Lessons

Lesson Info

Real Estate Photography

we are excited to be here. Thanks so much. We were even mawr excited to tell you about this business model and how you can make a ton of money doing real estate photography and how you can really enjoy your lifestyle with this really great business model. So real estate photography it is. We'll get started. So you want to hear our story a little bit about her background, have been married for 10 years. I got married when I was 12 clearly and at 10 years ago we were like, We need to start a business because we both had corporate jobs and we knew that we were going to start a family, which is 10 years now in the making. It was a lot sooner, but 10 years later we're ready, and we wanted to start a business that would be family friendly and that we could work from home and still create a great income. Yes, so we worked both in corporate for 10 years, and we didn't want to be in the rat race in or so we looked at all these businesses, like all these different business models, So she has a b...

ackground in business. Mine is in marketing and advertising. Ah, little bit of creative and to my degree, is actually in fine arts. So what happened? Waas as we're looking at these business models, Mark online found a contact. Yeah, I just found a contest randomly on some photography website and it was like, entered a win Nikon d 70. Now this was back like 10 years ago, so that was a really, like a high end camera. So I just was like, Oh, what the heck, I'll just enter in. Strangely as fate would have it, he was a full on Kit Wen's and you know, the camera body and everything like that. So just like this is great way that because I had always done photography on a film camera. But that was back in the days where I basically photographed Siamese cat with these roses. And then they all came out yellow when I developed him and I hated to go from taking the photos and then paying to get him developed because I'm super frugal and orderto learn what the heck I was doing wrong. So when we got the digital camera, I was like, This is fantastic. I can just see it on the back. Well, here's here's the funny thing about that is with my fine arts background, drawing and painting and all fluffy stuff. I didn't think photography was like a legit rial art form. Were I? Should I even be here by? No, but seriously, but as soon as I picked up the camera and she started teaching me how to use it, I was just floored by the technical technical side of it as well as the creative. And I was just like, This is awesome. I don't see how it I didn't pick this up sooner. So yeah, people started booking us and we started shooting and we thought, This is the perfect business for us. So we were still working both full time job for the time. And this is a really big thing because ah, lot of you guys out there are working full time jobs and trying to start a photography business. This is a great genre to do that with, because you you're able toe work. We process that night and shot on the weekends he shot after work in the okay, We were working basically two full time jobs each while we're at a day jobs. We'd shoot on the weekends and evenings and process in the evening. So literally we worked our butts off, but it's paid off and we loved every minute because it was so rewarding. We were building something. We're building towards something. Yeah, And we want to encourage you. You totally conduce this and we're gonna show you exactly what you need to know to have run a real estate photography business and also how to shoot it. So both the model and the technique. Exactly. So why don't we just get right into real estate photography? How many of you will have shot real estate? OK, we have And how many want to shoot real estate photography? Oh, a little bit about the genre. Okay, So, as you know, real estate is real estate photography is about capturing the home because Okay, here's what I found when we first got started this I actually worked for getting into this right now. Sure tell, but I don't want to jump ahead. I worked as the marketing and advertising manager for a real estate firm, so I was seeing all of the photos that these agents were submitting to promote these $1,000,000 properties. I mean, they were shooting with their IPhones, sitting in their car like just taking a picture of the exterior and posting it online. Teoh to try and sell these homes. And I was just like, Okay, there has to be a better way of going about this. So being the smart guy that he is, he went to the top agent in the office. Yeah, it was garbage. It And I was like, Listen, I'll shoot your next property for free because I was like, the photos that people are using I could do much better, even though secretly, I had never shot real estate. Remember, we had started this photography business, but we hadn't done real estate photography. So of course, he tells his agent, Yeah, I'll shoot your property for free. So good thing he's good at research because then he went home and figured out how to do it all. And at the time seven years ago, there wasn't much information out there. So a lot of it that I learned over the years which were able to import to you today, thankfully, um, I had to figure out on my own. So I love resource is like creative live now where you know you guys could just learn on your own pace. And thankfully, it's all be a part of that. So, real, say is one of the fastest growing segment of photography, particularly in this rebounding housing market. So we just wanted to kind of reiterate that agents hire you to photograph the home when it's listed, not when it's sold. So looking at headlines about home sales is not the same thing as people actually listing their properties and the agents hiring you as it gets listed photos of the number. One way to set a property apart as Mark mentioned on the MLS service. And you know other things online when you see a house, even if you're looking for your own house. If you're flipping through photos and they're bad, you might skip over that house. If you're flipping through great photos of an average house, you might be like, Well, it does look really spacious. We should just go take a look at it, and that is the job of the real estate photographer is you're trying to make the home look enticing enough to get people to come out. That's what the agent wants somebody in the door. So it's your job. Is real estate photographer to capture? I guess the main shot, the main exterior. Or if it's if it doesn't have that good of an exterior, it would be the money interior shot. If there's great views, you're gonna want to really focus in on those shots and we partner with the agent, not the homeowner. So every once in a while, homeowner wants photos of their own home. But this agent who's hiring you, not the homeowner and then, in addition, the real state agent interior designers. I need photos and architects, any photos and builders. So that's kind of your market, which is quite large when you get to that, because we all know a real estate agent we all know in our you know what I mean. So we've all been approached at one point, I'm sure a lot of us have. So the next thing that we're going to talk about is the business model, and what I really wanted to go over is the difference between portrait and wedding businesses and real estate business because I also shoot portraiture and there's a big difference in the business model. It's a business to business model and not a business to consumer model. So you're working with other business owners, and it's a business expense when they pay you, which is a lot different than a portrait business where you're getting somebody's personal check. The business model is kind of a high volume, medium price point, meaning When you do a portrait shoot or wedding shoot, you're making a larger sum up front. But that's a one time client. Maybe if they come back and have a baby two or three times. But a real estate agent is going to hire you for the first shoot, and then they're gonna call you next week and the week after that, they like you gotta You gotta deliver like, but we're gonna teach you how to take photos. We also sell images repeatedly, so sometimes the agent gets a listing, and for whatever reason, the homeowner says, we don't want the agent and they hire somebody else when we get this call and it's like I have this listening on such and such address the markets like Like I know that address I shot a year ago so he can resell those photos because the agents only buying a license. And sometimes we sell them for, you know, interior designers, websites or whatever. You can sell a few that way, too. So the other great thing about this business model is it super low overhead? You obviously didn't Don't need a studio. So you're working from home and you're only expenses are really gas and insurance and credit Any of the equipment that you may not have, But I'm sure you have. You have the camera, you know, you you may need to get a tripod if you don't have one already on the specialty lenses, but will be after your sunk costs. The really great thing about this is it's such low overhead. You know, once you're already in it with the equipment, you're good. Now, the other thing is, you're going out and shooting on maybe an average of an hour and 1/2 to 2 hours per shoot, and then you're coming back and you're only delivering 30 images for that time depend. Depend. It does depend because if you shoot like a 20,000 square foot home, you may deliver photos or 100. You know, it just really depends on what the client's needs are and how they plan to market it. Some some agents may want less, but they really want to focus on a few key shots and really make those images strong. Yeah, and so the whole business model is your shooting in a quick turn, and you're doing minimal light room processing so we don't go into Photoshopped, even though markets the Photoshopped genius a little bit. But we don't take it into photo shop unless you've got a really remove some detailed thing that the agent request later, we're doing everything in post in light room. So for about every hour that we shoot, we're doing an hour of post. That means calling the images because you're not starting with so many, calling them, processing them and delivering them to the agent. You get a really short time and a low client interaction. It's not like a wedding business where they're like, uh, back and forth like so emotional. It's like tomorrow. That's how it goes. We get an email or a call would be like, Yeah, the property to shoot. When can you shoot it up when you need it. I need it in two days. OK, what's the address? You know, you know, like the business. That's what we love about this because there's very little emotion involved. Not that we don't like emotion, but there is the whole side. I have a real thing for security, which we didn't really talk about. The fact that we work these full time jobs for, like, 45 years and had a full time business at the same time because I wasn't willing to let go of the security of the income and just hop into a business. So we waited until the business made enough money to replace our corporate jobs. And I should say we never spent business money unless it was on equipment or something for the business on any of our personal lifestyle stuff. Everything stay in the business because we kept in mind the number one goal was to get out of the rat race like we really wanted that full time business. So that's how we kind of made that transition. So next thing you won't want to know how to get started before I do that question. This is really interesting. Sam Cox from Colorado asked who's responsible for prepping the house, the interior and the exterior for the shoot? Do you and you give prepping advice? Sam, we're coming right at the second. Yeah, we'll cover all that in detail. Okay, So how do you get started? Well, Mark got started by offering a free shoot. That's how I got started. I mean, if I could do it differently, I would I would do exactly the same. I have the option to approach a really top agent. I would do that, cause here's what happens. The agent, then is like a top agent in your area. All the other lower newer agents are like, if that guy's using Mark Angeles, I need to use Mark, and then they all call you and yeah, word gets around so you can develop the body of work. Yeah, I would recommend just learning your craft first. Do practice shoots. Even if you want to dive right in and asking agent, you'll shoot it for free. You can use that and you can give a little disclaimer to him or her and just be like, I'm not that experience, but I'd like the opportunity to shoot this for you to gain some experience, and they will be more than happy to help you. I did that as well. To practice, yeah, is to really develop the relationship with the agent, because even though this is a business, it's there a single proprietor business as well as an agent. So it's a business relationship, but it's still a relationship. So a lot of people will call us because they know us so you can't, you know, take that out of the equation and then also the office manager's. Every real estate firm has an office manager, and those office managers are often times the gatekeeper. So we have situations where the office manager knows us, and then we first day. Here's how we keep their friendship. We send them cookie. The lie Sprinkles. I don't have time to bake way, Call up someone and have it delivered. No, but building those relationships because once you're in and the agents really love your work, when a new agent comes in the office managers, if you have a good relationship with them. They're going to just say you have to use these guys. They provide the best quality of work, their turnaround times, a great Their pricing is reasonable. Um and so that is a great way to drum up new business without really doing that much work. There is a tipping point. If you get enough people in one office to start using you becomes like this many cult following, where new agents come on board and all the other agents are like way use, Mark. So once you kind of get that tipping point, then you've got the snowball going and you just get all the new agents in that office. So it's a really great way to do it now. The way to get in with the office managers is to do office meetings and presentations. So we've gone in and said, Hey, we'll do a free presentation because they have meetings once a week with all their agents on how your agents can shoot their own photos. And we do that because once we show them all the things to do, shoot their own photos, they're like, Can we just hire you? They see the level of work and skill and equipment involved in there, just like I will. Just the great thing about that is I don't mind if the agent has a tiny 800 square foot listing and they don't want to pay for photos. I want that agent to come back to me once they get the bigger listings, and they remember I'll just call those people that I saw in the office. You can also offer first time discount because, remember, we're talking about a long term relationship here and that first time discount and, like Mark did it for free the first time. The first time discount is buying you years and years of income from an agent. So I put on here one top agent it does depend on your market can be worth up to $30,000 a year if agents are listing multiple houses a week or their listing huge houses once a week. You're talking about a huge amount of income, so whatever you can do to get that agent relationship in the first place is gonna provide you I don't know about, you know, but I could use an extra $30,000 every year now multiply that by T. J. You start at the high end, you know. But even if it's 5000 year, if you get 20 of those agents, that's okay. Can I ask a couple questions? Yeah, of course. Excuse me. First question is artwork bill. What's the best way to respond to the Realtor who shoots their own photos with their photo shot with their point shoot or IPhone? Or do you guys just skip that market entirely? Well, like I said, I don't mind if they're doing it. If I feel like they're also getting big listings. Some agents are transitioning. They're going from tiny listings, and they're trying to get bigger listings. And so I'm okay, toe foster that relationship until they move through that and start getting better listening. Although there are some newer agents that see the value in having professionally shot photos so they would start right off the bat and they would just pay the money because they know that it's gonna pay back in multiples for them because their house is gonna be seen. It's gonna it's gonna appear the best. That's how they want to market it. Okay, I have another question from photo maker. I thought this was interesting. Um, could we find out if the agent has to stay with you during the shoot, Which would be the moral equipment of having a director lurking at a commercial shoot you? Or can you shoot on there on your own with their own style? Well, I know that in the state of California you have to. I'm not sure about other states, but in California it's a law that the real estate agent has to be present with subcontractors like us. So, but I'm also a licensed real estate agent, so it's not necessary, per se. But it is good in case there are any issues that happen during the shoot, you know, because they can deal with the seller on certain issues with whatever furniture moving, etcetera. So, but it's good to work all that out beforehand. I mean, every once in a while we have an agent not show up, and sometimes the sellers get a little bit like, Well, where's the agent like the agent supposed to be here? So you know, part of their business, too, is to be there whenever somebody's in the house which we can also say is part of the reason why I will tell you we travel light and work quickly because that agent is with you during the whole shoot. You don't want to burn their time. It used to be that real estate architectural photographers would take like it was a big house. They'd be there all day long, like every you know, they have big lights and doing all this stuff. But time is money, honey. So one more question. This question is from art bark bill, who asked, Do you deliver static images or do you also do a slideshow complete with Ken Burns effects and everything else? I'd say 50 50 way didn't always deliver still photos, but a lot of agents know that we do property websites as well, and they're called Photo Virtual Tours. And so yeah, with the Ken Burns effect, and it appears that it's moved its video. But it's not there just still pictures that are. We don't have a ton of that in the presentation, but just so you know, that's an add on. So we charge $100. 75. They've used us for the photos, so If you're proficient making websites or you can be proficient or you can hire someone who's proficient, there's even sites out there that will do for you. That's a great added bonus. Are you guys gonna get more pricing? I get a little bit of three other thing. The one thing that I would say about real estate photography before you really go out there and do is you should have insurance coverage because you're working in people's homes. And if you break something or if you break something, no. But seriously, I mean, some homes, especially the higher end homes, may have really invaluable artwork or the lower and home or porcelain bunny could be invaluable or grandma in the earth. And you don't want to know that it's never happened, us I. But it's also great to cover your own equipment because you're always hustling and moving around that way. Will, because I dropped a flashing pool. We're doing a twilight shoot and certificate was running around with the light stand in my hands running. It was a darker, you know. They stick out at the bottom and my foot like caught it, and we'll talk about the shoes. This is why you need to have a good tight shoe toe lock the flash on the stand and I like, kicked it. And it was like flash land in salt water. So I looked at it and kept moving because it was toilet. Okay, get the show through. The last thing is the camera. That's the one thing that everybody has different levels of camera. But I will say that four real estate, the dynamic range gets more important. So for those of you don't remember, the dynamic range is the difference between the darks and the lights. So the more expensive usually the camera that you have, the better that ranges. And you're shooting interiors and exteriors sometimes at the same time because of the window light. So the more expensive camera you have, the more detail is there through the shadows. And that's gonna make a big difference. So get the best camera that you can afford. What about you all interested in what's in our kit? Yeah. Come on. I know you always always. Okay, well, that's it. Moving right along. Okay, So the main thing is the camera we used Nikon, the Nikon D three s, which is a full frame camera. So the lenses are all like 14 to 24 is our mainland's that we use because it's an ultra wide ones and tell the people we don't you just tilt shift. I'm sure they want to know. Oh, I'm sure they did want to know that tilt shift is great. It's mainly used. Are you all familiar with tilt shift? It's to correct perspective, distortion it, etcetera like I don't know that. So we'll teach you kind of how we do it. We use the 14 millimeter wave. Don't tilt shift primarily because, remember, I'm really frugal, so it's not something that is really necessary. It's a very expensive lens, although this lenses pricey as well. But we can get everything that we need with the 14 millimeter and we'll show you. And we've developed workarounds to correct the verticals, etcetera, and it's all. We also have the 24 to and the 72 200 to cover the full focal range. Because a lot of times houses have use the super wide, you're not able to capture the view. So the 17 hundreds great to zoom in on like if it's a city view or a mountain view, we do use that quite a quite a bit. The remote triggers. See how many we have there in the corner. That's this is just what we bring on. A typical shoot, right, and we bring enough equipment to cover, you know, any any situation for an average home. But if it's a larger home, we may bring more lights, which in turn, would you know we would require more remote triggers and mark way. We have so many remote triggers because you need one for the camera as the transceiver and receivers, one for each flash speed. So we are using speed lights, and we'll tell you more about that in a minute. But you can shoot real estate with two flashes, so the minimum that you would need is 31 for the camera and one for each flash. You can see we have, and we have more flashes than that. But you wouldn't typically shoot with that many unless you're doing a lot of really large homes. Okay, what else do we have here? Like this tall, sturdy tribe that is a tripod, which is a very important piece of equipment. Toe. Have you're gonna want something that sturdy? Um, I don't have the model numbers of bars. Unfortunate, but it goes to about seven feet. So not all tripods go that high. The main thing with that is you can, particularly for exteriors. You can get a better vantage point up higher so you can frame it up here and then you just raise it and you can. It's on a timer. We set on a timer when we do the shoot so that there's no camera shake from us. So that tall tripod makes a difference. And you also want one that's easy to move up and down. Used to use that really heavy, bulky light stands that when we started use what you have number something to move around. Yeah, we use that for a while. And then we discovered these are lightweight. They're lightweight. They compact down to like a foot and 1/2 because you're carrying these all I do know the model number. If you're interested, it's the man. Photo 5001 b. Talk dirty to me technology on, then a man. One of the most important things actually is your camera bag. Do you think so? Because I think because you're like hauling all over up, step down, step across, dainty girl. You know, even though Kim care, you know, I'm concerned about the ruggedness because I'm just like, talking about in the trunk and way put weight bags on here because way Dio did use them in the past for exterior shoots and stuff. I put it on there, but it's not technically a must have way down. You're a lot like you, particularly the bushes, and then they fall. Now, if you're shooting with umbrellas, which we've we've done shoot with umbrellas outside if it gets too windy, you're gonna wanna have your tribe, your light stands weighted down. That's what they're for. And then, of course, the latter. That's just to get a better vantage point. And real quick, we'll talk about modifiers. We don't use a ton of modifiers, but we tried it. So we're giving you all this knowledge. We've been through it all not to do. The only thing that we do use out of this is the snoot. And Mark has a really fancy, expensive snoot that he made out of a cheerio box and doctor. So whatever works right, I'm frugal. So you just took that on. And that's new is a piece of cardboard that directs the light. So if you want to, like, create a little pool of light on a take coffee table or couches like that, we will use that way. Don't use it as much on real estate shoots as much as we do on an interior design shoot where you want to emphasize a table or something gels these gels. As you can see, we're really fancy. They just came in a big sheet. We cut them and then we just gaffer taped them on. And then they just those gels mainly. Okay. One of the things about real estate photography that I've encountered and that people have told me they've encountered in shooting real estate is the color balance between daylight incandescent lights, fluorescent lighting, and it just becomes a big, jumbled mess if you don't know quite what you're doing. So the speed lights are daylight balanced. I think it's I don't know the temperature, but they're blue cooler than like a table lamp, for example. So if the table lamps on in the room and you have your speed light go off. Then there'll be a blue cast. The way to resolve that issue is to add a warming Joe, We use 1/4 cut CTO warming gel on there, and that pretty much takes care of that. I mean, balances everything right out. And then the last one bar last few is barn doors, which you could just put the flags on to direct the light. But it turns out that God gave us to barn doors. So when we have flashes way, just put their Yeah, it's weird and direct it. I'm glad that we're not filled Well, because, like, you'd find me, like in the corner bar and during with my hand like that. So tell anyone except for all the people watching, but he actually taking photos on the remote sugar, like in house, being like the only one who's gonna see those, even the whole world Soft boxes umbrella are kind of the same. We've used them both, but let's be honest, they're too cumbersome, very cumbersome to move. You like gonna be hitting stuff, and that is just no good. OK, OK, so moving into what we do before the shoot There. Any questions? Real quick? No, I have so many questions. I'm not sure if you guys want to just take a couple or all right, we could do one of two. There were questions about gear, but I have so many questions. Ryan asks. I've seen some interior shots done via HDR. What is your opinion on that type of processing or other stylized shoots? Thank you. We're gonna talk about Well, just sures. Keep going. All right, we'll give you one more freebie questions. Okay, One lens. Like if you if you're someone that doesn't really own this lends you can afford, like, the 14 to 24 or Canon has and we're going to show you the difference between shooting with a 40 millimeter. Most of you probably have a 24 millimeter, and we'll show you the difference. And why that 14 millimeters important? And would you recommend a zoom or Yes, I would. Every every shot is gonna be different. And it would require different focal lengths because every focal length is gonna present each space a little bit differently. So you're gonna want to have a good grasp of how each focal length effects it shot. And know exactly what you're getting need for that shot. Because let's be the ultra white is gonna create little bit of distortion but the benefit benefit far away. And now, with light room, they have automatic thing that just correct that for the lens camera combination. Like barrel distortion light room could just put straighten everything out for you. Okay, so somebody asked a question earlier from the chat rooms. That's when we're gonna talk about what we discussed with the agent and stuff before the shoot. Yes. So typical scenario, it would be get a call from agent or an email. It's like, uh hey, air. You available? Teoh, do a photo shoot. I'm gonna My first question is like, Okay, uh, what's what's the address like, Where is this? And, uh, I'm gonna ask what the square footage is because I'm gonna need to know how much time we're going to need for the photo shoot on. And then I'm also going to discuss how quickly they need the photos when we can actually get in, because a lot of times you're not just dealing with the real estate agent you're doing with the sellers. So the seller may only be in town for, you know, one day a week or they're on a vacation or the getting ready to go on vacation, and they only have this one particular time to do it. So all that stuff is good to know. Beforehand, you're gonna want to ask those types of questions. So you're not scrambling. Then we go into talking pricing with the agent are pricing is based on the number of photos that we deliver, and there is a rough square footage associated with that. So we tell them, you know, 10 photos is square feet like, yeah, so that they kind of have an idea. There is situations where people are like houses under construction. I just need a few shots, but it's a big house. In that case, we'll kind of adjust with them. So it kind of depends on the situation that but they have so that number of photos and whether they want twilight, it's extra charge for twilight. Why do we charge extra for twilight tomorrow? Yeah, what he said. There is a limited time to do it, and it's also happens to be dinner time, so we have to be out, like, all stinking day. It doesn't make for a longer day, but it makes the most dramatic photos in my opinion. And we're gonna go over how to shoot twilight. Don't. Yeah, it's it's thought that that's what agents call us for is like we want twilight because this house is gonna be amazing at night and that all that to say not all houses are suitable for twilight. You're looking for homes with windows and stuff, so sometimes agents aren't sure they really want twilight. And we'll actually tell them, You know, this house is nestled in a hill. It has very little windows, and you're not going to see the sky, because if the houses particular in L. A in the hillsides, if the house is in the side of the hill and you take a twilight photo, well, there's no sky, it's just trees. And they're gonna be black at night. So I mean, you do still see the twinkling like lights inside, and there are still benefits to shooting as well. But some houses are more conducive toe, uh, shooting at twilight, and then whether they want a property website. Which again, is that ad on? We go over the shot list. If they're shooting a condo, Do you want condo amenities? Because that obviously is gonna add to the number of photos if they want the gym in a pool and all that photographed checklists. Yeah, I think someone asked a question about, like, staging with Okay, who stages the house? Okay, a lot of times I'm speaking in the market were from agents will spend money to hire professional stages. And I know that this is done in a lot of markets here in Seattle. A lot of we should say that's like, what? Less than 10% actually hire full staging. Yeah. So a lot of times the homes that we shoot our come professionally staged by professional interior designers and stagers so that there is very minimal movement. But our policy generally is we wanna have the space free of clutter and photograph ready. So we're coming with the expectation that that's all gonna be done, which says that our terms and agreements that the agent should have the property ready to photograph in the homeowner. But you would be surprised Some people think. OK, some people think that de cluttering. I mean, it's it's still there, like, should be on orders. Yeah, it's while so, honestly, at that point, if you go into a home and it's a mess, it kind of comes down to the relationship with that agent. If we if that agent we work with all the time, then we go through the extra work to clear those countertops and agents, usually they're helping you and move all the stuff out of the room that you're shooting and then back in a lot of extra work. And I'm sure there will be questions we don't charge for that because we're doing that for the agent relationship, even though we they all know it should be ready. And sometimes agents tell the homeowners it needs to be clean and ready to go, and you show up and it's still not. And I generally spend time Teoh move throughs around for each shot anyway, just because I want to produce the best images for my clients. So I will take the extra shine, you know, even if it even if I'm not getting paid extra to move a few things. Yeah, You want to hold off No good talk about homes and then condos. And I'm just curious you guys expand into commercial real estate photography, Um, or, like, you know, large scale apartment complexes for for those businesses, or do you just do exclusively, um, like single family homes and condos? We do. I would say it's about 70% residential, single family homes and condos. Yeah, and then the rest would be commercial, which we're not going to really get into how to shoot the commercial stuff today. But anybody in that kind of feel this fair game like they're gonna find you and your I just put a note in here about scheduling your shoes. We're the only thing about this business model is you don't know if you're gonna be working next week because agents get the listing and they call you and they want it shot tomorrow. So there isn't a whole lot of flexibility, but when we're booking, we do try and pay attention. We already have a shoot in that area right here. So we try and move the agent into a time slot right before so that we can kind of keep our shooting days like maximized and for the higher end properties. For me, it's critical that the property is photographed at the right time of day, particularly the exteriors, or if there's a view, so we're gonna be mindful of that as well. That's why you know, I asked for the address on the outset because I help on Google Maps and I check to see the physical location of the property. What? Where the sun's gonna be at what time of day. And this is very important, because if an agent wants can only schedule to shoot at 3 p.m. And the lighting is not ideal, then you know you're gonna have to either you're going to just do the best you can or suggest, you know, Can we Can we shoot it earlier in the day? Or you're gonna have to come up with another solution. Also, tell the agent the houses backlit at that time, because sometimes it's the homeowner like I can only be have you do it at three o'clock in the afternoon? Wait till they did. It's gonna be back like you're not gonna have a really blue sky because it's not the best time of day, and they'll say okay because you don't want to shoot it. And then the agent comes back. Yeah, What's going on with the shot? It doesn't look like we told you last one was contracting usage, which we kind of went over the Burbage that we do put in there and also about the copyrights that we are selling them a license to use the photos while they have the listing. So if another agent get the listing, those photos are very game. Okay, let's move into actitud Susan. I'm a little bit overwhelmed by the amount of questions that are coming in. So I don't know if you guys want to do a few and then and just keep sure strolling, try and get everything will be OK. Okay, So moving into at the shoot lighting. So we already had a question about this. The HDR question. Okay. When I first started, I was testing out, like all the techniques, you know, like on camera flash HDR exposure, blending using umbrellas and things like that. But we've developed a workflow that works best for us, and I've developed my own techniques that you know, coupled with post processing techniques that just is efficient. And so first, we should say the HDR is what you typically think of as a little bit cartoony. The colors get kind of funky, so we do not do hdr. Just want to put that out. If we do have to blend, then we do exposure blending, which is more of a layering of the photos that it doesn't get that the colors don't get as funky. And when we do that, we usually take anywhere between three and five exposures. The reason that we do that is if you have a situation where even if you put all your lights in the house, if the sun is setting and coming in your window like that's really hard to balance, like you've got such a different dynamic there or in the situation we're going to show you. We do cut out windows very rarely, But we'll show you the difference in that to a situation where you really need to see that view even if the sun's not streaming in. If you can't pull that view back in and it's really integral to that room, then we might blend the exposures. We're not gonna do a ton on post processing, but you guys can look up exposure, blending and see how that's done. Then we also want to tell you the difference between strobes and speed lights. We don't use strokes, meaning the friggin or battery pack big lights, primarily because, remember, we're on a time schedule and we're also working in people's homes. And we can't be moving stuff around and doing all that with the big Strope. So we use speed lives compact, easy to set up their for Triple A batteries. We built a business on the backs of these little guys. They do offset an envelope antelope, the batteries and Luke. Yeah, seriously, with betters. And I will tell you my kitchen has battery charger. Yeah, it's just charges charges. So every day we're just charging batteries it's part of, but I mean, it's worth it because they're fast. They're quick, they're efficient. So also the speed, like we always work in manual mode. So we're adjusting how much power is coming out of them. In manual mode, you get a consistent light output, so we're not doing it in TL where it's like sending out a different amount of light every time and their conspicuous during the shoot. Because where you get those tiny light stands so they make in the corners. Now, just a reminder. This is the most like, foundational thing that has to happen in real estate that the f stop on the shutter speed and what light you're controlling. So, look, I made this up. Maybe it didn't. Maybe I heard it. Remember, s stop. Let's in flash as shudder lets in sunlight now, sunlight actually meets all ambient light, everything other than flash. But you really have to get that because again you're on a shoot. Don't want trying to figure it out on a shoot. So if you're gonna practice something that we anything to practice getting that balance right, because this we can't overpower the sun, remember, Because we're using speed lights. So you're limited by that sink speed in real estate photography, that's typically not a problem. We're not usually shooting faster than 2/50 unless you're outside and when we're shooting outside, if you have to go over to 50th just know your flashes aren't doing anything. You can't get them in the frame. So you can see the light, so we shoot with multiple flashes, Tiffany said. A minimum of two, Uh, I think I sort out. We just won't know we did have to, because we have. But a lot of times I like shooting with three lights because in a typical portrait of a person, you're gonna want to have the main light, like the kicker, the fill tragically air, creating rounded light instead of like, just one direction light. So and I never, ever shoot on camera for real estate because it's like the deer in the headlights for a room. I treat the room as a person. You don't want to make it look. People like your photographer's photograph. I photographed faces because people because they talked to me I'm like, Oh, no Walls, he says. They talked to him, Give him medicine. After that, I just say how refreshing it is to know that a professional photographers like, What's that like? Multiple lights encouraging. If you don't know how to do that, get a good grasp of it and I pregnant, or is it hot in here? Okay, you just you just sold workshop. Take it up. Okay, so from here on out, we're going to show you photos and show you actually like how we do this. So Okay, let's get started. The shot on the left, these air straight out of camera S o C. Straight out of camera. They were cool. They didn't know that. I learned that all creative one light off are off. If you look at this image, then you can see the feelings kind of lit. Here. You can see the bed's kind of lit. So we said we don't use umbrellas or soft boxes. We also do not point the flash into the room. Okay, this is a big tip. That is a big day with a song for my tips. Time point your flash into the wall or into the feeling. So what you're doing In most cases, walls are pretty light in homes. What you're doing is taking that light and creating a soft box soft box. Okay. What do you do if the walls are all black or brown? Or would you? Honey, you take anything that you could find the flight color, and you just put it in front of one time. I was shooting a theater room that was all dark. The walls were just dark fabric, dark pillows, and I needed to get a good proper exposure in there. And so I grabbed the pillow that was light, and I just shot the light right into the pillow and it illuminated the whole room perfectly. That first choice and second choice and then the third choice. If you have to, you can point the lights in, but as soon as you do that you're going to deal with more shadows. You're gonna deal with more harshness of the light, because if you if you can see that shot, if that were shot with the direct flash into the room, these shadows would have been like really hard and it would have been a lot darker. But shooting it into the wall softens the light, and it's more pleasing, aesthetically, as you can see. I mean, that's a distant shot, one leg and technically, you could have pulled this up in post. So it's not the end of the world, but I don't do things that will go. You gotta get it right, Right. OK, so this is to lights and I don't Do you know the other one was on stand. Probably not because you always have one in our hands. So you're walking around the house with one or two light stands, and then you also have a handheld and just a little tip. It was on our equipment page, but the handheld, I like to screw it into a little clamp. So when you have to pick everything up and walk to the next room, I could just clamp it on the stand. His hands are bigger, so he never does that. I guess he just carries it all. I think my muscles have grown ever since. I Yeah, I just want to point this out because I'm like that this is all straight out a camera. I would have fixed that he would have climbed what it is, cloned it in, you know, in post. But this like me, I mean, you have to be with real estate photography. In my opinion, he's very detail oriented. So in real estate photography, with his verticals and stuff that we talked later, he's very good at like making sure those perfect. But I love shooting into walls and ceilings. This I don't know if you can see that would frame. That was kind of like a It was just a passageway, so you can see him holding it here. He's got up and pointed around the corner. So that flash head that comes up like this, he just holding it and pointing it. We're going to go into the fact that this is a 14 millimeter shot and cropped and why we like 40 millimeter. But you can see there's the shot, and here it is, just cropped down to the appropriate so you can crop out. There's another one coming up with a light sand in it, too. So not a great shot, just well lit and everything. So here's the thing with the stand in the corner of the room pointing back to the corner, and then you can see it's a little bit darker here, but again, this is where if you're getting started, you could make it happen. But remember, we put this in to show you that this is just an average bedroom at any home USA so that you can see you can light it with one light if you need to fix it in prose. But two lights better. Yeah, but imagine if that was shot with flash on camera. It just would have been, like, straight light here. But here we have light bouncing this way. And then he's got the camera in the doorway. Small bedrooms, usually gonna shoot from a doorway because the best way to make it look the biggest. And then his flash he's holding. So always holding again to flash is pretty basic. Okay, moving into shooting. This is more of Once we get to the house, we always ask the agent for a tour to see what they want. Photograph what they don't want photographed, make sure we see all the spaces. Because one time the homeowner got there before the agent and gave me a tour of the house, and he's like, Oh, that rooms dirty. We don't need a photograph. That And so I was like, Okay. And I thought it was a closet because of the way that it was position. Then I get all the photos the agents like. Where's the theater room? I don't know where the story. So it's always good little club. It was not a little club. If you have time to walk through the house first and confirm with the agent. Do you want this show? And if you can't get confirmation on shooting anyway, yeah, because you don't have to deliver. It's important to shoot it and let they just have not, too, but particularly in situations you're doing, let's say they ordered 10 shots. You go into the house and they have a utility room. You want to just take somebody you can do with one light, but just take that shot. We keep it on file, but we don't deliver it to them so that if they come back and they're like the homeowner wants the utility room, it's really important. Then you have it, and you can either have it as an add on photo price for them, or they could flip it out for another one. But we always make sure that we cover it because you don't want to go back because time, honey, we shoe F eight F 11. So because you're shooting real estate, you want that detail so it's really important to get us up. The reason we don't shoot at F 22 is because we're using those speed, life and the higher your f stop the left last you're getting in so that we found That's pretty good. And I've tested like F six F 63 f 56 you know F 71 f a the full range. And that's pretty much the sweet spot. And I think the lenses love to be in that area as well, and I find that's perfect. Balance for the speed lights is to be at that aperture. But sometimes I would crank it a little bit lower just toe get more out of my speed lights like if there's a big room. Yeah, and the other thing you can do is just the I S o. We don't do that a ton, but if you have to take your f stop up, you can take up your eyes. So just to get a little bit power, because we have the D thrift, their super clean files, so you could theoretically shoot at a higher I s O. But I like my files as clean as possible because in post processing, I tend to crank some of the shadows and bring them up, you know, 2 to 3 stops sometimes. Speaking of clean files. We didn't mention this, but he has a little lower your puffer, everything technical term. But anyway, it's really important to keep your sensors clean because unlike portraiture, cure shooting at 1.4, you may think you're sensors not dirty, but girlfriend is Where did Yeah. So if you're 22 you will see all of the dirt in the sky. I don't know. They're always ends up in the sky just so dust on the sensor, it like shows. So you have to keep your sensors clean. So especially if you're like, going If you have, like, three shoot scheduled in one day. I mean, we average 3 to 4. You gotta keep it with you. You got to keep the stuff in your kit because I could be in a dusty situation, you know, climbing a hillside in order to get a shot. Because he does that. I switch out of lens the next shoot. I'm like, Oh, my gosh, you know, just like I've actually been at home processing to shoots and called him and been like there's a gigantic piece of dust in the upper right corner. You need to make sure that you're doing it, Okay. Staging shots, clutter movie preacher. We actually slide about that. We'll get into that in a minute. Okay, So we really wanted to talk to you about the difference between 24 millimeter, which is a lot of your standard lenses that you would have for other photography and the 14 millimeter and also how we crop that down. So this shot was taken at 24 millimeters and this shot was taken at 40 millimeters. Now, you don't need all of this information at 14 millimeters in this particular shot. I'll show you shots later where he didn't have a 14 millimeter, you'd be in trouble. But in this case, we would rather shoot at the 14 millimeter. And you can see the flash going up into the corner here because this is 14 millimeters cropped. So you see the floor and all of the information versus you couldn't get back far enough a 24 millimeters to see that. Does that make sense? Crop 14 is way different. Even if you cropped this down toe 24 is way different than shooting it out of the camera at that within 24 lines also gives you all of this lateral room to play with, so we were able to reveal more of the floor. Also, I don't want to forget to say this later. Some say it now that the height of your camera, we have other things that shows you when we raise and lower the camera, but particularly for kitchen shots, we always try and make sure that the camera is at a plane where we can see the tops of the counter. So once your camera gets too low, you're like shooting into the sides of Cabinet. But really, for kitchen and dining and shock like that want to be high enough? So you're looking into the room. I suppose if you have a tilt shift, that's where this kind of stuff would come in handy because then you can have the camera higher, but then still show a bunch of the lower stuff cause you get shifted downward. But but this is our way to overcome that with what we have. And we talked about the difference between we shoot interior designers and architects. So we had this shot because I wanted to show you the exact same dining room and three completely different shocks of it. So this is what you would shoot for? Real estate in real estate. You're showing people the house they're gonna buy, not the furniture that they're gonna buy. Okay, this is architectural because you're seeing the wall, the detail, how the architect interpreted the space, right, marble, everything. This is interior design, because this obviously is showcasing the designers work inside the home. That's not to say that you cannot present an image like this or this to a real estate for as a real estate photo. Because sometimes agents like a little bit more descriptive or, you know, like, romantic, lyrical moment going Oh, my God. Some one time we shot the power of the water the whole time was like, Do you see this miracle moment? Right? Oh, come over here. Come over here. Look at this. You hear them? You're saying lyrical going on there, just like we're not kidding that Really? Okay, Here's another example of real estate and interior design. So you're showing the space and you're showing the designer This is something where we would probably give both of these shots to an agent. But we want to show you a lot of people call and like, Yeah, I've seen all these other real estate photographers photos but yours Air, like, so unique, so different. So this is how we do it. This shows the room, right? You stood on corners. Six. Your room. This is the same room, but obviously it's much more interesting. So if you're flipping through hundreds of photos, what's gonna catch your eye? Yeah, this one draws you right in. The reason we would probably give both of these in this particular situation is because this shows the flow of the house that goes back out to the entryway. But this also is important. It shows that the living room ca next fully to the outside, that's a huge feature. Obviously, this is another same example standard kitchen shot shot from the corner, Something more interesting. So it's your job to kind of preview the space and in your mind you want to present the space just kind of a documentary style. But I love to go beyond that, because to me, this is like an art form as well. So I always look for the angles. They're gonna just catch your eye. People book us for that. They start out. Your photos are different. We want you to shooting real estate if its architectural home. We're looking for these leading lines, and if there's a situation like this or anything, where there's really strong architecture, we want to make sure that the camera is perfectly lined up. So in this situation, that overhead beam is right in the scent. Don't laugh at me. Overhead thinking is right in the center of your lens. If you're off a little bit, that's how you're going to start to get all these worldly things. So you really want to pay attention to the architecture of the space now if you're shooting a 1500 square foot home, but I'm not gonna look like this, but every home gets a different treatment way. Also always look for symmetry if there's a symmetrical shot that was an obvious shot, but you can shoot it. You shot from each side from every angle, every corner. But that is just the most dynamic for its symmetrical nature. Um, this we talked about a little bit earlier about whether he moves furniture. This is a particular yes, so this was a library. And the seeding these two seats were actually like, right up against that table. So it was the best shot was obviously from outside of the room looking in, but the chairs were to close. So I just move those out to where I could see just the edge. Uh, let that bad boy up and this is the shot. So this is in this particular case to get a shot and come down into the room, which we're also gonna talk about. You do want to be moving furniture and get the agent to help, you know, Did I say that you shouldn't be moving stuff, though That's expensive. E c. I check with the homeowner is like Is it OK if I move these for the shot? Don't mean moving artwork or vases or anything like that, because your insurance policy most insurance policies say if it's an accident, they'll cover it. If it was you moving it and you dropped it, they may not cover it. And when the homeowner is like, oh, that's a $3 million piece of art, then you say you can move it, Okay. Choosing the right angle. Yeah, so I wanted to show this the slides to kind of give the first shot that I took. I walked in the room and I said, This is a great angle But then because of that, it was kind of a smaller room. I wasn't able to get both windows, so what I did was I just shifted three feet to the left, and I was able to actually show that there were two windows in through. Not to mention it made for a more aesthetically pleasing shot. And also you have to pay attention. What's on the edges of your frame? I always look, because sometimes you're in a situation where you could go this way or this way. And then I ask, Where's the architecture like, Where's the real estate? This wall that you see the extra space over here to meet isn't as poor, as important as a potential owner. Seeing that this room has two symmetrical windows, right? Like you want to know this you you pretty much can guess that there's a wall to the left, so I mean, obviously you could have taken every angle of the room to show, and people can piece together in their mind. But if if you only needed one shot of this room and that's kind of them until it I have. If I only had one opportunity to take the shot that represents this room, then that would have been in over that one or any other angle. And that being said, if you're particularly with larger spaces, even like at this point, we can walk in and be like this is gonna be the best angle. We still walk all the four corners of the room and looked through the camera. What you see with your eye and what you see all of the sudden. If you look through that camera, the architectural detail becomes difference because all the distortion and everything in the camera it's just a different viewpoint than what you're seeing in a three d look. So we go to each corner and sometimes you're surprised. Sometimes, like I didn't I wouldn't have known that that staircase intersected over here. Whatever. So we do take, we don't take all the angles, but we look for all the angles we do take multiple angles and we usually give them one. If it's a big room two or three. Okay, Want to talk about camera height? So we're adjusting that tripod quite a bit. There's a difference between these two shots and that this is a photo off the room. This is a photo of what it would be like to be in the room so you can see this here, the tripod high. You're like looking down into the room. You see the space. There's nothing wrong with that shot. And this ultimately becomes more if your artistic discretion on Ben this lower camera height where you're coming right down into the furniture and shooting. And it's more of a a little bit more lifestyle, like what would be like to live there? And that's part of why I feel like agents want to use us is because we do include these types because I've seen hundreds of photos that are just like go to the room, quick, go to the next room, click without putting any thought into composition into placement of the objects. I mean, maybe it's just my artistic side, but that is very welcoming. I'm like, I just want O on that couch, you know? Now we'll say if the furniture was ugly and the tabletop cluttered and it was disgusting. You wouldn't have taken that shot, right? Get the balance it with what's actually in the works in the room. Tiffany mentioned we talked a little bit about verticals, and this is kind of a big thing. And architectural and real estate photography when you look at a building you don't see Okay, let me let me start over when you look at a building in Okay, Repeat here. Okay? If you're looking straight up in a building, you don't see the light, the building, the lines of the building Converge as you would if you pointed a camera. Took a shot, right? Actually, we're gonna go over this later, but the only Okay, so the key thing you want to focus on is keeping your vertical straight, which is keeping the camera straight. So when we shoot with our 14 millimeter, we always have the camera street. Except for this. So that's what we want to talk about. This is the only exception to keeping that camera straight. Now, not only do we keep the camera straight this way, you got to make sure the camera is straight this way. And for some reason, it's harder for me to tell this way it is. But they don't be like Look, I did. It would be like, Well, actually, the camera might be equipped with a level which, except for ours, it fell out, Not in the camera and the camera itself. I don't think you could drop tripods come with little bubble levels in there that you can use. That's what I use that one in the camera. But then I still could never get it quite right. Well, not as good as he could get it. He can really light room. My room will fix that right up for you. So no worries, honey, he has my back. Okay, So this is the only time we tell the camera if this is on the second story looking down because clearly your view is really important here. The second time, we would tell the cameras if it has an epic staircase, then you can shoot down or sometimes just shoot up the staircase. But he still correct the verticals and post. So you're gonna tell and your walls are gonna, like collapse down, but you can still go back up. And that's another thing about the 14 millimeter. Any time you know, you're gonna have to correct verticals and we'll show you an exterior vertical correction. Any time you know you have to correct it. You've got to leave the extra space because as soon as you start pulling those walls back, you're stretching that frame and you're gonna lose some of its gonna cross dropped down a little bit. Techniques. Tell them all your secret. Not too much. Just OK, so we'll just go down the line bathrooms because they're such small spaces. A lot of times mirrors are like right where you need to take shot. I don't know if you've seen any of the MLS photos of bathrooms like the real estate agent would be in the shot. You know, it's like, Oh, am I buying the real estate agent, too? Come with the house. I mean, there are several ways to do this. You can come from a lower vantage point, which is typical, like you do that a lot. So the camera is below the vanity, and then sometimes that little sneaky pocket wizard with its little antenna will sneak up into the mirror. But that's kind of an easy clone. Or we will move the camera because sometimes what the mirrors reflecting is, you know, dark door jam or something that's in the room that you can actually hide it. So you're not really gonna notice it, so you're always looking for ways that you can get the camera out of the mirror is the first. Yeah, a lot of times to there's like a basin there to stage it. You could position that to cover the camera, you know, in the mirror between you and the mirror. I've used quite a bit. If you can't do that like we photographed bathrooms and that closet that was like all mirror everything, Then you're looking for a position where you can put the camera. That's the easiest clone. So you gotta know if there's a mirror, you're in it, or if there's a TV, you could be in it like a black TV or picture frames loss of you. Always make sure that you're not in it because you're not for sale with the house, and so we would move it to where it's just an easy clone in light room will save you a lot of time. Uh, reflections tend to be an issue in real estate photography, because you have shiny surfaces in the kitchen, you have chrome. You have all that good stuff steel. So a lot of times it's hard to avoid seeing a flash reflection. So, I mean, those need to just be cloned out. That's probably or move your life. Like if you're seeing, we always check the image in post to see if there's something that you're not seeing in person because the flashes air going off fast. So you may not actually see that reflection in the Cabinet because they just pop so fast. You always want to check and see, and a lot of times you can just move that light sand and get a different thing. Or you can use your God given flags and just do that so that doesn't hit the bridge. I, particularly I typically take it varies, but I could take like, four or five shots of the same room, just moving lights and things like that until it's not an ideal position. Yeah, and then you go. I was only given agent running that work, Thea Other problem where you're gonna run into with shadows and stuff is chandeliers and ceiling fans. So that's one reason why you don't want to shoot. Uh oh, you don't want to shoot into the room, especially if there's a chandelier or a nice fixture, because it will make 10 times huge shadow on the ceiling. But even if you're pointed out okay, so you could see a little bit of the shadow here. But that's from the daylight, cause there's a window here. But if I if I pointed my flash directly into here, it would have been like you would have seen to chandeliers or three chandeliers on wall. But I've discovered a neat little tip to can I can't actually shooting. Okay, cause typically, we have the flashes to a certain height toe where it flashes into the wall. And, yes, normally they're like up in the corners so the light stands are extended. But I've just to try align error If you hold that. If you put the flashes lower, I think e mean it minimizes the shadows, sometimes almost entirely. It's weird how that happens. I think it's because of the angle of reflection that the light hits, there's no Yeah, You're not, like basically, the light start coming across the same level of the chandelier. So once you bring those light down to your head level or somewhere in here, you still may be ableto light the whole room and not have that chandelier do that. The only other option is again. You gotta move your flashes or you got a point. Take a flash over on the side and point in so that you are correcting for that flash off off the chandelier. Couple more tips keeping details and light fixtures. Wait, What? I noted that if you're going to shoot low, the reason we shoot high is because desks and dressers with lamps and stuff on him most the time. This level isn't ideal, even though you shouldn't while because you're creating the pillows on the couch like different things, they're gonna create shadows on the floor. So that's the reason why we have the light stands high in most situations, keeping detail in light pictures so you can see those lamps or on, and they're not blown out. That's one thing you know that I'm in particular. Let me let me try and explain. OK, there's two. There's two different things you A lot of times are exposures are going to be slightly under exposed out of camera. The reason is because the most important thing is to keep the details in the fixtures. Once you start dropping or dragging your shutter so that you have a longer shutter, you're gonna bring in more ambience. Well, you do want the ambient, but the only way to get the right amount of ambient is in the camera not imposed. However, I can have a darker exposure in the camera with correct ambient. But the whole thing is kind of a little bit dark, and I could raise the exposure in post that is not going to change the ambient exposure. Does that make sense? So as soon as you raise the exposure, you're not going to continue to blow out the fixtures like you would if you raise the exposure in the camera. As soon as you extend that exposure in the camera, you're gonna blow out the fixtures and you can't correct that in post you can use recovery. But if they've blown too far, particularly like the ceiling lights and stuff once you've gone too far. You can't get that back, But you can start with it. Correct. And off the exposure of the overall image. Manchester. That makes sense, right? Yes, absolutely. Okay. Connecting a mixed white balance way. Talked about that earlier is different color balances between incandescent table lamps, outdoor lighting, which is cooler. Yeah, dissolution or in post Utkan color. Correct things. And more into that. Okay, we use auto white balance. So what? What? The cameras picking the white balance. But we're really going with what's happening in the room. And sometimes in a situation where, you know, like an old houses with kitchen and fluorescent lining or something like that, we don't change that. But we just might take the Goebbels off the flashes. So where you don't really mess with the white balance much, Do, uh, on the camera. Oh, no, no. We shoot everything. An auto weapons. Okay, So multiple angles of large rooms. Now, we did say, based on square footage, that you would have more photos. And this is particularly why is because this is the same master bedroom, but it's completely different. Although these all show the master bedroom, this is showing the bed and everything. This is showing more architectural detail, and then you turn around and all the sudden you like, allow their windows with a view like That's really important to. So if people are like, Oh, I have a 10,000 square foot house, I could just do it in 10 photos. You really can't. When Once you get into bigger homes, you can. You can give them this photo, but they're not really showing their potential buyers the assets of the room. So large masters. Any time you have a large home, you really got to make sure you're getting all the angles. So you're selling the real estate, cutting out TV screen, cutting out TV screens. It's a by request. We charge extra for this type of stuff, but it's better than looking at a blank screen, right, particularly in these theater rooms. I don't think I put other ones in, but he'll do it on T V s and stuff. If the agent request it sometimes in a really clean room where the TV is hanging on the wall like the agent's gonna want the TV to have something in it, and by the way. You cannot do this in camera because, I mean, not that you can't get Leonardo and camera, but you can't take a TV on because your shutters to slow. So unless its image lifestyle perspective. So this again is another reason why people hire us, that this is the entryway of the home, that your average photographer would go in and shoot the entryway, and we've included it with the doors. This in this situation, people want city views. But this is what it's like to live with the city of you, even though we're not really showing the room right. This isn't just beach and chew through fireplace. Okay, 14 moment. This is what I mentioned earlier. If you don't have 14 millimeter, this This is the infinity pool going to go any farther to back up. And you wouldn't have gotten the whole house if you didn't have 14 minutes. I didn't go swimming to get that shot. There was a ledge outside of the pool, and I walked on because there was a 30 foot drop on the other side. This is why you should also have insurance. Like hopefully. Yeah. So I got up there boom got my shot and I would like out of there Yeah, And I also wanted to show this is the same house. So we're showing the house, and people could be like, Oh, that's a beautiful house. I'd like to live there. This is what it feels like to live there, right? Like you can imagine yourself with a margarita work. This is a technique we use a lot. So I put a few different examples of shooting down the house when they have these big sliding on their outdoor spaces this big and silk, al. But yeah, it's a great way to show how it feels to be in that space. And the way to get these is in most cases, that the house has this type of feature. Your interior lighting is dimmable. So you've really gotta drag the shutter in order to pull the sky in. And so, in order to drag the shutter and get the sky, you would blow out these. So they've got to be dimmed under exposed for windows. This is where we would take a shot where you can't see the interior. This is where you took a shot. Where you could see the interior, but you can't see outside and you need todo slash. That's that's just flash. This is just different exposures. This is what we got with the flash. This is why you have to like the inside of the room in order to see outside. And what I talked about slightly under exposing just a slight exposure bump. And you're good to go. I'll give you another tip. You don't have to think. OK, so what happens once you raise this exposure? You might lose a little bit of the blue outside. So in light room, I just take on the saturation. You just up the blue saturation just a tiny bit. And then the guys, every day I use luminess. Thank you. Slide the luminous to the left and that brings the deepness of it down. And you get that right back. Twilight. How is she? Twilight? 30 minutes. I'm sure this is why we charge a little bit extra, but you have to see 12 runnin were gunning. We are doing our thing. But so this is where knowing ahead of time. What, you're going to shoot where you need to be because that window early is only you're only going to get a few shots, so you have to plan out which ones they're gonna be. And this is the technique. It's really important. We slow the shutter down, so you may be on a 20 or 32nd exposure, which is eternity. A twilight cause you, like, Come on. So this shutter is really long And what that enable us to do is take our three flashes or four if it's a big house and continue to use them. So here's how it goes. Remember the cameras on a timer so we don't have to be next to it. We hit it, beats that goes off your first flash of all your three flashes goes off. Then we walk around and either on the pocket wizard that has a little trigger button or on the back of the flash. And we continue to hit you, hear the flashes, recycle about more seconds, and you put it again. And then you hit different spots. We're moving our lights around your illuminating hit it and they remember is still burning the whole time. And we're getting tons of power out of our flashes with just little speed lights. In some cases, in really big homes we don't wanna have. The flash is so far away because they're losing all that power going across large yards. So we will put the stands in the bushes or somewhere where it's a super easy clone, you know, like so it comes out and you Typically, you typically don't see this big spread of light. You'll just see the flash kind of glowing you just on the interior. You're just using the existing home lights. Yes, so all the home lights are on every lamp. Everything if they can damage yeah, otherwise way around that is to shoot a little bit earlier than twilight. So that way, way earlier than 12. So if you're getting shots that look like this on the skies light blue, it's because you're shooting too early. Typically, people don't realize that this twilight shot, where it's this beautiful deep sky is like it's almost dark out. It's almost because remember that shutters dragging and burning and burning and burning so you gotta have it pretty dark before it's going to get this color. So that's the difference there between 2030 minutes, save a little bit early. I put this in to show you the architectural lines. This one comes out towards the camera versus this a little bit farther, and I feel like this is a little bit more dynamic. Exterior twilight. This is what we just talked about. Multiple pops. So you're pointing at the corners. You're doing all this. You also are pulling at the bushes and anything else. You got a light, everything. All of this right up at the palm, trees up everything. Because just even if you only get one up in the tree, it's just giving that extra little bit of lift that if you have to pull it back in post the data is there also way before twilight starts? Make sure that your pool lights are on, because in this case, they tried, but the pool lights weren't working. But that pool should look like this. So it's a big deal if they can't unlike full full power. Generally, yeah, totally full CTO jail or just No, you don't need as much outside because it's twilight. So it's already got a more blue cast and one of the techniques I used to. If it's not jelled, and there's a little bit of a blue cast. I just go with amber brush in light room and paint the color right back in. I like that. I think a lot works great. Okay, way said this. So we're gonna move on cause we gotta go. Uh, here's a race camera. The other reason that you got to be really careful watching your camera angles is views. So this particular bedroom, that's the city out there in the corner and you can see that we can see the top of the bed. Normally, when we shoot bedrooms would be, like a little bit lower. But in this case, we raised it so that the angle of that camera can see the city. Otherwise, you're not to shoot way. Have a lot to cover. Okay, A slight reverses Photoshopped we talked about. We don't use photo shop unless we really have to clone something out. We talked about punished, ER correcting distortions. That's the one thing that we do in post pretty much in post. We are up in exposure. If it's a little bit under exposed and I'm correcting color, I'm really a stickler for color. So cameras throw orange or the greens and exteriors and stuff. So I'm de saturating that as much as I can so we can get a true color, which also agents tell us. You know, they like the look of the photos better. So painting green grass. It's a thing that a lot you'll be asked to do a lot, adding Bluer sky. There's a great in tool to properly told sky back if you need to. And then we deliver two sizes, too. The agents. So MLS size is the small Brandon for them, alas, fruits and then there print size if they need to send out a flyer or something like that. Oh, look to go over this because it's really quick. You can see this is what happened with all the lights on in the room and mark choosing flashes and how it reflects in the windows. This is a situation where you have to cut it out because it's a condo and that's their money shot. There's no front shot, so it it's really hard to hide your lights, turned off all the lights and took the exposure for the outside and then cut the windows out. Oh, he wanted a big wanted t go back, Go back Thing is an example of the exterior. And again when I said earlier, if you're gonna point that camera op vertical, it's got to go way up. You want tons of sky in the frame because as soon as you correct those verticals, it's gonna naturally crop back. This wasn't very extreme. Straight, narrow, same thing verticals. We pointed it out. I wanted to show you the difference because technically, you could shoot vertically. So this is the same room shot vertically. But you can see how you really truncated the space. And here we did point the camera up. So this is kind of the third reason you changed till on your camera and you can see the whole space. And then we just corrected the vertical so you can get a better idea of the room without having to have a vertical crop. Because remember, they're looking at photos, usually in slide shows. This way. So we try and do is few vertical as you can questions. Wow, you weigh went into so much detail on every little thing, but But that's enough that you can go out and seriously, you can do real estate Shoot. Just reference this course and you'll pick up stuff that we said. You guys are gonna rocket. All right, well, we do have just a couple minutes for questions. I did tell Melissa Maza in the chat room that I would ask this question. Are there any tips on how to establish relationships with Realtors? Be nice. Yes. Um, we have a way. Have a firm belief that you run a business and make money and photograph like you are. So there's nothing that's gonna get you past being a good person, being like the best self that you could be and genuinely engaging with people. Most of the agents we have, like us, way go the barbecues and, like, you know, just you have to be their advocate and, you know, produce the best quality of work for them. He likes me, Really? So I mean, you can There's other ways to foster relationships through networking, but yeah, we have tried all the networking stuff where you go out, but typically what you're gonna find, which is fine if you're starting, what you're gonna find networking events is other real estate agents that are just starting. It's fine if you want to do a trade or you know, something like that. But you're gonna find people that have a little bit more entry level operatic. So there was a lot of questions on pricing. We didn't really get to it without getting specifically into pricing. If we could just talk about the pricing model, is it a static price per square foot? A percentage of the listing price is it by time by number of photos. It's all the above, but generally we have. Our pricing model is based on tears of square footage, and we wait for a number of photos so we can come up with a number of photos that it would take average number photos that would take Teoh photograph, you know, up to 1500 square foot and then up to 3000 square foot upto 5 to 8. And they're different pricing tiers that way. And if they need mawr less than each given tier than we could, you know, make it just right price per photo. They want 12 instead of