Here are our Top 5 Keys to Awesome Home-For-Sale Photos
When your home is for sale, you get about 2 seconds to grab an online Buyer’s interest with your lead photo. I cannot over emphasize the importance of high quality professional photography. Your lead photo needs to tell a story! When you are selling your house, you basically enter a beauty contest. The goal is to stand out and capture the buyer’s eye. Yet, we continue to see uninspiring lead photos. This is a speed round where you have to stand out from the other houses being sifted through. Beyond that, you will only keep the person’s interest if your photos are REALLY good – or really bad (there are websites for this).
1. Make Sure you have Blue Skies in the Background
If a picture is worth a 1000 words then blue skies double that. Stalk your house for the best time of day for the exterior photos and make sure you plan WELL AHEAD to get shots with crisp blue skies. Don’t let the weather leave you in the grey.
On the other hand, cloudy days are the best for the interior shots because the light from the windows is easier to manage. You can still get good shots like the one below but you really have to work at it to keep the shadow distractions to a minimum.
2. Conquer the Lighting
One of this biggest challenges and the biggest secret weapons with Home For Sale Photos is lighting. Managing the windows and utilizing dramatic interior lighting can make or break the photos. The first photo below shows what happens when the equipment can’t manage competing light sources.
Lighting can be affected by the home’s furnishings as well. This is when experience and professional equipment makes all the difference! The darker areas in the photo above force the viewer to have to concentrate to figure out what going on in the photo. The photo below shows how crisp balanced lighting can be. Photos with balanced lighting make the viewer’s brain go “ahhh”. You can feel the difference.
3. Manage the Hue
Awesome Home-For-Sale Photos have true colors. Amateur photos can take on the hue of the decor and finish materials. We actually see professional photos with overly yellow and blue hues. There are several photo apps available that will allow you to adjust the hue and modify the photos. Go for the truest color you can get!
The photo above feels tinted with green when compared to the photo below. This is probably a result of trying to work around a low light situation. When your house’s appeal (and Sale Price) hang in the balance, you really need cool crisp true colors in your photos! Otherwise, you may seem dull against the competition.
4. Get the Angle
Head on photos rarely do justice to the room and the Dining Room photo below is no exception. Views on an angle almost always look better and convey a sense of lifestyle and story. The photo below seems like just a room.
Here is a photo from the same house on the same day showing how getting the right angle can tell multiple stories about the room and its relationship to the adjacent areas in the house. You actually see the Dining Room, Kitchen, Hallway, Main Stairs and Foyer – all from one photo.
5. Make sure the photos are in focus
You would think that this would be obvious. And yet, we see listing photos all the time that are not in focus. Interestingly, not being able to manage the light affects focus and hue too. Here is another area where you don’t want the viewer to have to work to work for it. The focus can easily shift to the photo and the incompetency of the listing agent rather than the wonderful features of the house. When photos are fuzzy and poorly lit it lowers the energy for the whole experience.
As a contrast, the photo below is in focus so that the focus can be on the feeling of the room – not the feeling of the photo.
Want more information? Email us today and we will be in touch very soon. michael@BunchRealEstateGroup.com
