Where does Lifestyle Photography fit into your property marketing
There are numerous different phrases to describe what I'm talking about here: cameo photography, lifestyle, or as one eminent British film director eloquently proposed when I shot' his house, grace-note photography. Whatever you call the style, it amounts to the same thing; which is that there is a technique of photography that could really help your properties stand out from the competition - and that, my friend, is the most fundamental job of any estate agent.
Why Bother
The prime objective when you're selling any property is to sell the space' but there's a big secondary goal too, these days your photos need to evoke an emotion in your potential buyers that will get them clicking on your properties before they click on those of your competitors. You have only to put yourselves into the shoes of anyone trawling through hundreds of similar-looking houses in that beauty parade known as the portals, to realise that any honest and attractive way to differentiate your homes from the competition is bound to attract more interest than if you keep to the if it isn't broke don't fix it' philosophy adopted by many failing businesses throughout the world. Woolworths is a great example of what happens when you do that.
Times are moving on. I've said before that your photos are appearing NOW on 50 HD screens and on mobile phones. Never before has there been such a great opportunity for creativity and imagination. So, for example, why wouldn't you want to show a dining table looking pretty as a picture all set for a dinner party, instead of a large and empty slab of wood What's more likely to get the viewer's juices flowing What's more likely to create that feeling in your buyers that will move them to the nest stage Feelings and emotions are incredibly important. It's not all about working out the price per square foot.
Technique. A brief How to'
In the examples I've included here you should notice a couple of major differences between normal estate agency photos that sell the space and these lifestyle examples. Photos that sell the space should be sharp throughout, whereas lifestyle photos are deliberately shot more artistically using what's called a shallow depth-of-field. The term, deep depth-of-field simply informs you that the photo is sharp throughout; whereas a shallow depth-of-field' means that parts of it are deliberately blurry so that the main subject of the photo appears to jump out of the picture.
One important thing to realise is that if you take a blurry photo by accident then that's called an accident', especially if none of it is sharp. To deliberately take a photo with a shallow depth of field you need to know to use a large aperture, to use a longer focal length lens, and to shoot with your lens fairly close to the object that you want to remain sharp. Doing this will enable the background and maybe the foreground to look more blurred than if you were to take the photo from further away. It's really MUCH easier than it sounds and many of you would benefit by being shown rather than told how to do this.
Another necessary component of this style of photography is gaining the client's cooperation in preparing the property and making it look good. For this you'll need to encourage them to put cushions on garden chairs, perhaps open a bottle of red and put it onto the garden table with a couple of glasses. It'll seem like hassle BUT, it'll be worth it. Thinking about optimising your photos so that they attract attention amounts to professionalism and that alone will be a big differentiator between you and your competitors - the ones who turn up with a compact camera, stand in a room and take a snap without actually considering what they're photographing or why. When push comes to shove, the only way you can appear to be different to other estate agents is actually to be different, to be better, and to take more care. That's what will win you more business in the future - no corporate advertising or brochure will ever be a substitute for actually doing the job better.
Coming next: What to look for in a professional photographer
John Durrant was a partner in an award-winning agency in Woking. He's been featured on the BBC and in the Sunday Telegraph. John wrote the 12,000-word Guidance on Property Photography for the RICS and today he photographs some of the finest homes in Surrey and West Sussex. Additionally his Doctor Photo business edits/optimises thousands of estate agents' own photos each month and he travels the UK teaching photography workshops to estate agents.
See: https://www.doctor-photo.co.uk/
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