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 In today's sizzling real estate market, chances of scoring that big sale can nosedive when sellers use the unflattering property photos taken by photo-unsavvy real estate agents. Don't miss your shot at a great sale. If you don't like the agent's pictures, improve your chances of getting more interest and a higher selling price by taking your own amazing photographs.
What do you need to know to do this? To get the insider tips, we went to one of Manhattan's busiest architectural photographers, Björg Magnea (www.bjorgmagnea.com). “The secret,” she explains, “is to compose pictures that hide the flaws and showcase the attractions of your home. You want to make it appear as elegant and spacious as possible.”
“Start by looking at the house,” says Magnea, “and decide which elements to play up, and which to bury. Find broad, uncluttered interior and exterior views with character, charm, and space.”
She recommends compositions that offer unobstructed views, with leading lines drawing attention to attractive focal points such as stairways, doors, couches, or tables. Compose your shots so these visual anchors are whole and uncropped, and leave enough space (compositionally) around them to project an ample feeling for the room. If you're only an average decorator but have a friend who designs, or one who simply has a talent for making spaces look appealing, enlist his or her help. Also, ask the real estate agent's opinion about the property's most desirable selling points to help guide the photo session.
When you've decided what to photograph, draw up a timetable. Usually, different rooms or exterior facades look best in light at different times of day. Don't try to get all your shots in a single two-hour session.
“The hallmark of great real estate photography is the absence of optical distortion,” says Magnea. Poor architectural photography, on the other hand, is plagued by perspective distortion (a.k.a. keystoning) and by barrel distortion (where parallel lines bow outward, especially at the edges of the frame). Barrel distortion is a common flaw in photos made with inexpensive wide-angle lenses.
The good news? Both perspective and barrel distortion are easy to control.
To eliminate barrel distortion, use a pro-quality wide-angle lens, even if you must buy or rent one. Usually, the more expensive a wide-angle lens is, the better its distortion characteristics. (To learn which lenses are best, check our library of online lens tests at www.PopPhoto.com.) If you can't afford pro-quality glass, consider shooting multiple passes of a room with a normal lens, and stitching the (digital) images together in an image editor. If that's not an option, compose your shots so the outer edges, which usually have the worst distortion, can be cropped. Finally, Adobe's Photoshop CS2 has filters that can “repair” both barrel and pincushion distortion. If you frequently shoot architecture, this feature alone is probably worth the upgrade to CS2. (For tips on controlling perspective distortion, see the tilt/shift sidebar on the last page of this article.)
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