PHOTOGRAPHY VIDEO 1 WHAT EQUIPMENT WILL YOU NEED? Gear Budget High End Camera body Wide angle lens Tripod legs Any digital SLR will do eg. Canon Rebel T5 (1200D) Nikon D3200 Sigma 10-20mm Tokina 11-16mm Canon 10-22mm and any combination of zoom lenses to cover 24 to 300mm. Just about anything, just make sure it s strong and doesn t wobble. A DSLR with full frame sensor eg. Canon 6D Nikon D810 A high quality wide angle lens eg. Canon 16-35mm Nikon 14-24mm A tilt-shift lens. Manfrotto 057 Carbon Fiber Tripod The Really Right Stuff TVC-34L Tripod head Manfrotto 322RC2 Manfrotto 405 or 410 Junior head Arca Swiss Cube 1 P a g e
Gear Budget High End Lighting YongNuo 560 III or IV Multiple YongNuo 560 IIIs or IVs Flash triggers YongNuo TX wireless flash controller N-flash portable flash Profoto B1 battery-powered flash Pocket Wizard Plus IIIs Phottix Odin Wireless trigger Hahnel Combi TF remote control Batteries for lights Sanyo Eneloops Sanyo Eneloop XX or Pro PHOTOGRAPHY ESSENTIALS: There are a few different methods you can use to shoot real estate. But whichever method you choose you need to make sure of a few things: 1. Color accuracy. 2. Straight walls. 3. Show the best features of the property from the point of view of a buyer. 4. Light the whole scene. WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENT WAYS OF SHOOTING REAL ESTATE? 1. HDR or exposure fusion. 2. One shot flash method. 3. Multi shot flash blending method. 2 P a g e
PHOTOSHOP ACTIONS NEW SKY ACTION To make this easy for you I ve put together a Photoshop action that you can run when you want to add a new sky. I can t guarantee that this will work every time test it out and see how it works for you. This technique is ideal when you have a light sky behind clearly defined trees or buildings. Here are the steps to take: 1. Flatten the photo by going to Layer then Flatten Image or Merge Visible. 2. Place a suitable sky layer on top of your house photo, and position it in the area you want it. Watch to make sure that the horizon line in the sky photo approximately matches the horizon line in the house photo. Make sure your house photo is on the bottom and labelled Background and your sky layer is on top and labelled Layer 1. 3. Run the New Sky Real Estate Photography System by going to your Actions folder, find this action and then press Play Selection. I ve given it a shortcut of Shift and F3. If you press Shift and F3 together it will run the action, but of course you can change that shortcut or remove it if you like. 4. After running the action you should have your different layers, with the sky layer now called Sky. Click inside the layer mask for the layer called Paint over sky, select a white paintbrush and paint across your sky. You can even paint straight over the top of any trees or buildings, provided they are darker than the sky. If you accidentally paint over a light part of the house with your new sky, just select a black paint brush and paint over that area again to remove the new sky from that area. 5. If the sky on your house photo is fairly white then often that s all you need to do. 6. If you are painting over a patchy sky, click on the layer mask for the Fill in sky layer, select the Magic Wand Tool, and with tolerance set to about 50 click inside the sky area to select it, but not the trees or buildings or anything you don t want to cover with the new sky. 7. Now with a black paint brush selected paint inside those patchy sky areas, just painting over the areas where the sky from your house photo is showing through. 8. When you are finished deselect your Magic Wand selection (Ctrl D or Command D). 9. If you need to bring back some detail in the trees or a building, click on the layer mask for the top layer, which is called Darken trees & buildings. Now using a white paint brush paint over the trees where you want to retain some more detail. The opacity of this layer is set to 50%. If you need to increase the detail just increase the opacity on the layer until you reach an opacity level that you are happy with. 3 P a g e
That s it! Now all you need to do is flatten the image and you re all done. DOUBLE EXPOSURE ACTION This is a simple action that simply copies one image, pastes it on top of another image, and masks it out and sets you up with a white paintbrush so you can mask in whatever you want to see in the top image. Here are the steps to take: 1. Open your two images in Photoshop. 2. Select the top image, that is, the one that does not have so much in it that you ll use. So if you have a photo of a room (photo #1), and you just want to use the second photo to mask in a corner that you flashed to make it brighter (photo #2), select photo #2. 3. Run the action, or use the shortcut of Shift and F9. 4. Now that photo #2 is positioned on top of photo #1 and masked out, use that white paint brush to paint on the layer mask to reveal photo #2 in your image. REMOVE COLOR CASTS This is a simple method to remove color casts from an image or part of an image: 1. Make sure your image is flat, and then duplicate the Background layer by pressing Ctrl (Cmd) and J. 2. Select the top layer, and open up your Hue/Saturdation sliders by pressing Ctrl (Cmd) and U. 3. Click on the Master drop down, and scroll down until you select the color that you want to remove. So for example, if you have a yellow color cast, select Yellow in the drop down. 4. Click on the Saturation slider, and move the slider to the left until the selected color cast is removed from the area you want it removed from. Then click OK. 4 P a g e
5. Now add a Layer Mask to that top layer. You can do this by going to Layer and then holding your mouse over Layer Mask, select Hide All. This will add a black layer mask to your top layer. 6. Click inside the layer mask, select brush from the tools palette, and with white paint selected start to brush over the area where you want to remove the color cast. You can set your brush opacity 100% for this step. 7. If it looks like a little too much color has been removed, click on Opacity on the Layers palette, and lower the opacity of that top layer to decrease the affect of the color cast removal. 8. When you are done, flatten the layer. Go to Layer, then Flatten Image or Merge Visible, or just press Shift+Ctrl (or Cmd) +E, and you re done. HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO SHOOT A HOUSE? That s going to vary a lot, depending on the size of the property, how many photos you re taking, whether the real estate agent talks a lot or lets you get on with the job. It s fairly common to take somewhere between 30 minutes to 2 hours to shoot a medium sized home. Now this will vary depending on your market, and whether you re aiming for a high quality, high time product, or if you are aiming for a low quality, low time product. But then there s the editing time back in your office. When shooting you want to bear that in mind, because if you don t you could spend 3 or 4 times as long editing as you did doing the photography. I aim to spend no more time editing that I do shooting, so if I m onsite for 1 hour I expect to process for no more than 1 hour. 5 P a g e
WHAT ARE SOME COMPOSITION RULES? - Get your height right o Don t get too high above benches or beds that are close to camera - Wide angle is good for real estate, but it s not always good o There are times when you need to bring it in, either by zooming in or by physically moving your camera. A real estate shot isn t good just because you shoot wide. - Is the image visually pleasing? o You want to show the features of the room, but you want to do it in a way that gives it life and looks interesting, with pleasing lines, and no large blockages in the way (such as the back of a sofa) - If possible you want the shot to lead somewhere else, and not make the room look like a jail cell. TWILIGHT SHOOTS: HOW TO GET THEM RIGHT TIMING: Don t shoot the exterior too late, or around the house can be too dark, and the inside lights glow like the house is on fire. Once the sun goes down (you should note ahead of time the exact sunset time), start shooting the outside. Depending on the light available to you, somewhere between when the sun goes down and 20 minutes after sunset you should have a period of time where the light is even inside and out. That s when you want to get your hero shots. EXTRA LIGHTING: Sometimes you can get a great shot using available light, but sometimes you need to add your own lighting into the mix to add some punch. For more on doing a twilight shoot, have a look at the videos on my Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/realestatephotographysystem 6 P a g e
DAYTIME EXTERIORS: SHOOT AT THE RIGHT TIME OF DAY It s not always possible, but I try as much as I can to shoot the exterior of a property at the best time of day, even if it s inconvenient for me. So an east facing home (for the front of house, assuming that s the hero shot) will be photographed in the morning. A west facing home will be photographed in the afternoon. Homes facing north or south can be photographed just about any time. So how do you find out what direction a property faces? You can try asking the client when they are making their booking, but they often won t know. In that case, ask for the address and look it up on Google Maps. Sometimes you can tell from that, but other times you may need to refer to Google Street View to take a look at the property. Alternatively you could use http://photoephemeris.com/ to calculate where the sun will be. This is a pretty cool tool, as you punch in the address and it shows you graphically where the sun will be at different times of the day. 7 P a g e