Tips 1 and 2 For Creating Better Real Estate Videos

Have you ever browsed a website and seen images that appear stretched out or compressed like a fun house mirror?  How about viewing videos or slide shows with these types of images in them?   That’s caused by images being uploaded without them being resized for the website in which they are viewed.    Many of you may be familiar with this concept on your home TV.  You may have a widescreen TV, which has an aspect ratio of 16:9, but are viewing a TV show shot in traditional, old-school 4:3 ratio.   What does that mean?  To fit your widescreen TV, the show is stretched wide to fill the screen, and throws off the appearance of the show.

Tip 1.  Preserve Aspect Ratios

Well, in online marketing, preserving the aspect ratio is key to avoiding the distortion that can occur.   According to the real estate photography pros at the RE Snapshot blog, preserving aspect ratios in PhotoShop is rather straight forward.   Click the “constrain proportions” in the Image Size tab (under ‘Image’ in the top navigation).

Tip 2 - Resize Photos

Another important step is to resize the image to the dimensions for where its going to be used.   This too prevents the web browser from resizing the image to fit its location.   Resizing photos can be done with PhotoShop and other photo editing tools.   For your PropertyPreviews videos, for example, the minimum size of photos we accept is 640 x 480 pixels, but 1024 x 768 pixels is preferred.

See For Yourself

Try taking two sets of images, one set in their original format and another in a resized format to compare the difference in quality.   Taking the time to do these steps will improve the quality of your marketing materials, and increase the perceived value of your listing.   That may be just enough to get a prospect to act and contact you for more info.

PropertyPreviews.com Voted a Top Free Site for Real Estate Agents

Tina Merritt of Wolkia.com listed PropertyPreviews.com as a top free site for real estate agents.   Thanks for the shout out, Tina! Here’s the whole presentation:

Tips For Shooting Better Real Estate Photography

Here are three tips to make a big room look smaller, courtesy of the RE Snapshot Blog.

1. Use the 3-Wall Rule. Try to capture three walls in your scene to show more dimension.
2. Try Shooting at a Slight Angle. When shooting at a slight angle to a room, the lines of the room help create visual depth to the room. This helps make the room look longer by adding perspective.
3. Use a Wide Angle Lens. To achieve some of these tips, a wide angle lens makes the job much easier.

There are some compelling examples of agent-shot photography and the same room reshot by professionals.  Here’s a sample before and after shot:

The top photo is a very nice kitchen, but due to limitations of the camera, the lighting is uneven (note the bright light coming into the window).  Also the focal length of the lens does not allow the entire kitchen to be displayed.   So, using the rules above, there are not three walls, and a wide angle lens was not used.  It does seem that an angle was used when shooting.

The second photo is the same scene as above, but you can clearly see the use of  the Three Wall rule and a wide angle lens.  This is a much more dramatic and complete representation of the kitchen, and visually much more appealing to a prospective buyer.

Sow whether you use professional photography or do it yourself, by employing these techniques you can present your listing in the best light and hopefully engage more prospective buyers to contact you for more information.

What do you think?  Let us know in the comments.

The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly, Week 9

Happy Thanksgiving to all.  Be thankful your listings aren’t featured in this week’s The Good, The Bad & The Ugly - Bad MLS photos.

Let’s start off with this South Beach stunner.

Oh, wait. It’s not in South Beach. But what about that pink sky? I’d say it’s possible to have such a sky in California, where this $409,000 listing is from, but I’ve never seen sky partially color a white garage door like this.  This agent needs some Photoshop skills, stat!

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Let’s see some lakefront property in the Land of 1,000 Lakes:

Note how you can see both inside and outside details clearly?  That is the mark of great professional photography and some great editing skills.

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As always, vote for your (least) favorite entries from this week in the comments section!

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly - Bedroom Edition

This week from VHT: the GBU focuses on bedrooms.   While a picture is worth 1000 words, in these cases they would all be bad words, so I apologize in advance.

Note the cropped bed at least shows the Garfield comforter, which fortunately matches the carpet.  I don’t even know what those green glowing dots are on the floor. And I don’t want to.

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Now for a bedroom we’d all like to retire to, a room with a view!

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Let us know what you think in the comments!

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Bad MLS photos are getting more notice

Bad MLS photos are gaining in popularity - at least in terms of being called out as bad. Mary Umberger recently wrote an Inman News column about an agent/collector of bad MLS photos on their Active Rain blog (Mary’s article is for Inman subscribers only, but here’s the Active Rain blog Mary discusses).

Our readers know we’ve been touting bad MLS photography over the last few months, along with some very high quality photography, to help educate agents on the difference between “reference” photos (taken just to recall some details) versus “marketing” photos, those which are intended to engage, move, and motivate prospective buyers to take further action. Those actions can be clicking through to your property details page, calling you, or emailing you. Hopefully it stops them from dismissing your listing and stating, “Next”!  Many times “reference” photos get uploaded to satisfy the MLS requirements but are then included when this listing is shotgun-syndicated across the web and become “marketing” photos.

As we’ve said before, you only get one chance to make a good first impression, and in this market, that lasts a fraction of a second for buyers who are trying to filter out homes they DON’T want to investigate further when viewing search results screens on major real estate sites.

Don’t know what we mean? Take a look at this Wall of Shame entry - remember these photos are to help sell homes. What does this photo say about the property?

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I bet you could use a palate cleanser right about now, so here’s a Wall of Fame entry from this week:

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Let us know in the comments if you have more candidates for the Walls of Fame/Shame.  We’d love to feature them here!