7 tips for property photography

Monday 14 June 2021, 20:40 by Elja Trum | 10,351 views | 10 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

When you are selling your home as a photographer or hobby photographer, you may feel like taking the photos yourself. You do not need a property photographer for this. In this article, 7 tips for property photography.

In a few months, we will be moving to our new home and our current house is currently for sale. The market is favourable for sellers, so a selling agent did not seem necessary to me. Houses are selling like hot cakes.

Besides, I consider my photography and writing skills good enough to surpass those of the average estate agent. These days, you also have online estate agents (useful PDF from the Consumentenbond), which allow you to sell your house yourself.

1. Tidy up

The first step is actually rather obvious. Tidy up your house. We have now lived in our current home for 17 years, and over those years we have collected far too many things. By now, I have already taken more than 100 boxes to storage.

That creates quite a lot of space, but even so, before I could take the photos I still had to move many of the things we use every day out of sight. You would rather not have the residents' chewed toothbrushes in a photo.

When tidying up, also think about your personal photos on the walls. I replaced photos of the children with landscapes and flowers. This makes it easier for a future resident to imagine themselves living in the house.

In some cases, I simply removed the photo from the wall altogether and photographed just a white wall. That naturally looks nice and spacious too.

2. Use HDR

I usually photograph portraits. High Dynamic Range is therefore not something I use regularly. However, I have used it a lot over the past few weeks.

HDR is ideal for property photography because it allows you to expose the interior well while still being able to see outside in the photo.

Bedroom with sunlight coming in, possible with HDR
For my HDR photos, I put my camera on a tripod. This allows you to take several photos one after another from exactly the same position.

I then take three photos from each position. One correctly exposed, one 2 to 3 stops overexposed and one 2 to 3 stops underexposed. In Lightroom, you can easily combine these into one HDR photo.

You can then edit this HDR with plenty of latitude. Make bright areas darker and dark areas lighter. While you may normally like some contrast in your photography, it is better not to have too much contrast in property photos.

3. Work from a low viewpoint

A good starting point for the height from which you take your photos is the height of the door handle. This works particularly well in bedrooms.

For each room, you can then decide whether you need to go a little higher, but the door handle is a perfect starting point, and lower than you might expect. So do not take your photos from eye level, as that is too high.

If tables or a kitchen worktop are visible in the photo, you want the camera to be just high enough to see over the worktop.

4. Wait for the right moment

If you start in good time, you can wait for the right moment. I calmly waited a few days for good weather before taking my photos. A beautiful blue sky with the occasional cloud naturally looks much better than a grey day.

I also deliberately took the photo above in the morning, for example, because the sun is on the front of our house then. In the afternoon, the whole front of the house would be in shadow.

If a photographer comes by, you have to make do with the weather you get. If you take the photos yourself, you can plan a little better. Good light makes a big difference in a photo.

5. Take evening photos too

Everything often looks beautiful in the evening too. Do not wait until it is completely dark, but take the photos during twilight. Of course, turn the lights on as well, so that your garden, for example, has a cosy atmosphere in the photo.

Viewings are usually during the day, so potential buyers do not see what it looks like in the evening. Your evening photos are therefore a nice addition for a more complete picture.

6. Make your photos lighter

Dark corners do not look particularly attractive. In a photo, shadows can quickly become very dark. That is why I deliberately lifted everything in most of the photos. This allows the viewer to see everything better and makes everything look light and fresh.

Another very useful trick, especially for white areas, is to reduce the saturation locally. You can do this with an adjustment brush in Lightroom, for example. This allows you to remove colour casts from a wall, for example, so that the wall looks truly white again.

It may not be desirable in property photography, but here and there I also removed a few small nails or marks from the photo. You often see details in photos that you would not notice at all in real life.

7. Photograph from the corners

It is very difficult to see depth in a photo where everything has been photographed straight on. This works much better in a photo taken from the corner of a room. This creates more depth in the image.

Try to include three walls in the photo. This gives the viewer a good idea of the size of the room.

View all the photos

Curious to see all the photos? Visit the special website I made for the sale.

The property has been listed on Funda since last Friday, by the way, and we have already scheduled more than 30 viewings.

It would probably have been the same in the current housing market if I had put messy smartphone photos online, but of course I tell myself that the interest is because of my photography.

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About the author

Elja Trum is the founder of Photofacts and online photography course website Photofacts Academy. He has been writing about photography since 2006. Elja is also the author of (Dutch) books on composition, black-and-white photography, flash photography and portrait photography.

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10 comments

Frans wrote on Tuesday 15 June 2021 at 11:20 | reply
An interesting article. What strikes me most when reading this article: If a real estate agent dealt with the truth about the house for sale in the same way as the photographer, he would legally be punishable. Would a bona fide real estate agent who knows the house accept these photos in an advertisement under his name and responsibility? Furthermore, but that is my personal opinion, such a tidy and empty house is a sign to me that the owner wants to get rid of the house quickly. Has someone died, gotten divorced, or fallen ill?, I cannot help wondering when seeing these photos, which in my opinion do have aesthetic value but contain little truth. My offer would be lower because of it.
Translated from Dutch.

Henk wrote on Tuesday 15 June 2021 at 11:30 | reply
One extra tip : moderate your use of an ultra-wide-angle lens. You do get a nice spacious image with it, but reality is different. In the current overheated market, potential buyers may not drop out quickly, but when they come to view the property, the amount of space may still be somewhat disappointing.
Translated from Dutch.

Martin wrote on Tuesday 15 June 2021 at 12:39 | reply
Very interesting. I think a shift/tilt lens is ideal for this branch of photography, so that all the vertical lines are straight. That looks nice and clean. So I don't share Frans's views. In fact: I suspect that many real estate agents manipulate more...
Translated from Dutch.

Gerrit Devinck wrote on Tuesday 15 June 2021 at 13:11 | reply
What especially stands out to me is that the vertical lines in the house are not straight. Surely this can easily be done with a tripod or afterwards in Lightroom.
Translated from Dutch.

Paul wrote on Tuesday 15 June 2021 at 13:28 | reply
Good article.
I have to agree with Martin about the manipulation, although I have also come across a real estate agent who took the photos with his phone, shooting from the hip.
And I also have to agree with Henk's remark about the ultra-wide lens, it quickly goes over the top.
I myself have often taken this kind of photo for a friend who rents out rooms, the 16 on my DX, so 24 on full frame is sufficient, you can fit enough in without too much exaggeration and distortion.
Translated from Dutch.

Elja Trum wrote on Tuesday 15 June 2021 at 22:17 | reply
Frans; because I did some work on the exposure, saturation and removed some spots? I think you're exaggerating. Nobody will walk through our house and feel that it doesn't match the photos.

Henk; I photographed everything from 17mm and up. This is, as I understood it, not unusual in real estate photography-land.

@Martin; Yes, a tilt-shift could definitely work here. I did correct some of the photos afterwards, but sometimes you also lose the edges of the photo because of that, which can be a shame too.
Translated from Dutch.

Frans wrote on Wednesday 16 June 2021 at 09:44 | reply
Dear Elja Trum, we disagree about that; if I want to see photos of a house that is for sale, I want to see it as it is. So not made prettier, extra tidied up or with furniture or photos and other things removed. Just like with anything else I want to buy, I want to be able to see it - also on the internet - 'as is' and not 'dressed up'. We do not agree on that. We do agree on the fact that the photos in your article are beautiful photos in themselves.
Translated from Dutch.

Ad wrote on Wednesday 16 June 2021 at 10:13 | reply
The earlier reactions do make it clear that taking photos and selling a house are two very different things. Nice photos, but do technically good photos also show the aspects on which a buyer makes their selection. The question at the moment is of course whether photos and whether the quality of photos matter. In this overheated housing market, photos are not even necessary.
Translated from Dutch.

Elja Trum wrote on Wednesday 16 June 2021 at 10:17 | reply
@Frans; our stuff won't be left behind upon handover anyway. So if I remove things, because I myself have collected too much junk over the past few years, then it's easier for you to imagine how your own stuff could be there.

Your eyes can bridge larger differences in contrast than my camera can. So if I bring up the shadows and use HDR to keep both the inside and outside visible, I'm not really sprucing anything up, but making the earlier one more realistic.

I understand that removing a spot on the wall or a nail in the wall is borderline. It's just that such things draw much more attention in a photo than in real life. I really didn't do this with every photo either.

On my site about the house there is also a video in which I walk through the entire house. Nothing has been altered in it. I don't believe you can discover anything in it that has been 'airbrushed away' in the photos.
Translated from Dutch.

Nando wrote on Wednesday 16 June 2021 at 16:56 | reply
@Frans.. and everyone who finds it interesting.
I do real estate photography. In that context, it is very clearly stated that a good property photo should be a sales image. The photo must be an attractive photo that makes the buyer want to sit down on a sofa and enjoy themselves, or imagine how they can welcome the night in the bedroom.
It must show the space in the best possible way. Personal things must be put away, so that the buyer can imagine that they live there, and not someone else.

Real estate photos are a sales image. Tidy, neat and attractive sells better than dirty and cluttered, after all.

These photos are simply very attractive and show the house at its best. That draws the buyer in, they would like to go and have a look there. And that is what it is all about in this branch of photography.
Translated from Dutch.

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