Real Estate Photography: Kitchens

This week I'm reviewing Scott Hargis's second new Real Estate video Kitchens on Lynda.com. In this video Scott shows you how to handle challenging conditions, including shiny, reflective surfaces and tight confines. He demonstrates how to light a kitchen, style the room, test different compositions, and edit the final photos.

A kitchen can be the most challenging room to photograph. In contemporary houses they are often open plan with shiny, reflective surfaces and tight confines. Despite these issues, kitchens are often considered the money shot of the internal real estate shot. For the freelance photographer kitchens there is a lucrative niche in the kitchen remodeling industry. For these reasons, Scott recommends going the extra mile to make that portfolio shot for future business.

One of Scott's great strength's is his use of visualisation of the image in the manner of Ansel Adams. This helps him divide the image into zones like an abstract painting making critical compositional decisions on location. In the competitive world of real estate, an informative image that is also aesthetically pleasing will have stickability in a virtual world of image overload.

In the video Scott demonstrates 3 setups starting with a classic 1 point setup as seen in Basics video. Getting the 1 point shot nailed is critical for real estate photography. If the shot is even a tiny bit off the viewer is going to either notice the flaw or quickly move on. To nail the shot Scott demonstrates zooming into the composition in live view to align the horizontals.

Scott also uses a fake tilt shift technique to solve a compositional conundrum with the foreground. Instead of breaking out a tilt shift lens, or resorting to a two point image, Scott goes wide knowing that he can crop out the ceiling acreage in later in post. Although Scott's mantra is always to get it right in the camera, he is also a pragmatist.

As well as good technique, Scott advocates working out the aesthetic mind by purchasing house and landscape magazines. Just like in classic portraiture lighting, it is possible to work out how the photographer has lit an architectural or real estate image. Such exercises help the photographer to see a scene aesthetically as well as technically.

In the second part of the video Scott takes us through a series of kitchen photo editing tips. He starts with the crop for the wide shot. Although he personally favours a 5:4 ratio, it is important to know the target Multiple Listing Site (MLS) ratio which is often 4:3.

As an aid to analysing the composition, Scott converts takes a look at the photo in Black and White. This eliminates any distracting colour information. If the composition works in B&W it will work in colour too. 

After warming the photo to provide a warm and cozy feel, Scott cranks the clarity slider to give the image a crisp contemporary Real Estate look. Scott finishes the photo off with a vignette. The effect of the vignette is to pull the eye toward the middle of the picture. 

Scott also talks about the difference between editing for a client image and a portfolio image. The client image must always be a true reflection of the space including all utilitarian aspects of the image. For the portfolio, Scott recommends removing extraneous information and cropping tighter to render the most aesthetically pleasing photo possible.

Scott concludes the video by emphasising once again the importance of getting the kitchen right both for the client and for the portfolio. Just as kitchen remodeling is a big deal, every home buyer is looking for that great kitchen too. With this video, Scott has once again delivered an entertaining and informative video that I can highly recommend.