Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Tilt-a-Whirl




Another tilty photo. I guess when the kitchen looks that bad, taking a minute to straighten the photo isn't really a priority.

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Monday, September 28, 2009

Don't wanna give too much away



Another example of a corner shot that provides a small glimpse of part of the room, leaving the viewer with no clue what the room looks like.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Tilt!



The home is listed for $1.5 million, but they hired a photographer that took tilty photos. Or maybe they decided to skip the expense and take the photos themselves.

Same home below. A huge chunk of the home's value is attributable to its million-dollar view, but the photographer fails to capture the view. Instead, it looks like there's a nuclear blast outside.



Saturday, September 26, 2009

HDR: Horrible Dynamic Range


No wonder HDR gets such a bad rap.

Friday, September 25, 2009

Tilty and Pointless


This one's a twofer: Tilty shot that is at the same time, completely pointless. This view will not sell the home.

Flasher



Nuff said.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Friday, September 18, 2009

Trash Cans



It takes 2 minutes to move the trash cans out of the frame for your primary photo -- the "money shot" -- is that too much to ask?

Bad Angles

Today I ran across a listing whose major transgression was a series a ill-conceived shots that had no focal point and did little to market the house.


This is probably part of a family room, and it looks like maybe it abuts the kitchen. This is the first of two fireplace fragment photos in this listing.



Since the fireplace is the focal point of most rooms, you expect it to be the focal point of most real estate listing photos. Not in this blurry photo. You have absolutely no sense of what the room is like, and the photo has no focal point.



I assume from the height of the chandelier, that this is a dining room. But where's the room?


Tilty photo of the day:


And bad hallway shot of the day:

This is not a particularly horrible photograph, but unless a hallway is particularly grand, a photo of it will do nothing to sell the house.

Listing photos are not appraisal photos. You're not taking listing photos to document the house, you're taking them to market the house.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Hope You Like Paneling!







This one falls in the EWWW! category:



$5 Mil House with Dime-a-Dozen Photos



If I were an agent marketing a property listed at just under 5 million, I'd spend a few hundred dollars on a professional photographer. Instead, the agent shot the photos herself, and they look like snapshots. The seller deserves better.

The fireplace should have been shot head on, without the personal crap peering in from the right. I'd also have removed everything from the mantle, replacing with something simple... the religious imagery could rub some potential buyers the wrong way, even subliminally.




This shot does not do the house justice, and shooting in the harsh midday sun exposes high contrast shadows that detract. And you really can't see much of the house at all.

Crammed-In Furniture, Personal Crap, and Tired Drapes.



Monday, September 14, 2009

PINK!

Let's see: 
  1. Open door obscures view of kitchen; 
  2. Angle obscures most of the kitchen; 
  3. PINK.
OK, nothin' you can do about the pink, but did it make the photog so nauseous that he couldn't even reach over to close the doors before he released the shutter?

This next one is what I call a furniture shot. The furnishings command all the attention in the photo, providing little information about the layout or size of the room. And the kids' toys should've been stashed away. And it's a crappy photo.

The Dr Seuss Tree



So this Dr Seuss tree occupies half the photo and some wrought-iron thing in the foreground provides additional distraction.