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. 

Real Estate Photography: Exterior at Twilight

Scott Hargis released two new Real Estate Photography videos on Lynda.com this week. This is a review of the Exterior at Twilight video, as that is the main focus of my freelance work. Next week I will review the Kitchens video.

Twilight is the magic hour for real estate photography when the exterior of the house looks it best. With most prospective buyers now looking online, a stand out twilight exterior photo is the money shot that grabs potential buyers attention. In the video, architectural photographer Scott Hargis shows how to shoot an exterior view at twilight, mixing natural and interior lighting to make a house look its best. The video is just over one hour long. In part one, Scott takes two front and back exterior twilight shots. In part two we see him in post editing the photos. 

Topics include:

• Why twilight?

• Setting up front and back shots

• Waiting for the moment

• Turning on interior lights

• Editing images

Twilight shots are tricky, there is a lot of waiting about followed by a rush of activity. The best light occurs within a window of fifteen minutes just after sunset. In a typical brief from a real estate agency in Melbourne,  I need to take five to seven shots in and around that fifteen minute window. I don't have the luxury of spending a lot of time on taking only one or two shots as Scott does here. Even with two setups, we see Scott struggling to get the perfect shots.

Despite this limitation, I did pick up some useful tips from the master at work. For the front exterior Scott wanted to get up high to include a mountain ridge line behind the house. Even a fully extended tripod was not going to cut it, as you can see in Scott's Real Estate Photography: The Basics video. In the twilight video, Scott uses a double cab ute tray as a platform to gain the required elevation. Around the back of the house, Scott sets up his back up camera on intervalometer while he concentrates on the hero shot out the front. 

Another nifty trick was the use of newspaper to to mimic a fire in a brazier in the back yard. He also adds strobes in the bedrooms to balance out the brighter lighting of the kitchen and porch lights. Other tips included the use of an ND filter when shooting into the west to darken the bright sky above the setting sun, or to darken the foreground in reverse.

For the front hero shot, Scott uses a 24mm tilt shift lens shifted up to minimise the amount of road in the foreground. This is something I've tried on site for verticals but never nailed, as focusing in dim light with a tilt shift is time consuming. In the video, Scott zooms in with live view and then uses a loupe on the LCD to achieve tack sharp focus.

The use of the ND filter and the Tilt Shift are all part of  Scott's philosophy of getting it right in camera to minimise work in post. However when shooting multiple setups in a short time frame, using tilt shift lenses and ND filters is probably out of the question. Typically, blown out western sky's are replaced with drop in skys and foregrounds darkened in post by professional editing teams.

The second part of the video on editing was of less direct interest to me, as I hand over my images to an editing team at the agency. However I'm always conscious of providing the best frames I can in camera to reduce the editing teams workflow. So it is important to understand the editing teams worksflow. Scott walks through a blending an image for the rear exterior which is a common professional editing technique.

Overall I found this video on exterior twilight shooting a good investment of my time. Scott is a seasoned presenter and the production values of the video are high. I picked up many useful tips and reinforced much of what I know - twilight shooting can be stressful even for a master like Scott.  I look forward to reviewing Scott's the Kitchens video next week.