Why we place such an emphasis on our pictures

It is our belief, when selling a home, everything starts with pictures.  Think about it.  When a buyer finds a home on Realtor.com, the MLS, or the agent's website (if they have one), they start by looking at the pictures.  If the pictures are boring and unimpressive, why would that buyer waste their time getting into their car and driving to go see the home?   I wonder how many sales have been lost over poor picture quality although the home would have been a perfect fit for the buyer.  I cannot speak for other Realtors, but I know for a fact, that has never happened on one of our listings.

We receive so many compliments about the photographs on our website.  Of course, we realize that much of this is due to the beautiful homes we list, but there is so much more to what we do than just taking nice pictures.  It takes a lot of time to get just the right picture, at just the right time of day, on just the right day!

We can easily take 100 pictures of a home, inside and out.  Outside pictures can be tricky, so we might have to return to the home 3 or 4 times to get just the pictures we want.  For instance, we never to shoot into the sun.  This is easier said than done because north facing homes in the winter months have the sun hanging low overhead most of the day.  We have to wait until mid-morning or mid-afternoon to take the shot while the sun is still relatively high and bright, but it is to our side and not directly behind the home.  If you have seen those pictures where the home is just a dark blob in the middle of a white halo, whoever took that picture either didn't know better or didn't care.

Getting the outside lighting just right means we often have to visit the home at least two different visits, and it could very easily take as many as 4-5 visits in extreme cases.  We might have to go out in the morning when the sun is to our back to shoot the front and then return in the afternoon to get the rear of the home with the sun again to our back.  Many times this cannot be done in the same day because cloud cover moves in between the morning shoot and the afternoon shoot.  We have to wait several days, then run out to the home again for the next shot.

It is not unusual for us to set up and wait 15 minutes for a shot taken on a partly cloudy day We are waiting for the sun to peek through the scattered clouds.  Is this being ridiculous?  Does it make a difference?  Unless you have watched a home through a camera lens as the sun moves between the clouds, you will not understand.  But there is a huge difference between cloudy and sunny lighting.  If the grounds around the home are landscaped with seasonal color, you can watch it all come to life like the colors on a canvas painting.  That is what we want buyers to see!

Although getting just the right shot is time consuming, that is only the first step.  After the picture is taken, we don't just post them to our site.  The pictures are edited three times by me to get them where we want them.

Step #1 - Color Balancing and Tonal Contrasts

The first thing we do is balance the color and brightness.   For instance, rooms with all white walls and not a lot of light can turn pink.  We don't want that.   Rooms with darker walls and hardwoods and little natural lighting through windows will shoot very poorly.  We have to brighten them up with some specialized software, but we can only take it so far.  If I over-edit, the pictures will turn grainy and appear washed.  By the way, we never use an inside flash even in the darkest of rooms.  If you want to see why, look at some of the pictures below.

Step #2 - Converting high resolution Pictures To Low Resolution Pictures

The second thing we do to each and every picture is reduce the resolution.  We initially take the pictures at a very high resolution level, but this makes them large in file size.  Even with high speed Internet access, people are not going to wait forever for 15 pictures to download.  We have to reduce each picture to a manageable size so they will download quickly.  So why don't we just shoot the pictures at a lower resolution setting so we can just post them quickly?  Because they will look like we did just that!  It doesn't take a trained eye to notice two pictures side by side, one taken with a high resolution setting and a low resolution setting.  The picture taken at the high resolution always looks "richer" and more robust.  This is important to us.

Step #4 - Creating an interesting color border

And finally, the third thing we do is place a color border around each picture.  We always use a dark black background.  It is the ideal color background as far as we are concerned, but dark areas around the edges of picture will bleed into the dark black background.  We want the picture borders nicely defined on the page.  That is the first reason,  But there is an even more important reason we do this.  The right border color can make a picture almost jump out at you.  It really gets your attention. 

And if you don't think MLS pictures make a difference, follow this link!