Looking for a house?

Last week I had a real photographic challenge: photograph a house to sell.

I have never done that but I carefully evaluated my possibilities and thought I could do a reasonable job. I must say I was pleased with the final results: pictures were correct, exposure was great, perspective impeccable. But of course, we need to register also what went not so very well in order to fix it on a next time.

First the positive points:

• The house must be absolutely clean and tidy. This friend of mine has done it perfectly: when I arrived, everything was clean. No clutter around. Whatever was there, we removed through the process of photographing
• I didn't need to use flash because the light into the house was perfect. There was no bright sun outside and I had no harsh shadows. No flash was needed.
• I was very attentive with the camera position, although I had forgotten the head of my tripod. Take care that the back of the camera is parallel to the walls. You can correct it later on as explained here but as better you do on the first time, as less you need to fix afterwards
• Also watch out for overexposed windows. On some of the images I took many exposures and superposed them and revealed the overexposed windows. More or less like I did on this post.
•  Look for low or high angles. You can get surprised with the results! The image below has been taken from 50 cm high.

• Look for the details on the house and show it. Even if it looks a bit artistic, make them clear.

 

I was really curious to know the impressions of the real state agent and based on what I heard of my friend and what I saw published on the site, I can list the following points to improve next time:

• When taking pictures of the outside (street, facade) use the same wide angle you did on the interior, even if it implies on showing ugly over-exposed skies.
• Photograph the street
• The garden must be photographed on a sunny day
• The front door is also important
• Any sideways to the house must be shown, specially on a place where houses are tight beside each other
• Work systematically: take a picture and scan the image looking for clutter. Remove it and photograph the angle again, again and again until you don't overlook any clutter.
• Talk to the real state agent and ask him/her what they think its a must on the house. For example, I don't care much for stained glass, but it seems to be very important on the house market.

Looking for clutter for me is quite difficult. I am conditioned to solve problems and I have some difficulty on evaluating how messy something looks before I get the full picture on my display on the computer. But then is too late to photograph it again.

As an exercise, I suggest walking around with the camera and photographing around, training your eyes to see clutter.

Want to by a house? Check it out at Funda!