Are you wondering how to become a property photographer?
Property photography is a significant part of the real estate industry. In today’s digital world, attention-getting property images play a central role in sales.
Therefore, real estate sales professionals are always looking for skilled property photographers to shoot their listings.
In this post, you’ll learn how to become a property photographer as we share 8 great tips for creating your business.
Let’s get right into it!
8 Great Tips on How to Become a Property Photographer
Here are our 8 great tips for how to become a property photographer and create your own business.
1. Find the Best Camera You Can Afford
Having the best camera for the job is essential for real estate photographers. But what is the best camera for property photography?
In general, DSLR cameras are the favored choice for property photography. These cameras allow the photographer the greatest flexibility, ease of use, and settings options.
It would be best to avoid using your cell phone camera for real estate photography. While many modern smartphones are equipped with fantastic camera arrays, they still don’t capture the crisp, captivating photos a DSLR camera can.
Here are our three top suggestions for the best cameras to use when you are considering how to become a property photographer:
Hopefully, the above helps point you in the right direction for the best camera for real estate photography.
2. Best Lenses for Property Photographers
Real estate photographers need to be fully equipped with the right lenses to get the best shots for their clients, no matter what property they encounter.
Generally, wide-angle and ultra-wide-angle lenses are the lenses of choice for real estate photography. These lenses allow the photographer to show a full-room view in just a few photos.
Wide-angle lenses capture images that allow prospective buyers to visualize the layout of a house, providing a more comprehensive sense of space. Here are additional factors to consider:
- Avoid fisheye lenses, as their distortion cannot be corrected
- Opt for a lens with a maximum focal length ranging between 12 and 16 mm to cover a wide perspective without excessive distortion
- Decide whether you prefer a zoom or prime lens. Prime lenses offer a fixed focal length, whereas zoom lenses provide a range of focal lengths
Here are three top choices for real estate photography lenses:
Next, let’s talk about some of the other essential gear you’ll need to become a property photographer.
3. How to Become a Property Photographer – Using a Flash
Proper lighting is crucial for outstanding property photography when capturing interior spaces and rooms.
Using a flash is, therefore, often necessary. For example, consider these factors:
- You’ll need direct on-camera flash for filling in dark areas
- Experiment with bouncing on-camera flash to avoid glare or over-exposure
- Be mindful of lighting color temperatures and maintain color balance, especially when blending indoor artificial lighting with ambient outdoor lighting
Leverage all your light sources effectively — artificial lighting can enhance indoor details, while natural external light can illuminate many interior spaces. Using a flash can help you make the best of all lighting options.
To learn more about this vital piece of equipment, read our blog post on the best flash for real estate photography (top 5 picks).
4. A Tripod and Remote Triggers
Avoiding camera shakes is essential for capturing sharp images; even steady hands can result in blurriness. This is where remote triggers offer a significant advantage:
- A remote trigger allows you to take shots without physically touching the camera
- Remember, especially at low shutter speeds, even slight contact with the camera can lead to unfocused photographs
For these reasons, you’ll want to find a quality, adjustable tripod and a remote trigger, which are crucial for property photography.
You can find examples of good tripod options in our blog post about the best tripods for real estate photography.
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5. Establishing a Strong Online Presence
As a photographer, you understand the visual power and impact of images. Showcasing your work is no different – you’ll want an impressive online portfolio.
A visually eye-stopping website captures the attention of would-be clients and holds it.
An ideal photography website focuses on presenting stunning photos in an easily accessible manner, making it enjoyable for site visitors to explore your portfolio.
However, remember that the website design should serve as a backdrop to your work — don’t let it overpower your work or distract potential customers.
Overall, your website should be thought of as a robust sales tool that includes such features as:
- Professionally designed pages and easy content-adding
- Intelligent lead capture and contact forms
- A distraction-free blog interface
- Striking, eye-catching galleries
- Stylish elements for custom branding your website
- A strong call to action
- An order form with an integrated payment solution
- And more!
Here is our suggestion for a user-friendly portfolio maker that will allow you to have your site ready in minutes and make a positive first impression on potential clients.
6. Know How to Reach Your Target Audience
Having a high-quality online portfolio for marketing is only half the battle. You must also know your target audience and how to reach them.
Identifying your target audience is vital to stay competitive in today’s real estate market. Who is your primary target audience? In most cases, real estate sales agents.
To determine the best way to market to and connect with your target audience, you should ask yourself the following questions:
- How can I find sales agents in my local area?
- Do I offer unique services as a photographer that appeal to specific niches?
- What sort of properties do I have the most experience working with?
- Are there neighborhoods that I know better than others?
Knowing how to reach your audience will allow you to promote your property photography services best.
7. How to Become a Property Photographer – Leverage Social Media
Social media will continue to play a crucial role in property photographer marketing in 2024.
There are over a billion users across various social media platforms. Therefore, using social media to help market your property photographer services makes sense.
Since most forms of social media are free, there’s no downside to including these sites in your overall marketing and business growth strategy.
For example, consider the marketing advantages of social media, such as:
- You can easily share property photos and links to your photography site with current and prospective clients
- Being seen as a presence on social media draws attention to your tech skills
- Most social media allows you to directly interact with potential sales agents using chat or other messaging functions
You’ll want to search for online real estate groups to find and connect with sales professionals who might use your property photography services.
Leveraging social media is definitely essential when it comes to how to become a property photographer.
8. Work With a Professional Dedicated Real Estate Photo Editor
Professional photo editing is essential to any successful real estate photography business.
You want to always focus on the following two facts:
- The quality of your property photos can make or break a real estate deal
- This is why smart property photographers hire skilled photo editors to post-process their real estate images
Professional photo editors employ the latest software and technology to make photos look stunning, realistic, and captivating.
But don’t rely on random editors. There are many compelling reasons why property photographers should hire a dedicated real estate photo editor.
Dedicated photo editing means hiring the same photo editor or a team of photo editors to work on all your photos and accounts.
Working with the same dedicated photo editor helps maintain a consistent editing style that helps differentiate your brand and services.
Now, you might wonder how to connect with a talented, dedicated photo editor. Well, we have one last tip to point you in the right direction.
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When looking for a dedicated photo editor, finding a trusted professional real estate photo editing company that can provide you with the quality work you need is essential.
So, work with the best.
Take a look at PhotoUp’s dedicated real estate photo editing service and see how you can automate your workflow, save hours on editing, and allow you to focus on growing your business.
It’s really quite easy to get started. Sign up for a free PhotoUp account, and we will help you with the following:
- We’ll set up a test order from three potential editors
- Then, conduct a trial period with your favorite editor
- If you’re satisfied with the results and service, we assign them as your dedicated photo editor
PhotoUp Dedicated Editing
For more details, check out our PhotoUp dedicated editing video:
Now, you might be wondering if this is going to be affordable. The answer is yes!
A typical dedicated photo editor on a three-month rolling contract usually costs less than $10 per hour.
In a short time, you’ll know exactly how many hours you have your editor for each week and can adjust your hours as needed.
So, start your free dedicated editor trial today and save hours on editing while ensuring the absolute best property photography!
PhotoUp’s Additional Property Photography Marketing Services
But wait! There’s more to PhotoUp than just photo editing. We also offer additional marketing services that your clients will want, such as:
- Virtual staging
- Virtual house tours
- Video editing
- Real estate photographer websites
- Single property websites
- Floor plans
- Custom house portraits
- Property flyers
- And Virtual Assistants
PhotoUp has everything you need to become a sought-after and successful property photographer.
So, sign up for a free PhotoUp account today and let us help you grow your business!
We hope this blog post offered you valuable tips on how to become a property photographer. If you found this post valuable, you may also want to check out some related resources:
