Are you selling your house? Great photos on your listing are essential! Take your own photos with these 7 tips for exterior real estate photography.
Taking pictures of your home yourself is one way to save money in the home-selling process. But those pictures have to be top-notch since they're the first things prospective buyers see, and you need to make a great first impression!
If you have an expensive home, your real estate agent usually hires this out. But if you're on a budget or handling your own listing, then you can use these tips to take beautiful pictures of your home.
This post is part of a mini-series about photographing your home. Check out the other posts here:
How to Stage Your Home for Real Estate Photography
How to Photograph the Interior of Your Home for Real Estate Photography
TAKING PHOTOS OF A HOUSE EXTERIOR FOR REAL ESTATE LISTINGS
1. Make sure the exterior of your home is ready.
Staging your home is just code for "getting it ready to photograph." There's lots of information on this post for how to get it ready.
In short, you need to make sure it has curb appeal. Clean up, get the cars and trash cans out of the shot, and give your home an extra boost with flowers or a wreath.
2. Choose the right time of day to take pictures.
This is one tip you can't afford to ignore for exterior real estate photos: pick the right time of day to shoot!
You want a picture that shows off your house, which means you need to shoot when the light outside is flattering instead of distracting.
All the windows and overhangs of your roof can really get distracting if the sun is coming from an odd angle! You don't want a picture that has both shadows and direct sunlight on the face of the house because it makes it hard to see it clearly.
It's tricky because there's no perfect time to shoot every home: they are all different and face different directions! Since every house has a different orientation, you're going to have to do some field research about what time of day your house looks best.
I suggest going outside your home every two hours or so and checking what your house looks like and where the light is falling. Take a test picture on your phone each time you check to help you compare things later.
Look for what time of day has even lighting across the whole front of your home. You don't want shadows from the garage falling on an otherwise bright home. And you don't want shadows from surrounding trees or power lines showing up on the house either.
You probably want the front of the house to be in full sun (the sun at the photographer's back) or full shade (the sun completely hidden behind the house).
Depending on your house's orientation, this could be in the early to late morning or late afternoon into sunset. Whatever you do, you don't want to be shooting directly into the light since then you'll get a flare. You'll also want to compensate the exposure for a house that's very bright or fully in the shadows.
High noon is likely the worst time to shoot pictures of your home because the sun will be directly overhead. So part of your house will be in shadow, but the rest of it will be too bright and contrasty, which won't look good in photos.
3. Shoot horizontally on a wide-angle lens and a little higher than usual.
A wide-angle lens is usually the only way to get the whole house in the shot. Otherwise, you simply won't be able to fit the entire house and a bit of the yard in the photo.
Cash for Houses Baltimore says
Great tips to capture home listing photos. Listing photos play a vital role to attract potential buyers.
Thanks for sharing the tips.
Zoe Campos says
I never took into account that even the "perfect" time of the day should be considered when taking photos of the property. We're thinking of posting our house online to reach a wider audience, but I'm not sure if my husband and I can take good photos. Maybe it would be better to hire a real estate photographer who can help us make the house more appealing to viewers.