I am curious as to if anyone on here shoots real estate photos as part of their business? I have shot five or six houses for a friend who is in the house flipping business, and he has offered to introduce me to some of his friends who also buy and sell houses. I have a few questions before I commit to this type of project for someone other than a personal friend though. Here are the more pressing ones on my mind:
- What sort of package do you do?
- Are there any "standard" shots that I need to be looking for?
- Do you have the customer (realtor, broker, etc) sign a release for the pictures or just a contract for the services and product that you will provide?
- What sort of rates do you get for this?
- Do you charge by the half hour, hour, finished pictures, per house, etc?
- Have you found this to even be profitable?
Let it be known that I am not interested in doing HDR real estate photos
To keep it simple (the realtors love it), I just charge 10% of the interior sq. ft. with a $250 minimum.
i.e. a 3800 sq. ft. home is $380 plus tax and includes the disc. I can shoot a house this big (interior and exterior) in about 45 minutes. another 45 minutes or so to edit.
no release signed
just keep it simple. use a powerful on camera flash with a good diffuser (I use the GF lightsphere) and a 580EX on full power.
Unless you are shooting a HUGE room, no other lighting should be necessary
shadow recovery is your friend. get good at perspective correction (skew and warp). use a 17 TSE if at all possible, or at least a 17mm on a FF sensor.
All I know is that when Tyler Hicks started freelancing for the NY TImes he was shooting hotel reviews. Which is neat considering he's the best living photographer in the world, conflict or otherwise.
I've shot interiors for restaurant reviews. But nothing worthy of Home & Garden.
I have done a few for local magazines but only 2 for realtors. I want to go after this market and planned on doing a price based on square feet as ghelled described. For the magazines I charged around $500.00 which was about the same as the SQ foot formula. Forget use rights in my area as they could get 3 other photographers to do it for free just to get a name mentioned.At least this year this trend seems to be changing back to paying for quality! Now to find out if the realtors in my area will pay more than $50.00 for photos. Seem to be a cheap bunch but I guess you have to weed through the cheap ones to find the quality minded.
The pacakge I have done is simple. All the main rooms, bath rooms, back yard or pool area and front of house. I would be carefull about the yard as that can be a lot so you might want to add extra for additional shots. Some have a Gazebo, pool, hot tub patio which is like adding 3-4 more rooms if inside the home which don't get built into the square foot price. Trying to see how many time this would come up and if I need to specify the shots in more detail.
Yes I can see making a good profit off this area of photography. The first question the home owners asked before I left was if I do business or family photos so it could turn into more business.
You will have to be able to produce really good work to charge a Realtor more than $100 per home, I am sure there are several national virtual tour companies in Seattle who charge less than that per shoot and provide panoramas as well as stills(up to 25) and put it on a virtual tour slideshow platform.
You will have to separate yourself from those photographers who work for those companies because they do provide okay looking photos and the agents usually love them because they are wide angle and colorful.
look at this Highly regarded Seattle real estate photographers web site http://www.danachatz.com/ study his or or other high end pro's photos carefully for understanding what kind of composition has impact.
Lighting will be tricky for interiors, invest some more speed lights rather that a TS lens you can correct most distortion in post but having multiple lights(and using them properly) will make a dramatic difference. HDR is popular to but only when done properly.
I use to shoot radio triggered strobes on light stands and shoot through umbrella that took time to set up... now I shoot HDR and love it because the post shoot processing is so short for me (sounds strange but it is). I hated on HDR for so long but just gave in.
My price is $150 for 15-25 photos full release for web-res images. If staging is required it is on the realtor to stage or hire such service/cleaning company. There is no contract, to keep things simple. If a twilight shot is requested I negotiate the price. If more time than 1 hour is required on shoot and more than 25 images I negotiate.
Right now I am having a blowout sale at $95 and am getting more clients... price does matter... realtors are broke.
A living at just real estate photography? ...only if I lived in a larger not so spread out town.
As I understand it, Seattle is a good market for real estate photography. What I mean by that is there are plenty of very good photographers (such as Achatz referenced above) who set the bar for both quality and price pretty high. I tried to give this a go here in Denver, but the bar is set so low that no one is willing to pay more than ~$100. I still have some contacts with a few realtors and get some interest every now and then but nothing significant.
Regarding equipment and technique, I agree that typical HDR does not look good. But it can be done well (usually with something more like Enfuse than Photomatix). Thomas Grubba used to be all strobe, now he blends strobe with multi-exposure. Looks really good. I've done the multi-flash technique and it can look really good as well. Scott Hargis is the guru for that (I have taken his class). It kind of depends on whether you want to spend the time on-site or in post. If you are good, you can shoot a 2k-3k sq ft house with multiple flashes in 1-1.5 hrs. Not too much longer than HDR. But the post will be much less than HDR. Single on-camera flash is another option, but IMO that won't separate you from the $79 specials out there. It can look good when used with exposure blending.
The main thing is to know the market. If you try to compete solely based on price, you will have to be very fast and have a lot of work to be successful. If you want to compete based on quality you will have to be very good, and single on-camera flash probably won't cut it.
If it were me I would invest in lighting, tripod, and software before a TS lens.
ScooberJake, I have been trying out some lighing options in a friends vacant house, still working on lighting the rooms effectively.
Kurtis, I appreciate you mentioning your price/photo packages.
Brian, thank you for that link! I've never seen his work before.
Jefferies, I hadn't thought about other structures on the property before (gazebos, pools, storage buildings, etc), that's a very good point.
I'm still messing around with this, hopefully I can put something together in the next few months. As of right now, I'm still trying to figure out what wide angle to go with
The most important thing (as in any aspect of photography) is to find the right clients. In my experience the high end guys and Country Club sales offices are more likely to spend for good photography. They also tend to have their pet photographers.
In my town most of the realtors can't even pay attention much less spend for photos. They are not photography clients in the same way I am not a BMW client. We both want it but we both lack the budget. No hate, just fact.
You can build a business even in a tough market. Depending on your skills you will be starting at different points. If you can turn out work like the above cited Dan Achatz you just need to figure some pricing at the high end and start knocking on doors....for about three years. This will rarely generate revenue for this month's rent. However assiduous knocking, networking, calling etc. WILL get you business over time.
If you are less accomplished than Dan, you will need to offer your services cheap to free to develop skills. The three year curve applies here too.
You have a great advantage with your friend referring you to others. As far as pricing goes I charge by half day or full day. I have seen some very small places go for over a million and I will not let them pay me $250 to help them get a $60K commission. The MLS (here at least) allows for 25 images. Most agents want 25 or more even if it makes no sense.
No, I don't get every job. So what? I like the jobs I do get and the referrals that come form them. I am also making good money from that. I am a full time pro so I need to make real money not just "fun money".
i just found out today that I shoot more houses for the top producing Realtor than any other Realtor in my town... she was awarded this title today. She called me to tell me this while I am out there meeting with brokers pulling teeth to get them to use me! DUH!!! The BMW analogy makes sense... I think I need to create a tiered process or something that will let them grow into hiring me for all of their shoots.
Kurtis, The obvious line to your potential clients is that your images help create the success for successful professionals. They bite or not.
I get successful people because I am already making images for successful people.
markd61 wrote:
Kurtis, The obvious line to your potential clients is that your images help create the success for successful professionals. They bite or not.
I get successful people because I am already making images for successful people.
I agree... I am working on a marketing piece that points to this. I have 2 brokers that have 30ish sales people below them that I have been trying to talk to... they just act too busy to listen to me (while it is the slow season right now). I need to hit them between the eyes with the fact that photos do matter... and being a part of the marketing strategy for the "Top Producing Realtor" in our town, it should raise some eyebrows.
Hi All, I've been shooting interiors for a looooong time. I work with what most brokers and editors call a "unique" approach. First, I shoot everything at f32 with a 17mm lens and a FF DSLR. I shoot a test frame to get the windows to feel about a stop overexposed. Usually this is about 6-10 seconds in the average (mid floor) NYC apartment. Higher-up units are brighter, street level can run to 15 seconds. I have an 800WS Dynalite pack on a radio trigger, and standing behind the camera I paint the room with the strobe (mainly bouncing off walls & the ceiling) during the long shutter lag. Usually I'll put 4-5 pops on an average sized living room or large bedroom. The result is sharp images that are well filled without any feeling of the room having been lit.
For my high-end work I use a 4x5 camera, a 47 or 65mm lens, and a medium-format digital back on a MultiStitch. With this setup I can correct for perspective in camera. The files from the MultiStitch work-flow are awesome.MultiStitch adapter plate
It's an old-school technique known as "the big shot" and "painting with light". My setup for the interiors (DSLR) goes into a 25 pound backpack.
