With a camera on hand and an eye for beauty, you can capture wonders and immortalize moments. Photography virtually has no limit in subject matter for those with particular interests, talents, imagination, skill, and passion for the art. However, for professional photographers (or aspiring professional photographers), a specialty comes in handy because they can focus on a particular customer segment to offer their services to. There is much to be captured behind the lenses, but focusing on certain subjects will allow photographers to take their skills and careers to the next level.
One of the most profitable segments and specialties out there is real estate photography. A real estate photographer captures real estate for their clients - who are either looking to sell their houses or rent them. Read on and discover more about photography for real estate professionals, becoming a real estate photographer, and how to use Strikingly for these purposes.
What is Real Estate Photography?
Real estate photography refers to capturing the interiors and exteriors of a particular house for a client. This serves as the primary advertising campaign of their clients. They will be showing prospective buyers at the first meetings or what they will be posting online using social media platforms or on any of the real estate website templates they might have. Those looking for a home tend to be very specific about what this new home features. It is, after all, where they will build their life around. Thus, the primary job of the real estate photographers is to capture the parts of the houses that their real estate agents are advertising in their best angles. Real estate photography is all about capturing the right photos to feature the best characteristics of the house you want to sell or advertise.
Many of our Strikingly websites feature photography for real estate. While there aren’t many real estate templates yet, most of our Strikingly users are very creative in featuring what their real estate photographers captured. Here are some Strikingly user websites that are using real estate photography:
• Pretty Olives Interiors
Image taken from Strikingly User’s Website
• Dina Real Estate
Image taken from Strikingly User’s Website
• CL & PP Architects
Image taken from Strikingly User’s Website
• Galle Fort Real Estate
Image taken from Strikingly User’s Website
• Whitfield Six
Image taken from Strikingly User’s Website
How to Get Into Real Estate Photography and Be Good at It
Starting a career as a real estate photographer can be easy, given the right equipment and information. Here are some tips and techniques that you can use as you jumpstart your career to join the ranks of the best professional real estate photographers of today.
- Have a shot list. Before you even go to the location of your subject matter, you should already have a plan in mind. It is helpful to have a shot list - that is, a list of all the shots you plan on capturing when you arrive. Typically, this list contains wide-angle shots, front exterior shots, feature rooms, and shots of the most important rooms. This will help you have a certain idea of accomplishing your real estate photography business more smoothly and quickly. It saves time to coordinate these shots with your real estate agent (unless you are also a real estate agent) because they can help facilitate the best way to get all the necessary shots.
- Have a walk-through. Once you arrive at the destination (with your plan on hand), you have to view all the rooms. So as soon as you arrive, tour the place as a real estate photographer. That is, walk around the house, explore the different rooms, and understand how each room makes the place whole while keeping mental notes of how each room or place might be best photographed. Real estate photography is best done if you really understand what the place holistically represents to understand how to best capture it.
- Consider the lighting. Lighting plays a vital role in real estate photography. Think carefully about whether the current lighting brought about by weather is best for the photos. And depending on your client and location, you need to decide whether to keep the lights on or off in chosen locations. Both would require editing in post-production, so it is up to your professional opinion and decision as a real estate photographer. This includes turning on or off of lamps and tiny night lamps in the different rooms.
- Get the room’s best angle. While some clients and real estate agents would require that the result of your real estate photography includes shots in certain angles, that artistic discretion still relies heavily on you. Real estate photographers like you have to understand how the elements of each room work to build the whole feel of the room or location. You would have to really have an eye and an instinct so you can capture the atmosphere of the room correctly and completely. You also would not want to leave out particular details, so you have to make sure that you get the best angle possible.
- Always use a wide-angle lens. While it is always useful to have many different types of lens on hand, a wide-angle lens is best for real estate photography. A wide-angle camera lens allows you to have more background in the frame because it has a small focal length that would allow for more perspective. Using this kind of lens helps you make any room appear more spacious than it actually is. As a real estate photographer, you would want to capture as much detail as you can. You could choose from different kinds of wide-angle lenses depending on the kind of location you have on certain days.
- Declutter, if necessary. We’ve been talking about having as much detail as we can as real estate photographers. Real estate photography, after all, means capturing the heart and soul of the room. However, the reality is that real estate photography also involves knowing what would best capture the eyes and attention of prospective home buyers. Thus, you need to get your real estate agent (or the homeowner, if you are yourself the real estate agent as well) to contact the homeowner and ask for permission for you to declutter as necessary. Keep in mind that more often than not, as a real estate photographer, you are entering homes - a house with a story and a history already, and thus, you are invading spaces where these people are comfortable with bits of clutter. Most of this clutter has to go because they might stand out in the photos of the rooms you don’t want it to.
- Invest time and effort in post-production. Post-production or photo editing after you take the photos is a vital part of real estate photography. This involves correcting distortions, varying light temperatures, and other specific features that need to be improved before submitting it to the client for a final review. While we trust that your talent, skill, and passion have already brought you many good photos, post-production would make the photos you captured the best they can be.
Upload Images on Strikingly
While you can show the final products of your endeavors as a real estate photographer in many different places and platforms, it will serve you and your career well if you utilize the available resources online. There are many platforms where you can advertise your skill and even join a community of real estate photographers. Specifically, a website dedicated to showcasing your work will really help you appear more credible to clients worldwide.
- Log in or sign up with Strikingly.
- Choose a template and open your site editor.
- Add a Gallery section (or a big media section) from the selection.
Image taken from Strikingly Product
- Click on the section to manage your images.
Image taken from Strikingly Product
- Upload more images and add titles and descriptions.
Image taken from Strikingly Product
Real estate photography requires very little specification as compared to other photography subject specializations. You just have to have the right eye for home details, and you are good to go. Real estate photographers, in fact, spend more on their equipment. This is because, as a real estate photographer, your skill and your eye for the right angles and the right details for the interiors and exteriors of different properties are enhanced with the experience, and while it does, your equipment has to keep up with your skill and talent as well. And so you would have to really invest in it as much as you invest your time and attention in personal and career development.
With website builders like Strikingly, you can easily reach more clients and real estate agents to partner with you so that you can put your real estate photography to the test. Earn more by using any one of our real estate templates (or choose another to modify into making it into one) and build an online presence and portfolio to grow your career as a real estate photographer. Sign up with Strikingly now!
