Archive for October, 2007
A Few Halloween Photos
October 31st, 2007 Family Life, Photography, Portfolio No Comments »
Meh… screw the Feed Bag, we got candy happening!
The Top Producer..
Suckas just giving away candy…
Grandma and Papa’s front porch.
Jen.
The Top Producers older sister kept moving all the time, so had to use the flash on her…
Bad MLS Photo of the Day #205
October 31st, 2007 Bad MLS Photo of the Day No Comments »
Oh fine, be like that then. I knew I should have listened to my mother when she told me you were unbalanced…
Photo sent in by Kim Anderson
Your bad photos are good here, please send me the horrible shots you find.
If you haven’t read and signed the comments for Reagent Manifesto: Improving Real Estate Photos please consider it.
See more Bad MLS Photos of the Day Read up on Rules of Good Photos
Bad MLS Photo of the Day #204
October 30th, 2007 Bad MLS Photo of the Day 5 Comments »
“Mom! More Hot Pockets!”
Soooo this may an inside joke unless you saw the Emmy Winning “Make Love, Not Warcraft” South Park episode. Funny as hell.
Anyway…
Photo sent in by Jane Dodgson.
The Feed Bag - I Just Want To See The House Now
October 30th, 2007 The Feed Bag 7 Comments »
Vicki Moore… HUH? Required Reading.
Lenderama covers Zillow making steps into getting into mortgage.
Bigger Pockets discusses the The Economic Trickle Down Effect
Jessica Beganski explains why less is more in Living In Less:Smaller home = Larger life
You have to watch this funny as hell and spot on analysis of the sub-prime mess. The sub-prime discussion starts around the 3 minute mark. Required Viewing.
…and you’ve been fed.
Every day I scan far too many blogs and writings related to real estate using the free Google Reader . The Feed Bag is simply what struck my fancy as I read. Want to follow my free RSS feed? Subscribe here.
Streetfighter Real Estate Photography - The Under $1000 Gear I Am Using
October 29th, 2007 Photography, Portfolio, Rules of Good Photos, Staging and Clutter 7 Comments »
I got a “what camera should I buy” question a day or so ago on the blog.
I have no clue.
Let me tell you how I got my current camera though…
New to real estate and having held a camera in my hands for about 4 hours total over my entire life, I went to my wife’s camera shop. In theory Jen is the family photographer, she has a fancy pants film camera that dwarfs mine.
Anyway, so I go into the shop, and wow what a collection of weird looking old guys with crazy hair. But its a camera shop, so this somehow relaxes me. So I walk up to old guy with Santa Claus beard and say;
“I’m going to be shooting real estate photos, what sort of camera should I buy?”
And he says…
“How much money do you have?”
…
I think it’s fair to mention that at this point, with the money still in my pocket before I brought the camera, is the point of having the most money I reach in this story.
…
Spending Money Phase One
Anyways I end up buying a Canon PowerShot SD800 IS 7.1MP Digital Elph Camera with 3.8x Wide Angle Image-Stabilized Optical Zoom
Currently it’s on Amazon for $275. I also would recommend a Battery and Carry Case for it. Another $40 off Amazon. Also you’ll need a Memory Card another $40 or so.
That pretty much got me some straight out of the box point and shoot goodness. The Wide Angle lens is in laymans terms “moderately wide”. (28mm) So just fine for all purpose real estate shooting. I have discovered over time that perspective distortion is fairly predictable, and the camera packs fisheye distortion into every single shot.
Generally it’s pretty light, easily handled, can take about 340 shots on the memory card and the battery recharge time seems to be about an hour from completely flat. There is like a 2 photos left to go low battery warning and that is it. Be warned!
I can’t really comment on other cameras. Never used anything else seriously as yet. Been pretty pleased with it though.
Spending Money Phase Two
I do a lot of post shooting tweaking. My software of choice is Paint Shop Pro X2. Currently $80 on Amazon.
Here’s my earlier post on X2. Paint Shop Pro X2 - Oh My God “Graduated Blue”
My best advice is to take lots and lots of photos – of your own house if need be – and just play with the software over and over. If you’re using the Canon SD800 the fisheye correction is 30 in X2.
X2 is pretty close to Photoshop in what it can do, but takes a little longer to process images and start up. Also from what I’ve heard it’s simpler to use than Photoshop. The price is extremely appealing.
The free filters that come with it are positively godlike. I was unimpressed with “Sunlight” – then we headed into fall and it is simply off the hook for New England fall leaves. “Sunlight” simply rocks for exterior shots, “Brillance and Warmth” for Interior shots, “Graduated Blue” just astounding for editing blown out skies. All free with X2. Seriously good additions.
This version of Paint Shop also comes with a CD of video tutorials for how to use most of the features. Nice.
Oh and get good with the clone brush. Great for smoothing out dust particles. The sellers never clean their houses as good as they think they do.
Spending Money Phase Three
Tripod. Seriously, you just have to get a tripod. It saves a huge amount of fluffing about time setting up and lost time with “opps I moved” shots. I use Bogen / Manfrotto 785SHB Modo Mini Photo-Video Grip Head Tripod and I know you won’t believe it when I say it’s available on Amazon! It’s $80. 
Nice and light, the legs are metal and everything else is a hard plastic. It collapses down to about two feet fast and easy. I gave up on pole shooting attempts after discovering that 90% of the time holding the tripod above my head was almost as good. (Three second delay is about right)
HDR shooting (I do this rarely) is all but impossible without a tripod.
The time saver is that you can set the camera and do a “what have we got?” shot, then move objects and lighting getting the shot just right. Also you can use a time delay and go point a light somewhere, or on occasion use my heaving bulk to block out a light source casting an odd glare or something.
Spending Money Phase Four
Lighting. It’s all about lighting. I went very cheap and dirty for this phase. See my Professional Quality Lighting post. I will add that Daniel Rothamel was 100% correct about the yellow tint to the halogen bulbs. It really bugged me once I noticed it. I corrected this by buying replacement “bright, white” bulbs at Wal-Mart @ $6 a pair.
These lights are to be honest cumbersome, and do of course require plugging in, which can result in leads snaking all over the place in the house. For some reason I’m unable to see bright freaking orange leads on the camera viewscreen. Thankfully I can fix that in editing.
That being said, the two rigs net 1000 watts of light that can just HAW-HAW-HAW-HAW your problems away. All for about $80.
Spending Money Phase Five
By this point I’d managed to produce some nice photos. So headed over to Shutterfly and printed up some little portfolios of my photos. I did a 5×7 booklet of 40 pages and they print and ship for around $25 each. You can do as few as 20 pages for about $15. Just great for “hey look, I can shoot good photos”. I tailored it towards bored agents sitting on the floor desk, and I’m getting good business from it already.
Either your photos are good, or they aren’t. If they are good, you don’t need to say much. If they are bad, nothing you say matters anyway. The 5×7 booklet page on Shutterfly. I am really really pleased with how well these came out.
Having these little booklets of my photos (only did this a week ago) has just released a huge amount of energy in me. I’m starting to generate real interest in other agents using me for photos from it.
Spending Money Phase Six
Get New Business Cards. Tripod + time delay + butterfly lighting + DIY = a much better agent headshot. Get funky with it. Anything other than the vanilla corporate sadist headshot. My “agent headshot” is the photo of me up on the top of the sidebar. Write a slogan on the front somewhere that sums up your business. Mine says;
Good Photos Sell Homes
Online buyers only look for two seconds.
Price and photos are 99% of marketing.
And I have a photo of a house printed on the back of the card. I’ll be the cats half brother – people actually like getting these cards.
I get them off Xpressdocs through Prudential for $45 for 500. I also snuck a variant of that photo under the radar as my official agent headshot and my “official Prudential” agent page went from about 1 hit a day to around 25. From nothing but a photo.
Spending Money Phase Seven
Wanting a little more lighting oomph on occasion, plus wanting it to be smaller and portable. The next step is getting a Canon HF-DC1 High Power Flash for Canon Powershot Digital Cameras. It’s wireless, so you can place it somewhere, or hold it, and the flash will fire automatically when it senses another flash. $89 currently.
I just added this, so not much advice on usage as yet. If you get a Canon camera, this is essentially your basic option. Canon cameras use a little light sensing pre-flash that triggers every other brand of slave flashes to fire a microsecond too early. (I learned this the hard way… bastards!)
My main worry is combating that blown out window look, so being able to really brighten a room to balance the light balance is the idea here.
Holy Mother of Expense Budgets! What’s The Damage?
$275 Canon Powershot SD800
$40 Battery and Case
$40 Memory Card
$80 Paint Shop Pro X2
$80 Tripod
$80 Home Depot Lighting Set
$120 Shutterfly Booklets (I did a bunch)
$45 Business Cards
$89 HF-DC1 Flash
= $849 Total
+ ~10% shipping
= $934 Grand Total.
So thats the story of what I’m using. There is no question that better gear exists, but for the money spent I think I’m pretty well set up. What I’m shooting is better than 99.7% of what I’m seeing on my MLS. Here’s some shots from todays shoot.
At some point I’ll double back and get an SLR as a “proper camera”. I do wonder in my private moments if Photoshop or Lightroom is really worth the wheel barrow of money. It all really started for me by writing a silly daily photo post about real estate photos that were bad. I really didn’t expect to start turning into a professional photographer – abet one in a specialized area and still working as much as a realtor on my shoots as a photographer.
Anyone can run out and get the gear, and to be honest, having a better set of gear now really helps. What really counts though, what anyone really gets paid for, is the effort in setting up the shot and then finishing it off in editing.
The Money Shot is you.
Bad MLS Photo of the Day #203
October 29th, 2007 Bad MLS Photo of the Day No Comments »
Look how clean we kept the carpet!
Thanks to Brian Copeland for this photo.
Your bad photos are good here, please send me the horrible shots you find.
If you haven’t read and signed the comments for Reagent Manifesto: Improving Real Estate Photos please consider it.
See more Bad MLS Photos of the Day Read up on Rules of Good Photos
The Feed Bag - Vinyl is Stealing!
October 29th, 2007 The Feed Bag 2 Comments »
<— Hat Tip How To Split An Atom
The Real Estate Bloggers with Raising Commission Paid To Buyers Agent May Sell Your Home
Jim Cronin with The Art of Easter Egging To Gain Subscribers To Your Real Estate Blog. Of course long time Reagent readers already know about my constant captions hidden under images.
Larry Lohrman covers atticfire - A New Approach to Architectural Photography? Not sure I like all of it, and it’s Architectural rather than Real Estate shooting.
Jim Duncan has the best post of the day. Are you willing to martyr yourself to the industry? Required Reading.
…and you’ve been fed.
Every day I scan far too many blogs and writings related to real estate using the free Google Reader . The Feed Bag is simply what struck my fancy as I read. Want to follow my free RSS feed? Subscribe here.
Bad MLS Photo of the Day #202
October 28th, 2007 Bad MLS Photo of the Day 1 Comment »
Kid, you’re too old for a pacifier.
Your bad photos are good here, please send me the horrible shots you find.
If you haven’t read and signed the comments for Reagent Manifesto: Improving Real Estate Photos please consider it.
See more Bad MLS Photos of the Day Read up on Rules of Good Photos
The Feed Bag - Refried and Served Again
October 28th, 2007 The Feed Bag No Comments »
My weekly wrap up of everything I flagged as required reading in the Feed Bag.
Tom Royce explains Why Suffering the Pain In The Housing Market Now Is Important. Agree.
Jessica Beganski does an autopsy on a failed low-ball offer.
Ardell covers various MLS fines. I wonder if they actually get to collect on them?
My Saturday Bad MLS Photo of the Day bonanza.
Hmmm, I must have been grumpy this week, not a whole lot got flagged at required reading.
…and you’ve been fed.
Every day I scan far too many blogs and writings related to real estate using the free Google Reader . The Feed Bag is simply what struck my fancy as I read. Want to follow my free RSS feed? Subscribe here.
