Real Estate Photography

I photograph a combination of commercial and residential listings. Many times listing agents & owners question the value of hiring a quality photographer to come in and photograph a property. My goal in this blog entry is to show what I do and why it can be so valuable to selling the property. I'll show the difference in value between the standard four options for photographing a building. I'll be focusing on residential for the sake of simplicity.

Option 1) A real estate agent or owner chooses to take images on their own. Interiors are lit by the flash on the camera or shot with available light if it is a bright room and not much thought given to composition to make a room look the best. Exteriors are photographed while the agent is there taking pictures. Usually without consideration given to time of day and direction of sunlight. Here are some samples from an actual listing for a $837,000 house that I found online.


Option 2) A photographer is hired that comes in with a tripod and a digital camera and shoots available light photos of the space. Some consideration is given to composition, but the room is very rarely arranged to make the best photo. Everything is still shot with available light. This causes windows, light fixtures and lamps to be blown out and not be very visually appealing. Exteriors are usually shot without consideration given to time of day. Very little time, if any is given to post-production to make the image look its best. These photographers are usually hired for anywhere from $75 to $150 per listing. Because of this they are shooting multiple listings in a day and running from job to job. Here are some samples from an actual listing for a $830,000 house that I found online.



Option 3) A photographer is hired to come in with some lighting (1-2 lights), a tripod, a digital SLR camera and usually an assistant. Listings take about one to one and half hours to photograph. The room is set up and organized to make the space look its best. Exteriors are photographed based on the time of day and the direction of sunlight to get the best lit photos of the facade of the building. After the photos have been taken, another 5-10 minutes of work is put into each photo in post-production to make it look its best. The cost for the photographer and assistant usually ranges from $250-$500 per listing. These are listings that I shot that range from $500,000 to $1.5 million.


Option 4) A photographer is hired to come in with a full lighting set up (4-8 lights), a tripod, a digital SLR camera and an assistant. Listings take four to eight hours depending on desired photos. All rooms are set up and fully lit. Exteriors are shot at the perfect time of day on multiple sides of the building (if shooting for eight hours). "Money shots", such as dawn or dusk can be taken of interiors and/or exteriors. After the photos have been taken, another 15-30 minutes of work is put into each photo in post-production to make it look its best. The cost for the photographer and assistant usually ranges from $500-$1000 for four hours and $1000-$2000 for eight hours. These images are also from homes that I have photographed.

Now let's look at the cost of the investment in photography.

The estimated monthly payment on a $837,000 home (from above) that had 20% down and a 6% interest rate is over $4,500 (including taxes and insurance). Let's assume that the home has been owned for 10 years, so at this point a little over $4,000/month is going towards interest, taxes and insurance. Spending money on quality photography could quickly be recouped if it helps the home sell just a week or 2 earlier.

For the agent, the sooner a property sells, the quicker they can deposit the money and spend time on other properties and their own marketing. Another major bonus for the agent is the higher quality photos have a great use for the agent to show the quality of homes that they sell in their marketing pieces.

All the listings that I photograph fall in the category of options 3 and 4. See more of my work at www.mccoryjamesphotography.com

Satellite Room

One of my shoots last week wasn't your typical architecture job. I photographed the interiors of a Ball Aerospace building for H+L Architecture & GH Phipps Construction this past week. The room will be used to build a 3-4 BILLION dollar satellite!

The space is over 40 feet tall and is a clean room to limit the amount of dust and particulates that can interfere with the satellite's components. You first put on a "rabbit suit" and enter through an air shower that blows all the dust off. There are large semi-clean anterooms to clean equipment off before it is brought into the room.

Here are a couple images of the space.


The room with two "models" to give a sense of scale.


The air shower used to blow off all dust.

Camera Phones

For the most part I hated camera phones. The quality has been pretty bad and there is that annoying delay. Worst of all are all the people at concerts holding their camera in your view trying to take pictures of the band that are going to come out blurry 99% of the time.

I have recently been converted though. I have had an iPhone for a few months and the quality is better (but there is still that stupid delay.) But I am finding that it is great for documenting my life (and especially my son) at times I normally wouldn't have a camera.

I thought it would be fun to share some of my favorites over the past couple weeks. I'm sure you'll see plenty more here in the future.


Landon kicking a soccer ball in the park for the first time and making dad very proud.


Kelly swinging Landon in the park.


Going for a walk with his broom. He loves to clean and walk around the block.


Playing with dad's hat.


Asleep in the back seat after church with Larry the Lobster.


The first Colorado Rapids game of the year against the Los Angeles Galaxy and David Beckham (see below).

Photographing the Neighborhood

Over the past year we have been taking photographs of the owners or employees at various businesses in the the neighborhood around our studio. It has been a fun way to get to know our neighbors and give them a better understanding of what we do. It has also been a great way to increase my portfolio of environmental portraits. I plan on continuing the series for some time and hope to some day have a show from all of the different portraits.

Yesterday we photographed DJ, who manages Little's Liquors across the street. I thought it would be fun to show the process that goes into the final photo for a shoot like this.

First is the getting the exposure correct with my assistant (Stephanie helped on this shoot). We also use these test shots to get our composition and set exactly how we want it.

Next is taking the photograph of our main subject. We work on getting his body position correct and getting the lighting exactly how we want it. We are constantly making minor adjustments as we go. Then the goal is to get the look we want from our subject. Since this is the fourth photo in the series we have a good idea of what we want. We still took 65 shots if DJ to get what we wanted.


The next step is to get the exposure for our background. This shoot proved to be a little more challenging because of the bright flourescent bulbs, but I also like the feel they gave to the background. I took a shot for the bulbs (so they don't look blown out) and one for the overall space.

The final piece is the getting the blurred figure in the background. We have put a blurred figure in the background of each shot in the series. I think it makes the main subject stand out more and have more importance in the photo. Stephanie hasn't been in any of my photos before, so she got to be the blur. Getting the blur exactly right with the correct timing of firing the shutter and her speed of movement is challenging. We took 23 photos to get it just right.


The next step is to put it all of it together in the computer. The images are all put on layers and then carefully masked out to see what we want. The final step in post production is to get the exposure and feel we want exact. We shoot in RAW format, so we can do color correction as we pull all the images together. Their are a total of 12 layers in this photo to get our finished product.

Here is the final image once everything comes together.


You can see more of our neighborhood shots at www.mccoryjames.com.