Architectural & Interior Design Photography, Corporate Commercial Photography, Advertising & Portrait Photographer | Ottawa | 613-558-7585 | justin.vanleeuwen@gmail.com
As chance would have it, I’ve been picking up some work lately taking real-estate photos. Pictured here is my sister-in-law’s house which she’ll be selling, on her own, through grapevine here).
This was the second shoot I did in the past month and I felt I improved over the first a lot. The learning curve for this stuff is steep, but if you have a good foundation in composition, and lighting, you’re most of the way there. I will say this – you need multiple small strobes to pull off any of this work. Even I felt strained with “only” 4 speedlights there. So strained, in fact, that I’ve recently purchased two more.
You can’t just walk into a house and start blasting away. You need to represent the room and feel of the location, as well as light it so that the photograph shows what your eyes see (since our eyes adjust to shadow where a camera will just see blackness). It takes time, patience, and fiddling around as stray reflections cast awkard shadows all over the place. Many you catch, some you don’t until you get home and *facepalm* have to correct it in Photoshop
I felt very confident walking into these jobs as I was reading Scott Hargis‘ excellent e-book “Lighting Interiors” which I would highly recommend anyone wanting to enter this field. In fact, if you’re trying to sell your own home, and don’t want to shell for a photographer (which, by browsing the internet, many of you don’t) at least buy this book to A: educate yourself on how to take flattering photos of your half-million dollar product, or B: To realize you should really just hire a photographer; it’s an investment.
Hopefully by getting me to take her real-estate photos, I can help Mel’s sister sell her house for what she wanted. The photographs of the rooms aren’t harsh like those that could be taken with a point-and-shoot’s on-camera flash, and I’ve taken time to straighten all the verticles in the images to keep up with a professional standard. You can see some of my images larger over on my Flickr page. Let me know what you think!
Ya, I find it amazing that the MLS listings are full of "snapshots". The Real Estate agent, which is a sales person, should know that a good first impression will INCREASE "sales leads". I assume that was learned in Sales 101. It looks like a market that could use some help judging by the amount of horrendous images on MLS.
i would ABSOLUTELY buy that house, based on those photos.
LOVE the use of colour in this house! The photos are great, Justin – much much better than the ones you usually see in real estate listings.