Taking HDR Real Estate Photos

Having purchased a couple of homes for myself at this point in my life, I know how important the listing photos can be to a potential buyer. Being a photographer that normally photographs people, I decided to put myself up to a new challenge and try shooting bracketed HDR photos of a property being prepared for sale.

Lucky for me, the house was already clean, which allowed me to focus all of my attention on the photography. The most important thing I learned in my research for this project was that the rooms need to be spotless prior to capturing images - nobody wants to buy a house with photos of dirty rooms!  

Here's the things I knew were important to this project:

1. Only photograph clean rooms. 
   1. I wouldn't show up with a mop and bucket, but if there are random things laying about, I knew to take it upon myself to move them temporarily.
   2. In one case, I had to hold aside some hanging light fixtures to get a cleaner shot of the kitchen. 
      
      
2. Use a wide angle lens.
   1. In the case of one of the rooms, my new wide angle lens (Tamron 24-70 F/2.8) wasn't wide, so I had to merge 2 photos into one.
   2. That was fun and turned out great! ​​
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3. Use a tripod to take bracketed photos. ​
   1. A good tripod is worth the investment.
   2. I also used my shutter timer feature to make sure there was no camera shake as I hit the shutter release button. As I took each set of 3 photos, it was important that the camera stay in the exact same place, so they would layer perfectly on top of each other when blending them together. 
      
      
4. Bring lighting.
   1. External flash was enough for this job, but since I had not seen the home prior to arriving, I also brought extra tripods and lighting in case I needed to fill the rooms with more substantial light. 
   2. A little trick that I've come up with is to bring a white umbrella and bounce my flash off of it in certain situations that need a bit more diffusion. If it's a more modern home with lots of metal and glass fixtures, that can be a time saver! 
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5. Quick turnaround
   1. Editing and gallery delivery within 48 hours was necessary for this project, because they wanted to get it on the market asap.
   2. It's just something that's par for the course with real estate photography.
      Once it's clean, it's ready to be sold and these photos are the last task on the sellers checklist!  

Can you tell I spliced together 2 photos above? Hopefully not!  


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Here's the kitchen with the pendent lights in view. The lines are distracting and because they are so close to the camera, the proportions are wrong - they look too big. 


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​And here's the cleaner shot without the lights disorienting the view, thus allowing the viewer to focus on the features of the kitchen. 


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Here's some more photos from this project!

My biggest critique on my work is that I had trouble with the angles. I have invested in a new tripod that I think will help me control things a bit better. It's one with a swivel ball head which will allow for a greater range of positions. 

As I learn more, I'll share more!