Avoid the Fisheye Lens Look in Your Listing Photos

Just as vertical lines should be vertical in listing photos, straight lines should appear straight.

Case in point:

What happened here is that the photographer used a wide angle lens to capture more of the room than most listing agents get with their point-and-shoot cameras. Unfortunately the photographer did not correct for the lens distortion that a wide angle lens can create. The "fisheye lens" effect should have been corrected using an image editing program.

Watch Out For Verticals That Aren't

This listing photo breaks the unwritten rule we all carry in our heads that vertical lines should appear vertical.


When vertical lines at the left and right sides of the photo are bowed outward like this, it tends to create an uneasy feeling in the viewer, because we all know that the walls should be perfectly upright. It also signifies that the photographer's skills are substandard.

This effect occurs because the photographer has pointed the camera upward or downward. A little up or down angle is OK, but too much causes this distortion to become noticeable. In this case the camera viewpoint is angled downward.

To keep your vertical lines vertical, use fairly shallow camera angles if you are aiming up or down. I like to hold the camera closer to the ground (or floor) to avoid problems like this.

If you discover this problem after the shooting is done, the only way to deal with it is by editing the image. You can "undistort" the lens distortion using Photoshop or other image editing programs.

Brightening Dark Interiors

OK, maybe you don't have a fancy lighting rig and you don't have the time or inclination to teach yourself HDR photo techniques. That's no excuse for posting excessively dark interior listing photos like this:

At the very least, this unfortunate photo could have been brightened up with any of a variety of photo editing software tools, such as the ones that come bundled with cheap digital cameras. Or Picasa (free). Or Photoshop (complicated and expensive). Or Photoshop Elements (not so complicated, less expensive).

A simple brightness adjustment will not fix the blown-out window but can bring out much of the detail in the dark regions of the photo and greatly lightens the mood:

I'm not saying that increasing the brightness makes this a Good Listing Photo. It simply turns a Bad Listing Photo into one that lets you see the narrow corner of the room that the photographer settled for, instead of just seeing a window with curtains floating in a dark void.

Take and Post Lots of Listing Photos

Apparently there's a strong correlation between the number of listing photos accompanying an online home listing and the number of days on market:


I created the above graph using non-scientific but plausible figures provided by Realtor Frank Llosa, a Northern Virgina real estate broker. He's got a very informative and entertaining blog. The figures are based on Frank's review of 268 listings sold in Fairfax back in 2007.

In one of his posts he writes some tongue-in-cheek advice for buyers, suggesting that they "don't skip photoless listings" because listings with few or no photos tend to sell for less. This is really meant to be a criticism of listing agents who post insufficient photos as much as it is advice for buyers. With more and more buyers using the Internet to start their home searches, the more the photos accompanying your listings, the more buyers will become interested, and the quicker your listings will sell.

I would not assume that bad photos are better than no photos, but assuming your photos are good, the more the better, because they engage potential buyers and motivate inquiries, showings and sales.

How Pros Get Light and Bright Interior Listing Photos

Do your listing photos have this problem?


Dark interiors accompanied by bright ("blown-out") windows are usually a result of the limitations of your camera when confronted by a high-contrast lighting situation.

Digital cameras are not able to "see" as well as the human eye when it comes to light and dark areas of a scene. They automatically determine the exposure, or the amount of light they let in, usually based on the average amount of light. (The more expensive your camera, the more control you have over how the light is metered.)

The result can either be fine or lousy, depending on the level of contrast. When shooting indoors, the light coming in the windows can be so bright that it fools your camera, making it think the whole room is bright. It then reduces the exposure, causing your room to look like a cave and the windows to look like there's a nuclear blast detonating in the front yard.

There are three ways to deal with this very common problem:

1. Take the photos at just the right time of day, when the light coming in the windows is balanced with the light level in the room. That can be impractical, because these conditions may not occur at the same time of day in each room. And you usually can't schedule your photography according to available lighting conditions anyway.
   
   
2. Use flash photography to compensate for the relatively low light level inside. This also can be impractical unless you are a pro with lots of lighting experience. To solve the lighting problem, it may be necessary to use multiple lights, which must be simultaneously triggered by your camera. That kind of lighting setup is usually only done by professionals, or very dedicated amateurs. Even for professionals, a lighting rig can be too time-consuming to deploy for real estate photo shoots. On the other hand, if you are using an inexpensive point-and-shoot digital camera with built-in flash, the light provided by your flash will seldom extend beyond 6-10 feet and is not sufficient to illuminate an entire room.
   
   
3. Use HDR photography to blend multiple exposures together into one, more natural-looking image. "HDR" stands for "High Dynamic Range" and is a set of techniques that allows a greater dynamic range of luminances between light and dark areas of a scene than normal digital imaging techniques. Done well, HDR accurately represents the wide range of intensity levels found in real scenes ranging from direct sunlight to shadows, so that you don't get blown out highlights or black shadows with no detail.
   
   When shooting for an HDR photograph, the photographer takes several (usually 3-5) identical shots in RAW mode at different exposures. Then those mulitple images are composited into one blended image. The blending process occurs during the digital editing stage.

Here's an example of a room that was taken without HDR (left) and with HDR (right).
HDR enabled the view outside to be seen rather than "blown out," and details hidden in dark shadows inside the room become visible. The result is a more natural and attractive photo.

The photo on the right was also enhanced in other ways as explained here on our photo staging web site.

Keep Listing Photos Simple

Listing photos should help potential buyers sell themselves on your home for sale. It’s hard to accomplish this goal if the images are too complex. Here’s an example:


The problem with this shot is that the main subject – a living room – is obscured by several kinds of distractions:

• There’s a lot of clutter, with knick-knacks filling all available shelving and wall space.
• It’s not clear what the furniture in the foreground is and whether it belongs to the room or is located in an adjacent space.
• The furniture colors are bright while the room is dark, drawing the eye to the furniture, rather than what is being offered for sale, the room.
• The old rule of thumb – that all lights should be turned on – ends up adding another distraction to this photo – the ceiling light pulls attention in yet another direction.

The main attractions of the room, which are the fireplace and mantle, the hardwood floor, and the corner windows looking out to a green landscape, end up getting lost in the complexity of the overall scene.

The photographer could have made this image more persuasive by making a few simple changes:

• Persuade the seller de-clutter in advance. (I know, sometimes sellers can’t see that their clutter is clutter. This job should fall to the listing agent, not the photographer.)
  
• Change the furniture arrangement so that the room looks more like a place where people gather rather than a TV room. The TV in the corner should be removed for the photo.
• Look for a different camera angle that emphasizes the room’s attractions and de-emphasizes the distractions.

The de-cluttering and furniture re-arrangement can seem like a lot of work but will make for a much more presentable image.

Here’s an example of a living room photo that works well, not just because the furnishings are nice but also because the arrangement is tasteful and the photo composition is simple. Buyers can easily understand the purpose of the room and can imagine themselves entertaining in it.

It's possible to simplify too much. (Courtesy of BadListingPhotos.com.

Consider Alternative Camera Angles For Your Listing Photos

Most listing photos feature the front exterior of the home as the primary photo, and 95% of the time this photo is composed in exactly the same, predictable way. The photographer stands across the street (or in the middle of the street) and takes a straight-on, shoulder-high view of the home.

If the photographer happens to be the listing agent, they might be missing an opportunity to get more attention for their listing by not considering alternative camera angles for the all-important front exterior shot. The traditional front-on viewpoint tends to makes the subject property more like all the others. This effect is evident when browsing through online real estate listings. The small images presented on real estate web sites leave little opportunity for standing out, but there is some room.

Remember, real estate agents are not just contract negotiators. If they are taking listing photos, they are doing an important part of their own marketing, and they should be expected to think creatively about how to present their product in its best light.

Here are a several examples illustrating how non-traditional camera angles help the primary listing photo stand out and look more appealing than the standard shot.

First, here's a house that's sideways, and the listing photo takes that at face value and presents the side of the house as if it were the front of the house:

The image above shows the actual street view of the property. Maybe the agent felt that there is some rule that the street view must be the primary (and in this case, the only) listing photo. That's a pity. Even though it's a rather unimpressive house, it looks better from another angle. See the photo we shot of this same house, below.

A wide angle lens and an alternative camera angle were the keys to making this look like a potentially appealing house. Instead of taking a straight-on shot, we stood on the sidewalk at the right corner of the lot. We got down low to reduce the amount of pavement in the picture. You'll see two doors in our shot. The one toward the rear is actually a masonry-framed front entrance to the home. So the right elevation in our photo turns out to be the front of the house, and the left elevation, which was presented as the primary photo by the agent, is visible in our image but is no longer the whole story.

Next, I'm going to pick on a listing photo that I've previously held up as an example of poor real estate photography, this time focusing on the camera angle. Never mind the fact that the agent's photo has a deep blue cast.

Here's the agent's listing photo. Keep in mind that this home is being offered for nearly $1 million, by an agent working for one of the major real estate firms.

The agent's photo was taken from across the street. Although cropping would have helped the composition, the narrow-angle lens that the listing agent used required standing fairly far back to get the whole house in the picture.

We re-shot the house with a wide angle lens, enabling us to get in closer. But there's more. Take a look at the result below and see if you can figure out what else we did differently.

In our photo, we stood at the front gate that is visible in the agent's photo. The low fence in the front of the house was blocking the view of the front yard's landscaping.

Our solution was to not only stand where the landscaping could be seen by the camera, but also to elevate the camera to a height of about ten feet above the ground. The effect is to give even more prominence to the lawn, helping to offset the monolithic front elevation of the home, and warming up the photo. The overall composition contains less sky, more house, no pavement and attractive greenery.

By the way, we did not need to use an expensive elevated camera rig to get this shot. We just held the camera tripod up at arm's length and took a few shots using the automatic timer to trigger the shutter. Very low-tech, but it worked.

So, getting in closer and raising the camera up is another way to change the camera perspective and obtain a more pleasing picture.

In this third and final example, we'll see how the listing agent's photo missed out an a terrific opportunity to use a corner lot to great advantage.

Here's the agent's listing photo:

This is the typical, blah, straight-on shot. If you add up all the space given to the features of least interest to potential buyers, (street, sidewalk, driveway, garage) they add up to nearly half the picture area.
The quirky topiary landscaping might be considered a dated feature by younger home buyers looking for homes in this price range. The untended mow-strip in the right foreground is a definite turn-off. You'd never know from this photo that the home is situated on a corner lot with lush, park-like landscaping on the right.

We usually try to avoid straight-on camera angles because, as seen above, they are cliche and do not distinguish the subject from its competition.

With great delight we chose a camera position located on the sidewalk at the lot's corner. We lowered the camera to about two feet above ground, framing the house in the more colorful landscaping that is out of view in the listing agent's photo:

In our photo, the house now says "Look at me, surrounded by my lush landscaping!" The front door is still visible, but the garage is no longer prominent, and there is virtually no pavement. Same property, but now it looks like it's in a park.

Is this lying? No, it's just packaging. The agent could still include the standard frontal view in the set of listing photos that end up on the MLS, but this photo will generate many more clicks than the agent's sterile, unimaginative photo.

To summarize, the quality, distinctiveness and effectiveness of listing photos can be greatly improved just by thinking carefully about where to stand and how high to hold the camera before you click the shutter release.