BLOG: StoneHome Photo+Video

Some of my clients are confused when I offer them “virtual staging” services. The staging part they understand–many of which have physically furnished interiors of their listings with real furniture and props to create natural, inviting feel that lacks in empty properties. However, the “virtual” part of the staging equation is where the confusion and questions arise.

To clarify, virtual staging is quite simply adding “virtual” (aka, computer generated) furnishings to photos of a empty rooms via a computer and graphic editing software. It’s a solution for real estate agents and builders who either can’t or don’t want to physically furnish their listings, but would like to have marketing photos that are furnished.

While the concept of adding 3D furniture to photos seems easy theoretically, in practice it’s takes a trained architectural modeller. The modeller not only has to adjust the proportions of the furniture to match the dimensions of the room, but he also spends copious hours adding realistic lighting and shadows to the room and furniture, incorporating textures, adding patterns, and more. To give you an idea, a well executed virtual staged photo takes between 3-6 hours per photo.

The photo below is one I had done for a client a couple weeks ago. The top photo is what she gave me, and the bottom “after” photo is the virtually staged version I returned.

The free market tendends to either refine a product/service via competition, thus improving it, or undermine it, thus subverting it.

The difference between these two usually comes down to price.

When businesses compete to improve a product orservice, their prices may rise along with the value of their offering. We can all agree that this is a fair and natural consequence for the benefits of improved quality. But when businesses compete by undercutting each others prices, the value of their offering–their product or service–will inevitably fall too. Very few offer true, honest quality at bottom-feeder prices.

Still, there are surprisingly many people who delude themselves by thinking that this contradition of value-to-price is not real and that one can get both quality and low price if one searches or begs with enough passion.

As a real estate marketing specialist in Toronto, I get the occassional call from a new client insisting that I price-match my real estate photography or virtual tours services to that of some kid advertising  on craigslist who is willing to do the same for 1/3 the cost. In this case, rather than lecturing on the inverse relationship between price and quality, I kindly ask them if they’d be willing to sell my property for 1/3 their usual rates. After a short nervous/guilty laugh, the response is generally no. Those with some sense of decency will respect the comparison I offered and ask me to elaborate on why my services are in fact better; those without will say that it’s not a fair comparison and that all I’m really only offering is a better camera than they have.

To some I suggest they don’t bother hiring a professional and instead rent a “better camera” from Vistek so they can do the shoot themselves. It’s just the camera after all, right?

To others I reiterate the proverb that sums up the contradition nicely: Buy cheap, But twice.

I came across a real estate staging video on realtor.org that I thought would be of interest to real estate professionals, especially those who insist on leaving it up to the home-owner to prepare the property for viewing and/or shooting. Word of advice: don’t do it. Don’t assume that your client will know how to prepare a real estate listing to sell.

Before photographing any real estate virtual tour, photos, or videos, you should seriously consider hiring a proper stager. At the very least ask the home-owners to “make your home look like humans have not lived in it”. That usually helps a bit.

Click here to watch.

I’m glad that I’m not the only one who enjoys sharing before/after photos of real estate properties. Click here to read the article.

Even the NY Times appreciates these...

Interesting statistics on the most popular website on the net (see chart below). What does this mean for real estate professionals? It means that if you want to attract viewers–in this case Facebook viewers–you’ll want some kind of video marketing.

That means real estate videos, video bios, video blog posts–you name it. If you have video, people are simply more inclined to view your listings, watch your bio, and potentially contact you for services.

Contrast the “Movie” and “TV Show” categories to the “Local Business” category. Enough said.

Video is a clear winner amongst Facebook viewers

OK, I admit it. I’ve probably been going a wee bit overboard with before & after examples. Or so the average photo hobbyist with a working knowledge of photoshop might surmise. But, despite these efforts to saturate my clients with examples of what we can do to improve their real estate pictures, I’m always a little surprised when clients assume that they must wait for the weather to improve before having photos shot. It seems that no matter how many times I convey that we can “fix it in Photoshop”, the message doesn’t stick. Perhaps some of my clients either don’t believe or don’t understand. Solution? More examples!  :)

If anything, I hope these before & after examples show how a simple sky replacement improves a real estate photo. That’s it.

So next time you need to shoot a property on a rainy day or with looming grey clouds–don’t worry. In most cases, it’s not a problem. In fact, usually (as in the example photos below) it’s easier to work with and improve real estate photos shot on a grey, cloudy day because the clouds in fact act like a large studio softbox which actually softens hard shadows that are otherwise inevitable in photos shot on cloudless, sunny days.

The point is: We can make real estate photos look good despite rainy or cloudy weather conditions.

Disclaimer: For those eager to insist that this sort of manipulation is somehow wrong or that it infringes MLS or TREB rules or marketing conduct, rest assured: I’ve done the research, spoke to CREA, even consulted a client who happens to sit on the board governing these rules. They all insist that the only time real estate photo or virtual tour manipulation crosses any sort of questionable boundaries is when it is used to remove and/or add elements that are secured to the land and/or property (ie, removing a firehydrant, adding a tree, etc). As for manipulating weather and adding saturation to grass–that’s perfectly legitimate photoshop manipulation because those are elements that naturally change and are essentially not secured.

A real estate client wanted a sexier, modern real estate video to show-case a sexy, modern condo on Toronto’s Lakeshore Blvd. And she also wanted something different than the slideshow type videos. After all, this wasn’t an average property, so why not do something above average? Made sense to me.

And you know what? I’m glad I listened to her. For reasons I don’t quite understand, this particular video has become a favorite amongst viewers. It’s not necessarily my favourite from amongst the others that I’ve posted, but that doesn’t really matter. What matters is that my clients and viewers like what they see.

It seems that virtual tours are being superseded (albeit slowly) by video tours. And they should. Video is after all a superior experience. It uses two senses (sight (movement) and sound) rather than one. It’s easy to watch–everyone understands a play button. And perhaps most importantly, it’s enjoyable–who doesn’t like watching a well made video?

Despite the obvious benefits of video, many real estate reps that I deal with still don’t understand that a real estate video can in fact an be accessible, quality marketing tool. That’s probably because there’s so much garbage out there. Perhaps we’ll change that.

I recently learned how to embed real estate videos directly into google maps, and then embed that map directly into a blog or website from activerain’s own Brad Andersohn. The result: a really cool way to present real estate videos and their locations in an all-in-one media, google maps.

I’ve add a few of my own Toronto real estate video tours that I’ve shot recently to the google map. What’s particularly appealing about this is that you simply click the little blue placeholder on the map and the video pops up and immediately begins playing. It conveniently marks the location and lets you view the video all in the same window. Very convenient indeed. Check out my real estate videos by clicking on the blue placeholders on the map below:

Click the blue icons on the map below to see the corresponding real estate video tour.

To view larger map, click here.

This condo that I shot last week, the client requested that I add a “view” to what was an otherwise boring photo, so I did. I also hand blended the photos using multiple exposures to bring in more natural light. I’ve been learning a ton about photoshoping. The key is to try to make it look natural…that really is the hardest part. I hope I’m getting close. Here’s the listing I put together for my client: http://www.stonehomephoto.com/client/2045lakeshore

Try this: look at a wall in whatever room your in. Make sure that you can see the corners/joints at least at one end of the wall. Now tilt your head and look to the bottom of the wall at the floor. And finally tilt your head up and look at the top of the corner.

Next, take your camera with wide angle lens and do the same. Do you notice the difference? Probably not. But I can tell you theres a big one.

The verticals of the walls remain more or less vertical when you tilt your head. However, when you tilt your camera, notice that the verticals converge–that is, they bend in at the top or bottom, depending on the angle of the camera to the horizon.

This is called converging verticals, and it’s one of the first obvious signs of an amateur real estate or architectural photographer.

In most cases, I keep my real estate photos perfectly vertical in order to give the viewer a more natural perspective, one that their eyes would be more likely to see.

When I can’t do this due to a limitation of the surrounding landscape, I correct the perspective in photoshop (as in the example below). In the example before photo below, I was unable to get far back enough to get a straight vertical line on the property, and as such I was forced to correct in photoshop.