How to Photograph your house For Sale

“I’m sure most readers have seen poorly-lit crooked photos of house interiors that really don’t do justice to a room. But by taking a bit of care and not just snapping away, you can make a big difference to how you portray your most valuable possession: your house, she says. "Whilst some estate agents know how best to portray your house, not all do, and you may be able to do better than they can! Especially as you can wait for the right light for best results."

Here are some simple tips that everyone can follow; and then some tricks that anyone who’s used to playing with their digital photos can use for extra advantage. Let’s start with the basics:

Essential tips for better photos:

For the exterior, choose a bright day, and if possible, when the garden is looking good. Walk around your property looking for a nice angle that shows off its best side, and minimises any less than perfect features. Just standing in the center of the drive isn’t always the best idea. If the garden looks great, don’t forget to take one of two photos of that too.

For the interior rooms: I don’t need to tell you to clean, tidy away clutter and straighten up bedding and cushions first – do I? Choose a bright but overcast day: brilliant sun streaming in the windows looks nice to you, but will look terrible on your photos!

Dining rooms/areas: Set the table with your best china and glass, and add a vase of flowers. People will want to imagine how they can use your rooms, so help them along! Remember, you can always rent fabulous furnishings and finishing touches from Home Stagers Show Homes.

Bathrooms are particularly difficult to take well, as they tend to be smaller, so unless you live in a palace, you may have to give them a miss or concentrate on a pleasing detail.

Then:

• Put on all the lights, so you balance the light from outside.
• Look for a viewpoint to get the best features of the room in; corner to corner is often most effective. Walk around first before you start taking photos to get a feel for this.
  
• Try to avoid extreme zooming out – to avoid distortion of verticals in the room. Walking backwards to get more in (for example just through a doorway) is a better alternative.
• Sometimes, eye level isn’t the best vantage point to get in everything you want, so you may need to kneel down, or stand on a low chair for the best shot.
• If your subject is tall and thin, remember to turn the camera sideways.
• If your camera has an automatic flash, make sure you aren’t right in front of a mirror or other reflecting surface, or your ghost and the flash will upstage the rest of the room as shown right!
• Before you click the button, look around the viewfinder or screen and make sure you haven’t got any odd things in view, or features cut in half, or wonky angles.
• Then “click” – and if you have a digital camera, look at the photo to make sure you didn’t miss anything obvious. If you did, have another go.

 

Simple digital tricks to pep up your photos

Photos straight from a digital camera are generally a bit flat and lifeless. If you have a photo editing program on your computer that allows you to adjust your photos, try increasing the contrast a bit to get a bit more “zing”. Interiors can also look too dark (especially on a bright day), so you may need to increase the brightness too.

If you have things on a slant, rotate the photo to straighten the verticals. (Extreme perspective distortion is fixable only in more advanced programs – but if you avoid very wide-angle shots, you shouldn’t have a problem!)

For example, these before and after photos show what 10 seconds of fixing on the computer (straightening up and contrast/brightness) can do. What they can’t fix is that the person who took the photo cut off the chair legs: a case where a vertical photo would have been more effective to show how nicely the room had been staged.

Sometimes, the camera may not guess the colour balance very well, and everything may look too pink, yellow or blue. See if your program has a colour balance/colour correction option.

Lots of programs have an “auto correct” or “photo enhance” feature that will probably improve your results in one click if you aren’t happy with making manual corrections.

If you didn’t frame the photo very well, see if you can crop it: for example, in this exterior, next door’s fence, the photographer’s shadow and the ‘for sale’ sign really don’t add much and make the house look tiny by comparison. A crop along the red lines gives the house more emphasis.

 

Useful links:

IrfanView: a free editor with basic colour and contrast correction functions.