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  • Introduction To Property Photography


    Dallas

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    Professional Photographers Specialise For Success

     

    There is an old saying that you can be a "Jack of all trades and a master of none". This rings particularly true in the world of professional photography which has so many different facets to it that calling oneself a "professional photographer" is about as generic a term as you can get.

     

    It's not likely that every professional photographer is going to know how to do every type of photography there is. Or at least do them all very well. Specialisation is the pathway to greater success when it comes to professional photography because when you are doing this craft for money your customers will expect you to solve a particular problem for them. If you don't know the answers to all the possible problems they might throw your way, you'll just end up frustrating not only yourself but your customers too. And seeing as there is no better marketing tool than a satisfied customer, you definitely don't want to leave them wanting.

     

    Specialisation in property photography is what this part of Fotozones Learning is all about. 

     

     

    Why Property Photography? 

     

    Real estate and short term letting are huge markets for photography. In most real estate markets you're going to find photos taken by old school estate agents using their cellphones, or Airbnb hosts who adopt a similar DIY mindset. This approach is gradually disappearing however as new school estate agents and Airbnb hosts are beginning to appreciate the need for professional photography in their marketing. I think a lot of this sea change can be attributed to Gen Z as they begin to enter the property ownership market. I put it down to constant social media consumption on the likes of Instagram. If you don't look visually appealing on social you're not going to experience too much Gen Z love and so clever marketers are now appealing to this younger generation by (hopefully) speaking their visual language. Get the buyer's attention by getting them to pause their scrolling and have a closer look at the hero shot that you just posted. This is where as a property photographer you have to know what is going to make them pause and take that second look. 

     

    Given the sheer size of churn in the property market, the resulting need for photography that showcases those properties for sale is immense. Just take a look at any of the popular portals in your area. There are always houses for sale and there are always agents who need help getting their listings to look good. Work is good, but you need to be careful not to fall into the trap of being underpaid and overworked. 

     

    This is a great field of photography if you have a good eye for composition and (like me) are not particularly interested in the vanities of humans who would like to look like they are on the cover of a fashion magazine.

     

     

    What Will You Learn From Me? 

     

    In this part of Fotozones I am going to teach you my efficient and effective method of photographing property, for real estate, short term letting and corporate offices. If you follow my methods you will learn how to do this better than any average Jack-of-all-trades photographer will do.

     

    You will learn about my composition techniques and how these differ between types of assignments (and even rooms), the equipment I think you should invest in and the way I go about editing the captured materials. You'll also learn about your clients, how to find them and which ones to avoid having. You'll learn how to plan your calendar and deal with unexpected dramas that will unfold in your working day. Trust me when I tell you that I have seen it all in the time I have been shooting property. What can go wrong does go wrong and knowing how to deal with these mishaps is going to be your saving grace. 

     

    So let me give you a little background about how I qualify to offer any form of teaching in this specific photography genre.

     

    I have always been interested in architecture and interior design so shooting property is something I truly enjoy doing. It just comes naturally to me. The first properties I photographed were in 2008 for one of my website design clients, a guy who installed luxury flooring. He didn’t pay me much but he was able to put me inside some lovely homes and through that interaction I was able to build a small portfolio of property images that I put on my website. With some carefully worded blog posts related to my property work published on my website, over time it began to come up in searches for property photographers in my region. In the material I post in this zone I will also go into detail on how I ended up coming first in organic search for property photography in my region. 

     

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    One of the shots I did for the flooring company - they still use this as their landing image on their website.

     

    Over the next few years I did some work for a number of estate agents, some interior decorators and I even got a few non-paying jobs for an architectural magazine in the hope of catching the attention of architects. 

     

    One of the clients who arrived in my inbox was a realty company who were setting up shop in my neck of the woods after enjoying success in other regions with their somewhat disruptive "fixed fee" business model. Those guys really kept me busy over a period of about 18 months and I ended up shooting just shy of 500 properties for them. The money they were paying me wasn't very good, but they were sending me big volumes. Sometimes I was shooting up to 5 properties in 1 day, which is not for the feint-hearted, let me tell you! 

     

    The first jobs I did for them I was spending almost 2 hours on site and then a further 3 hours on the editing for each job. Do the math. To say that I was burning the candle at both ends would have been a gross understatement. I simply had to find a way of doing this job more efficiently, but not in a way that compromised my quality levels. 

     

    And thus began my development of the system that I am still using today. I am confident that I can walk into a residential property armed with just a small Micro Four Thirds camera, a decent wide angle lens and a tripod and under any lighting conditions deliver (later the same day) around 30-50 images of well above average quality. 

     

    How? 

     

    Well that's what you're going to learn here. I will teach you my process from start to end. 

     

    I don’t lay any claim to being the world’s greatest property photographer and there are many other far more talented people than I who will probably look at what I am going to teach here and tell you to run the other way. Purism is all well and fine, but it doesn't always pay your bills. Your time is your most valuable asset and if you are spending inordinate amounts of it sat behind a computer screen editing your photos well into the night, that quest for purism is costing you more than it is paying you. When you see how simple my system is I believe you may want to stick around for a while and learn from that proverbial lazy guy who found the most efficient way of doing things. 

     

    My plan with this learning zone is to publish fundamental lessons that you will find in the categories on the sidebar, but the main learning material will come in the form of ongoing posts I will make about real assignments I do and why I take photos for those jobs a certain way. Access to these posts will be restricted to Subscribers, Life Members and legacy supporters of Fotozones. The subscription fee will be very reasonable. 

     

     

    Lightroom Classic Only, No Flash 

     

    Unlike most other serious property photographers I only edit in Lightroom Classic. No plugins, no 3rd party apps. Everything you need to do to an image for most property photography can be accomplished in stock standard Lightroom Classic. 

     

    If you follow my methods you too will be able to walk into any home, in any location and 30 minutes later walk out with all the stills material you need to produce at least 20-30 great marketing photos for your client. You'll not spend any more than 30-60 seconds editing each shot either. Lightroom Classic will give you all the editing tools you need. 

     

     

    Minimal Equipment

     

    I'll be going over what equipment I use and not only why I chose it, but also how to use it efficiently. I will explain my thinking around composition and why this changes for different types of property as well as different types of end uses. For example, I will compose differently for Airbnb than I do for real estate and I will explain why.

     

    In the editing process I will show you how I use Lightroom Classic to speed up my output and get to the desired result without spending more time than I did taking the photos. I will be packing the Real Assignments category of this zone with many different actual assignments and the types of shots I got from each. I'm hoping to do this weekly so if you remain subscribed you are going to be getting fresh material and input constantly. Each Real Assignment entry will look at one room and why I shot it that way, what difficulties I had in doing so and how I edited the shots in Lightroom Classic. There will be a discussion area below each post where you may ask me questions. 

     

     

    Written Material & Screenshots

     

    I have given some thought to creating training videos, both on location and then in editing, but that will obviously require a great deal of additional work and as I said above, I will have to figure out how to do that more efficiently before I can commit to it. :) For now all the learning material in this zone will be written work with screenshots for illustration. 

     

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    Sound like a skill you would like to learn? Follow me... 


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