Archive for February, 2008
Bad MLS Photo of the Day #328
February 29th, 2008 Bad MLS Photo of the Day No Comments »
“Within walking distance of shopping…”
From Gregory Buccola in Pasadena CA.
Your bad photos are good here, please send me the horrible shots you find.
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Friday Feed Bag
February 29th, 2008 The Feed Bag No Comments »
Here’s the weekly summary of everything that caught my eye.
Okay… I’m pleased for The Real Estate Tomato that one of their bloggers made the front cover of REALTOR Magazine. But you’d think that a requirement for gracing the cover would be writing more than just three blog posts and a Facebook profile. I’m just saying…
The good news is that some of the more regular offenders bloggers made the cut for the article. Including Teresa Boardman, 1000WattConsulting, Ardell Dellaloggia, RainCityGuide, ActiveRain, Zolve, IncredibleAgents, Realtygram Blogger, Turner’s Perspective and Real Estate Zebra Blog. Screw you all for not mentioning my name. Big congratulations to everyone. The more traction blogs get, the easier it is for everyone doing it. (No seriously!)
I’ve bumped GenuineChris.com up into my A-List on my feed reader. Here’s a couple of posts from this weeks offerings. 9 Rules For Getting Along On The RE.NET and Transparency: Would You Be Different If Everyone Was Watching. Pretty much the best new RE.net voice I’ve heard for a while. I specially like his advice that the RE.net needs to get over Seth Godin and start paying better attention to old fashioned push marketing.
“News Flash: Push marketing, well executed, works consistently and makes people happy.”
Awesome post by Seth Godin this week. Advice for real estate agents (quit now!)
Hat tip for the below video to Larry Lohrman at Photography for Real Estate. Just a short video on the importance of real estate photography, but well done.
Jay Thompson has decided to branch out and set up his own real estate shop. I’m sure he’ll do just fine.
It’s the best of listings, it’s the worst of listings. A truly horrible collection of photos, mashed into a virtual tour that made me consider gouging my own eyes out. But seriously… a $6,000 dollar house… and yes I said $6,000 as in six thousand… a big hats off to the agent for taking it on and actually sounding like he’s marketing it for all it’s worth. It’s charity work and not really an income listing. So truly, thanks for taking it on. Just a photographer short of greatness :-/
The backstory… young Nik has had a succession of sickness and injuries for his last few birthdays. Plus money has been extremely tight. Now see what the gift of XBOX360 and Halo 3 does to a small deserving boy…
…and you’ve been fed.
Sunshine On My Shoulders
February 29th, 2008 Good Vibes, Photography, Rules of Good Photos No Comments »
I’m just gonna hammer this point home
Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy
Sunshine in my eyes can make me cry
Sunshine on the water looks so lovely
Sunshine almost always makes me high
If I had a day that I could give you
Id give to you a day just like today
If I had a song that I could sing for you
Id sing a song to make you feel this way
Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy
Sunshine in my eyes can make me cry
Sunshine on the water looks so lovely
Sunshine almost always makes me high
If I had a tale that I could tell you
Id tell a tale sure to make you smile
If I had a wish that I could wish for you
Id make a wish for sunshine all the while
Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy
Sunshine in my eyes can make me cry
Sunshine on the water looks so lovely
Sunshine almost always makes me high
Sunshine almost all the time makes me high
Sunshine almost always
Words by john denver, music by john denver, dick kniss and mike taylor
Sunshine just makes you feel good.
Bad MLS Photo of the Day #327
February 28th, 2008 Bad MLS Photo of the Day No Comments »
This agent also has a ton of photos of UFOs.
Sent in by Vicki Moore in San Mateo.
Your bad photos are good here, please send me the horrible shots you find.
See more Bad MLS Photo of the Day, Rules of Good Photos. Problem photo? Try Pimp My Listing Photo or if in Connecticut you can even check on My Services.
Thanks for visiting.
Make Hey! While The Sun Shines
February 28th, 2008 Photography, Portfolio, Rules of Good Photos No Comments »
If you’ve been following the plot, I’ve been going crazy over sunshine in the last week.
Anyway… yesterday after hours of tweaking I salvaged this from an overcast day.
It’s okay, but as I said yesterday it was fixing up dog food as meatloaf.
Today the weather forecast is off, and BOOM! We got sunshine baby! Fortunately the house is two blocks from my own house so after my frou-frou date breakfast with wifey I swung around and the first shot out of the camera is this one.
NOM NOM NOM NOM!!!
Filet Mignon!
Just compare the two photos. Which one makes you feel good inside?
Think the front was dramatic? Try the overcast vs sunshine shot of the backyard. I couldn’t even do anything with the backyard editing yesterday.
Pure natural feel good sunshine simply can’t be faked. I keep saying this over and over, the photos do not need to be technically perfect photos, we’re trying to create an emotion for the buyer. Real estate purchases for anyone except the most hardened investor, are highly emotional and positive emotion helps sell homes.
Raise the emotional tone, positive energy, feel good, use The Force…
Bad MLS Photo of the Day #326
February 27th, 2008 Bad MLS Photo of the Day No Comments »
See man, I told you if you smoke enough of this stuff you become invisible.
Sent in by Eric Blackwell in Louisville and also of Bloodhound fame.
Your bad photos are good here, please send me the horrible shots you find.
See more Bad MLS Photo of the Day, Rules of Good Photos. Problem photo? Try Pimp My Listing Photo or if in Connecticut you can even check on My Services.
Thanks for visiting.
Just A Quiet Day Screaming Into Pillows About The Sky
February 27th, 2008 Photography, Pimp My Listing Photo, Rules of Good Photos 3 Comments »
First up, if today was sunny, none of this would be happening.
Let me correct that…
…I was told NOT to come and been held off for two weeks of pretty good weather, and now we have a week of crap weather and I’m told to come, right away!
Anyway… overcast day, but gotta get something up for photos ASAP.
I get a minor break in the sky for all of two minutes and get this…
Which is about as exciting as a bucket of dirt.
Can yo’ feel da love in dis photo? Me neither. I keep saying real estate photos don’t need to be perfect, but they need to make you feel good.
Seriously… BLEAUGH!
So I start my usual editing thing, but to be honest…
It’s just not working today…
The problem is all the dang trees with no leaves in the background. Welcome to fluffy bunnies New fluffy bunnies England in fluffy bunnies Winter. You simply can’t “cut around them” and paste a different sky into the photo. There are simply hundreds of little tiny pieces of sky inbetween the tree branches. It’s mindlessly impossible to edit this way.
My usual edit technique is to color change the white sky to a blue, then apply a Graduated Blue filter to it all. But this eludes me today as the actual sky is a mix of white/gray clouds with hints of blue in spots. It shows up as obvious editing no matter how I try.
Time for a new tactic…
Just selected the entire sky trees and all. Then did a RGB tweak. RGB standing for Red/Green/Blue. It’s counter-intuitive what you do here – you don’t dial the blue UP, but you dial the red and green DOWN. Just a squeeze, littl’ dab will do ya. It’s like drinking. Two drinks and you’re having a good time, six drinks and you’re kneeling in the bathroom shouting for Ralph.
The net result is that the clouds become kinda less dense and oppressive. More blue, less white = more happy = better.
I brightened up the photo a lot and did the Skylight Filter as well.
Anyway the good news is that after messing about I got a half decent lead photo.
The bad news is that I’m serving up dog food as meatloaf… this is NOT Filet Mignon. The real solution is as I’ve said before…
McFail at Math?
February 26th, 2008 Deeper Thoughts, Humor No Comments »
Okay so I’m a big heap of lame.
Jen is working late tonight so I’m cooking… actually for goodness knows why I’m on a serious fish kick, and even though part of me wonders if a Filet of Fish from McDonalds actually contains any actual fish, I’m having an overwhelming compulsion to eat two Filet of Fish.
The hard part is convincing my two darling little freaking salad munchers that we should eat at McDonalds, without allowing them to talk me into driving for 20 minutes to the McDonalds with the really big play place off exit 25 on I-84. I’m not driving a long ass way for “fast food”.
Anyway… the joys of my life want Chicken McNuggets. One wants 10, the other 6, with Bar-Bee-Queue Sauce the little one explains firmly as if speaking to someone venturing into McDonalds for the very first time unsupervised.
Honey… trust me, I’ve been there. Heck… I’ve even worked there. Heck, I’ve even been fired from there. Though I maintain to this very day that wouldn’t have happened if they had bothered to train me where the pull switch was located for the over the grill fire extinguishers.
True story by the way. Shut down the whole store for a night.
Anyway…
I need 16 McNuggets.
I can get a 6 and a 10 pack, but that comes to fifteen cents more than the 20 pack which costs $8.09.
Hang on.
Dollar menu… 4 pack… $1
4 x 4 = 16 McNuggets = $4 = LMAO I WIN!!!
McDonalds you McFail at math.
Bad MLS Photo of the Day #325
February 26th, 2008 Bad MLS Photo of the Day No Comments »
Awwwwwwww.
From an anonymous donor.
Your bad photos are good here, please send me the horrible shots you find.
See more Bad MLS Photo of the Day, Rules of Good Photos. Problem photo? Try Pimp My Listing Photo or if in Connecticut you can even check on My Services.
Thanks for visiting.
Bad MLS Photo of the Day: Monday Edition
February 25th, 2008 Bad MLS Photo of the Day No Comments »
One of the less accepted theories of combating global warming and the resulting rise in sea levels, is to dump vast quantities of raspberry jello mix into the oceans. This has been described by critics as a pointless waste of resources bereft of intelligence, though Kraft Foods has been willing to bank roll further research to the tune of $5 million dollars. Former Vice-President Al Gore is on record as saying “it’s certainly a lot better than doing nothing”.
From Kirsten Boehmer who states that this was the only listing photo.
Roadrunner and Wiley E. Coyote just passed through…
From Kelley Koehler aka Housechick.
Another realtor sexy beast shot.
From Vicki Moore in San Mateo.
Just to be clear… I don’t hate the American Flag. But the flag and bedspread have way too many lines forcing the eye into the blown out window. My eyes hurt from looking at it too long.
From Eric Johnson.
Prison cell?
From Jamie Gross.
Talk about your realtor giving your house full exposure.
From Tony Gallegos aka The Mortgage Cicerone.
Ok… personal appliances left on the toilet cistern…. who wants to buy a house from Mr and Mrs Nasty-Ass?
From Pat Rosend.
Your bad photos are good here, please send me the horrible shots you find.
See more Bad MLS Photo of the Day, Rules of Good Photos. Problem photo? Try Pimp My Listing Photo or if in Connecticut you can even check on My Services.
Thanks for visiting.
