feel it’s only fair to issue a health-warning up-front, which is that I don’t really regard myself as a photographer.

My real love isn’t cameras or software – these are a means to an end: instead my absolute obsession is in making the properties I portray look the very best that I can. This is and always has been my entire professional life’s focus – and that was the case even when I was an estate agent.

As a photographer I’m largely self-taught. I’ve felt my way through a maze of different ideas and techniques that I’ve bumped into over the years – which is another way of saying that you’re likely to read things here from time-to-time that won’t make sense, especially if you’re educated in the ways of photography. When that happens, feel free to pile in with your heckles. I’m very much a work in progress – but I’m ready to learn – just please keep it polite ). I do attend courses with people who’ve inspired me from time to time and I’ll be writing about those in a future posting. I’ve learned from those and I’ve discovered techniques and skills from them. But on their own courses aren’t enough – the best way to learn is to find out the basics of photography and then pick up the camera and use it – I mean really use it.

I’ve confessed what I’m not, but what I AM is someone who has photographed more properties than anyone else I know. 37 years as an estate agent, then 6 years as a property photographer, uniquely qualifies me to have an opinion on this one specialist subject. At least, that’s what I think )

For me, estate agency was always about making the property the star of the show. And yet I look back at the level of photography I was doing 5 years ago and I’m embarrassed. The reality is that although my photos were better than many, they were nothing like as good as they might have been. Anyone who is self-critical may feel the same about themselves today – but the secret is never to stop looking for a better way and always to have clear objectives in mind to work towards.

Even today, as someone who earns a good living photographing some of the most beautiful homes in London and the Home Counties, I self-criticise. But I think that that’s a healthy thing to do for anyone who aims to earn their living this way – although it might not be good for mental health to be quite so obsessed.

My main aim as someone who portrays property for sale is to make my images look real. Whatever’s vertical should appear in the photo to be vertical. Shadows and highlights should contain a degree of detail. There should BE shadows – the type you get with ambient light (not blatted with flash);  I should show a room’s best ‘profile’ – its best side – whatever makes it special. This isn’t rocket-science guys – this is simply caring enough to get it right – and never losing sight of what I’m trying to achieve.

Expect me over the coming months to “go off on one” every now and again. Not for nothing is my surname DurRANT. I’m very much of the mind that estate agents, especially those in the UK, might be great at sales but many haven’t a clue that they’re also in the property marketing business. I’m on a mission to change that and I’d love them to look to our Antipodean friends for inspiration because for the past 40 years (to my knowledge) possibly longer, the Australians and New Zealanders have been miles ahead of us when it comes to knowing how to attract attention to the properties they’re selling.

I also believe that property owners – a lot of them – don’t understand how presentation of their property affects their bottom line. And that those who have presented their homes well are wasting their time if their agent’s photos fail to show their homes at their best. Anyone who wants to achieve the optimal price for their property seriously must start to take an interest in making sure a) that they use agents who know how to do make their homes stand out from the crowd, (or employ professional photographers to do it for them) and b) care enough that they’ll fully prepare their property for the photography – and then keep it looking that way when people come to view.

These are tough times for the property market – part of what I’ll be trying to do these coming months will be to educate owners how to participate in getting the best possible price for their property.

Confessions out of the way, I hope you’ll stick with me and that there will occasionally be something that made it worth your while to look in. PLEASE feel free to comment on anything and everything. I’ll take it all – the rough and the smooth – and I’ll try to learn with you as we walk along this particular road.

Virtual Staging is a great solution for any attractive but empty property where furniture purchase or rental is not an economic solution. Employing the famous Pareto principle, (otherwise known as the 80-20 rule), my personal belief is that only 20% of people have the visual sophistication to know why a good photo is better than a bad one. This 20% are the same people who can walk into an empty room and clearly visualise what they might be able to do with it. Unfortunately, that leaves a massive 80% who have no idea about photo quality or about what a home might look like with furniture, let alone with wall-art and other nick-nacks.

So, without virtual staging, where there’s a new but empty property – perhaps built as a developer’s first project – there’s an uphill battle in store; especially when the market is tight. Without furniture – real or virtual – marketing materials including printed brochures, advertising and Internet advertising, can only really show rooms that look comparatively cold and uninviting – rooms with which perhaps 80% of people will have no instant connection.

Virtual Staging is not an expensive service compared to the cost of actually furnishing a property or indeed building it, but it could make a real difference to the number of people who might be attracted to view, or not.

You can read more about the offering here – and at the bottom of the page there’s a link directly to the site.

The reason is that perspective improves for most elevation shots when you do this,  especially when the alternative method used by many agents is to stand close to the elevation and use a wide-angle lens. The consequence of their doing this is that mostly their photos suffer from significant vertical distortion (verticals converge), and particularly with modern houses where roofs are constructed at a low pitch, they can often appear pancaked, or in extreme cases they will appear completely flat – because nothing of the pitch is within view.

With the gallery photos I have kept to my distance rule and I’ve used a slightly longer focal length lens (except for the second one – the flowers were the story here, not so much the house), but I’ve broken the standing-up rule as I have deliberately shot from a much lower angle. For one of the houses this was necessary,  (a wall to the front made it impossible to stand square on to the house, and moving to the right of the place from which the shot was taken meant losing more of the front elevation. Also, the flowers provided a more interesting foreground than the driveway would have had I shot from higher up). Other times I shot low for dramatic effect – thus demonstrating that rules most certainly are there for breaking, so long as you’re breaking them for good reason.

Larry Lohrman's Book for Aspiring Property Photographers

Larry’s Photography for Real Estate website is undoubtedly the leading resource for property/estate agency/ real-estate photographers in the world. He tells me (and  I believe him) there are 50,000 readers a month visiting his site from all over the world, including Australia, Canada and the UK.

Change is coming – as more UK estate agents realise that really good photographs are key not only to increasing their sales, but also to increasing their listings of the best-looking properties, there’s going to be a bigger need for people who know their way around a camera. But, property photography isn’t a skill that gets taught in many places – you can’t really learn how to do it in a studio context for example; it’s not even a discipline that’s handled well by photographers who work for magazines and are really good at interiors – where art can overtake the need for an accurate representation of what a property offers.

A real estate/property photographer who is serious about their business needs to know a bit about agents and how they work/what they want, what kit to go for, interior photography basics, marketing, what to charge and so on. This book is a comprehensive explanation of where and how to begin your walk along what I know to be a really rewarding and enjoyable path – provided you know what you’re doing.

Buy it if you’re that photographer who wants to extend their business offering but you’re not sure where to start!

• When photographing interiors, lower the angle of your camera to around waist height. If you’re using an SLR you’ll have to kneel because you probably won’t have a flip-up viewfinder. It’s worth kneeling though, because you’ll notice an instant improvement in the way your interiors look!
• Use the best equipment you can afford. Never use the camera’s own flash because the light from it will make your picture appear harsh and flat. Also, if your camera has a wide-angle lens attachment, you’ll get a dome-shape shadow to the bottom half of your picture. Instead use a dedicated flashgun with a swivel bounce head. Point the flash head towards the ceiling. This way you are using the ceiling to “bounce” light around the room and this will create subtle shadows giving your picture shape and depth. Most ceilings are white, but some are coloured so understand that if you bounce light off a coloured ceiling, there may be a colour-cast that will need to be removed in Photoshop. Some people advocate not using flash at all. This is often a mistake because if you are photographing towards a window there will be too much shadow to the back of large objects, unless there is some form of room lighting to light those areas that are not directly facing the window.
• Really look through your viewfinder at the picture you’re taking. Roll your eyes around/over the edges, don’t just look at the middle. Look to see if there is anything out of place. You’ll be surprised when you do this, how often you’ll find yourself moving an object out of the way, rearranging the furniture or fluffing some cushions that you didn’t notice beforehand were flattened and out of place.
• When you’re photographing exteriors look for the best angle. If you can, frame the picture with a (real) tree branch or foliage from a bush or perhaps something architectural like an arch. You may have to take the photo from across the road to do this and stand in a neighbour’s drive. Make sure you ask permission, or that they’re not bigger than you if you don’t.
• When photographing modern houses with a low pitch to the roof, stand as far away from the house as you can. Many modern houses have a low pitch to their roofs, so standing close with a wide-angle lens can make the roof look flat. Standing well back will enable more of the roof to be shown.
• When using a wide-angle lens keep it as close to 90 degrees to the floor/ceiling as possible. If you slightly tilt the camera forward or backward you’ll exaggerate the distortion you get with most wide-angle lenses. That said it is almost inevitable that you will have to tilt the camera slightly when photographing interiors, in order to avoid captring too much ceiling. A little distortion can be corrected in Photoshop, but the more correction that is needed, the more of your photo will be lost at the edges.
• There’s a lot more to taking a great property photo than can be written here, but these tips will start you off on the right track
• If, having read this section, you’re still unsure how to get the best from your camera, take a look at my Trainingsection..
• Or if good photography is just beyond you and you’re losing the will to live and haven’t the time to learn or use these tips, take a look at my other site, hello-photo.co.uk and consider asking me to take your photos for you. I love photographing houses, and there may be some occasions (perhaps for some of your larger properties) when my services will be useful to you. I cover Surrey, Hampshire. Sussex, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and London