How to photograph an apartment, house for sale or rent | Articles | Photo, video, optics

A beau­ti­ful pic­ture is the engine of trade. Clothes in an online store, food on an aggre­ga­tor site, and even an apart­ment on a pop­u­lar web resource go unno­ticed with­out a pho­to. The pic­ture attracts peo­ple. There­fore, if you decide to rent, sell an apart­ment, house or com­mer­cial prop­er­ty, it is bet­ter to con­tact a pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­ph­er. About why it is worth doing and how to pho­to­graph the room cor­rect­ly, we tell in this arti­cle.

The pho­tog­ra­ph­er will help to cap­ture any inte­ri­or advan­ta­geous­ly. Pho­to: mebio.bg

Why you need a pro­fes­sion­al
How to pre­pare a room for inte­ri­or pho­tog­ra­phy
Right Light
Cor­rect angle
How to prop­er­ly pho­to­graph an apart­ment for rent and sale — tips

Why you need a professional

• He can cor­rect­ly set the light, pick up win­ning angles and make attrac­tive pho­tos of the room.
• The own­er often does not notice the short­com­ings that should be elim­i­nat­ed, or he does not want to do it him­self.
• Even if you have a cam­era phone, you can’t always take a good pic­ture with your phone. For exam­ple, in a very dark room or a small one. A pho­tog­ra­ph­er can take the right lens and make a beau­ti­ful pho­to of even a small room.

A pic­ture tak­en by the own­er can be very atmos­pher­ic, but not infor­ma­tive. Because of this, a poten­tial buy­er will sim­ply scroll through the ad. Pho­to: planete-deco.fr

How to prepare a room for interior photography

Before pho­tograph­ing an apart­ment for real estate appraisal, sale, rental, it is impor­tant to pre­pare this room. Often, own­ers con­sid­er this step option­al. But it is the tat­tered cor­ner, scat­tered toys or things that make the envi­ron­ment slop­py and repul­sive.

What can be done:

- do a gen­er­al clean­ing. It just seems that there are no fin­ger­prints on the mir­rors, a dirty jamb and a stained faucet. Shin­ing glass, shiny han­dles — all this adds a sense of com­fort and attrac­tive nov­el­ty;

- remove visu­al noise. What seems cozy in ordi­nary life (for exam­ple: a tow­el with bears on the oven han­dle, pothold­ers on the walls, etc.) is dis­tract­ing in the pho­to. The more things, the more clut­ter. It is bet­ter to remove every­thing in gen­er­al: spices, rags, deter­gent, tow­els. In the bath­room and toi­let, it is also bet­ter to emp­ty all the shelves. The min­i­mum num­ber of own­er items is a good trick. A per­son can imag­ine what he will put on this table­top. And visu­al noise will not dis­tract from the room;

- arrange tex­tiles. Remove bed­spreads from sofas (if the sofas are in good con­di­tion), steam the cur­tains (so that they are even, not wrin­kled), lay clean / new linen on the bed (not wrin­kled, ironed);

- in the hall, bed­room, office remove as many things as pos­si­ble from the shelves, from the side­board.

Peo­ple love new, clean, beau­ti­ful things. There­fore, it is opti­mal to cre­ate the impres­sion in the pho­to that no one lives in the house. A com­mon prac­tice is to do cos­met­ic repairs before sell­ing or rent­ing. It is not as cost­ly as cap­i­tal. But it has poten­tial cus­tomers and rais­es the price. Pho­to: hotelmix.vn

What can be left:

- things that cre­ate an atmos­phere. For exam­ple, in the office, you can leave sev­er­al books on the shelf. If they are in the same cov­ers (in the same style), not shab­by;

- plants. Green accents most often look har­mo­nious, peace­ful. It is con­sid­ered to be one of the most pleas­ing to the eye, sooth­ing col­ors. Plants can be placed in an emp­ty cor­ner to bal­ance the com­po­si­tion;

- paint­ings, pho­tos on the walls (behind them you can hide stains on the wall­pa­per).

Right Light

Can nat­ur­al light be used? Yes. If the win­dows are large and clean, and there is a lot of light. Such light is soft, warm and in the room it cre­ates the same atmos­phere. In win­ter, it is bet­ter to shoot in the after­noon, as it is still dark in many regions of Rus­sia in the morn­ing.

How to pho­to­graph the inte­ri­or of an apart­ment, house with arti­fi­cial light­ing? It all depends on the premis­es. Just turn­ing on the chan­de­lier is not always enough. Espe­cial­ly if the light bulbs are cold, and the room has a glossy stretch ceil­ing. The result is a bril­liant­ly illu­mi­nat­ed ceil­ing and a room in a repul­sive, cold light.

The pho­tog­ra­pher’s friends are atmos­pher­ic lamps in the apart­ment. Sconces, floor lamps, col­ored light­ing. Cur­tain the win­dows so that there are no unnec­es­sary light, turn on the avail­able lights, take a few test shots. Eval­u­ate where there is not enough light, and where there is too much of it. It may be bet­ter to rearrange the floor lamp or turn it off com­plete­ly, or add anoth­er light source.

Advice: In one room, the lamps (if you use sconces, lamps, chan­de­liers) must be of the same pow­er and of the same type. Oth­er­wise, one cor­ner will be with white light, the sec­ond with yel­low, and the illu­mi­na­tion of the zones will be dif­fer­ent.

You can take a pho­to from below to show the ceil­ing and the lights locat­ed on it. Pho­to: interiorizm.com

Addi­tion­al light sources. Are they nec­es­sary if you need to pho­to­graph the inte­ri­or of the apart­ment? Yes, if:

• there is not enough nat­ur­al light or oth­er light sources that are in the room (sconces, chan­de­liers, etc.);
• there are no win­dows in the room (for exam­ple: bath­room, toi­let, dress­ing room).

What sources can be used:

- soft­box or octo­box. It is bet­ter to take for a large room. In a small apart­ment, there will be too much light from them;

- an umbrel­la is a good solu­tion for small rooms (from 15 sq.m and less). There will be less light from it and it will be soft.

Do you need cam­era flash? Yes, it can be used. Usu­al­ly it is direct­ed to the ceil­ing or wall (if it is light) to reflect the light and fill the whole room with it.

If you need high-qual­i­ty shoot­ing of the inte­ri­or, you need to thor­ough­ly pre­pare for it. One impor­tant step is to eval­u­ate the qual­i­ty and inten­si­ty of the light. Find areas to high­light. It is pos­si­ble to say exact­ly what mod­i­fiers are need­ed only by exam­in­ing the room in which the shoot­ing will be car­ried out.

Read also:

Noz­zles for stu­dio light: what are and how to use. Detailed guide

Correct angle

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, 2 types of pho­tos are tak­en:

• with one per­spec­tive (par­al­lel to the wall);
• with two — they remove the cor­ner from which, like rays, two walls emerge.

It is best to shoot the inte­ri­or of an apart­ment for sale and rent from an aver­age height. So you most cor­rect­ly con­vey the scale of the room, get smooth lines of per­spec­tive. This advice is rel­e­vant for the aver­age apart­ment.

But if you need to shoot indoors with ceil­ings of 3+ meters, you can raise the cam­era to the full height of the tri­pod. So you can make a beau­ti­ful shot from above and show the height of the ceil­ings.

To take a har­mo­nious pho­to in the kitchen, a tri­pod can be placed at the lev­el of the low­er edge of the wall cab­i­nets.

If you want to exper­i­ment, you can take a pic­ture not only at an aver­age height, but also from above or below. The rel­e­vance of such frames depends on the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the premis­es. Pho­to: divastudio.by

How to properly photograph an apartment for rent and sale — tips

one. Use a tri­pod. With it, you can set the cam­era at the cor­rect height, even­ly. And the arms and back will not get tired from the con­stant load.

2. wide angle lens — to use or not? It’s worth tak­ing a few pho­tos with him. The most pop­u­lar for shoot­ing inte­ri­ors is 16–24 mm. It is enough to get a lot of space into the frame. But the shots do not have to be the same type, so you should use oth­er lens­es.

3. Props. It will fill emp­ty spaces, help to place accents and add cozi­ness. Props may vary. Sim­ple — put a vase with cit­rus fruits on an emp­ty table in the kitchen. There will be a bright accent. A com­plex prop is the cur­tains in the room, which absolute­ly do not match the fur­ni­ture. Can be changed for the time of shoot­ing. But such moments (for exam­ple, who will pay for the replace­ment) need to be dis­cussed with the real estate agency and the own­er.

four. Avoid angles that will great­ly dis­tort the size of objects. For exam­ple, there are two doors of the same size. If one is in the fore­ground, it will be visu­al­ly larg­er than the one behind it.

5. ver­ti­cal lines. A per­son usu­al­ly likes pho­tos that look famil­iar more. There­fore, make sure that the columns, doors, cab­i­nets, arch­es in the pho­to are even, and not lit­tered in one direc­tion, stretched or oth­er­wise dis­tort­ed. You can fix pho­tos with stretched cor­ners in pho­to edi­tors or imme­di­ate­ly shoot them straight using a Tilt-shift lens.

6. Pres­ence effect. These are not scat­tered toys and tights on the couch. This is a neat­ly opened mag­a­zine on a glass table, a plaid on the sofa (which is com­bined with oth­er items), an open door to the bal­cony. The effect of pres­ence increas­es the like­li­hood of posi­tion­ing the view­er and attract­ing his atten­tion.

7. Cap­ture details. You don’t need to take a lot of pho­tos like this. But it’s worth tak­ing a cou­ple of large shots for a change. For exam­ple, the new own­ers will have a fire­place, stuc­co mold­ing. Why not take a pho­to of them?

eight. If there is very lit­tle space, you can take a pic­ture from above. To do this, the cam­era can be mount­ed on a high tri­pod or raised on a mono­pod.

9. Take sev­er­al pho­tos of the same room from dif­fer­ent angles. This will give you more frames to choose from. And it will be eas­i­er for the buy­er to imag­ine the premis­es.

ten. Take extra shots out­side. Pho­tos of the entrance, front door, court­yard and even the bal­cony are impor­tant. They allow you to form an impres­sion of the loca­tion where the house or apart­ment is locat­ed.

eleven. Merge mul­ti­ple pic­tures. Com­pos­ite pho­tog­ra­phy is pos­si­ble not only in prod­uct pho­tog­ra­phy. For exam­ple, the room has large win­dows and plen­ty of nat­ur­al light. The pic­ture is good. But there is a ter­ri­ble floor. It is par­quet and has a huge glare on it. You can take a pho­to with the win­dows open. Then cur­tain them. Take anoth­er pho­to with­out a glare on the floor. And then com­bine both pic­tures in a pho­to edi­tor.

Detail shot exam­ple. If the chan­de­lier and stair­case are mov­ing to a new own­er, it is worth focus­ing on them as well. Pho­to: legko.com

We hope that our arti­cle will help you learn how to prop­er­ly and beau­ti­ful­ly pho­to­graph an apart­ment, a house for sale.