photography by wasim.

Tag: san diego real estate photographer

5 Tips For Shooting Commercial Real Estate Photography

While there are definite similarities in regards to methods and approach when photographing any sort of real estate, there are also important differences to keep in mind, especially when photographing commercial real estate and properties. In the residential real estate realm, they tend to use the images for a few weeks or maybe months until the space is sold, but in commercial real estate, these images are used to sell the business for perhaps years and years, and they might live on a website for just as long, offering the potential client or customer a visual representation of the space.

While that’s a huge responsibility for the photographer to capture that in a way that the business owner is proud of, that doesn’t necessarily mean it needs to be any more difficult. Like anything else, if you spend adequate time getting a feel for the space and the business and do your homework, you’ll naturally start to gravitate towards the best ways to represent them in photographs that’ll make both you and the business owner proud. Here are a few tips for commercial real estate photography that I’ve learned on a few recent commercial shoots:

1. Scout – Make sure to scout the space at least a few days prior to shooting, or if you’re unable to make it yourself due to location (there should be no other excuse really), have someone take simple shots from different corners into the space so you get a sense of the space and get an orientation of the space, which direction are the windows facing, when will the sun be where, are there obstructions to natural light, are there reflective surfaces (if so, check out my post How To Minimize Reflections In Interior Photography). If you can make it to scout the location yourself, which is preferable, shoot a few shots from different angles. Typically the corners of the room, even just on your phone, that you can take with you and marinate on for a few days. This time will give you a chance to formulate a mental shot list and idea of how to and what you’ll need to execute a successful shoot without the day-of stresses of getting all the shots you need and figuring it all out on the fly. This will also give you some time to play with ideas with the client, helping to build a rapport and a trust between you.

2. Communicate – Make sure to talk to the client at length about what they feel are the strengths of the space and what they like and what they’d like to convey. Ask as many questions as you can. This will help break into the emotional connection to the space and it will give you a good idea of what space to be in as you map out how to approach it. Unlike real estate, where the agent is not particularly intimately connected to the property, most times, when working commercial real estate spaces, you’re working with the owner or manager of the business, and, for the most part, they are extremely emotionally tied to their space – they know the quirks, the strengths, the weaknesses. Play off of that. If you listen closely enough, they’ll tell you EXACTLY what shots to get that will ensure their satisfaction with your work. And of course you’ll come up with several of your own ideas, and throw those in there. Sometimes it’s neat to see their reaction to a shot, a view, an angle that they themselves perhaps have never paid attention to.

3. Team Up – Encourage them to provide ideas and input as you move thru the space on shoot day. It will help make them feel like a pivotal part of the project, hopefully setting them up to be as emotionally attached to those images as they were when speaking about them in tip 2.

4. Mix It Up – As was also talked about in my post 7 Tips For Real Estate Photography, mix it up. Yes, wide shots and crazy angles for the sense of space, but don’t discount the extreme value of vignettes and tighter shots, within the 35-50mm range for a more intimate feel. These shots aren’t as intimidating, and instead instill a sense of feel, aura, and connectedness with the space. A person’s vision can’t relate to a wide angle shot, but they can definitely relate to a detail or a vignette or a section of the space that gives you an idea of the character of the space.

5. Logos & Branding. If the space has any sort of branding or logos, try to find a way to incorporate those into the images. Whether they be on screens or table mats or windows or pens, try to find at least a few shots where those logos are included. Not only can these sorts of shots help with branding, but they can also be used for other purposes by the business such as social media posts, headers, or physical postcards or prints for marketing materials. Business owners work hard to build their businesses and consequently, they’re very proud of the fruits of their labor. Branding shots are a great pat on the back that they are sure to appreciate.

So there it is. Don’t stress out about it, don’t fret, take it as a challenge, know that you’ll learn something, and, most importantly, have fun with it. If someone else was confident enough in your skills to hire you, then you’ve got those skills. Be confident. Go kill it!

Also, here are a few more entries that can also help you when shooting real estate and properties:

7 Tips for Shooting Real Estate Photography

How To Expose For Interiors And Exteriors In Architecture Or Real Estate Photography – Part 1 – On Location

How To Expose For Interiors And Exteriors In Architecture Or Real Estate Photography – Part 2 – Post Processing

How To Minimize Reflections In Interior Photography

Below is a gallery that has some of the images from my recent shoots at Jun Cha’s Monarc Studios, The Well Salon & Event Space, and a local condominium complex.

And if you’re in need of real estate photography services, whether commercial or residential, please feel free to contact me or check out my Property Photography website.

And as always, for more of my madness, take your pick: Instagram: @wasimofnazareth Ello: @wasimofnazareth Google+: www.Google.com/+WasimMuklashy

January 7, 2015
How To Minimize Reflections In Interior Photography

I was recently commissioned to photograph a live/work space in Downtown LA for insanely talented tattoo artist Jun Cha. It was set up as a loft, with the living quarters upstairs, and his tattoo studio in the commercial space downstairs. The space was absolutely beautiful, and I’ve never quite seen a tattoo studio or parlor as elegant as this was – a gorgeously clean monochromatic space adorned with Greek mythological statues and replica busts of everyone from David to the Virgin Mary, classy leather-bound art books, Roman columns. It was stunning.

Cha’s articulate attention to detail in his artwork transferred over to his borderline obsessive attention to every detail in this space. Hell, he even lay the tile down himself, a feat he made sure to remind me was NO small task. And this tile, this gorgeous black tile adorned with extremely contrasting white veins leading from one side of the room to the other, provided me with the biggest challenge of the space. The issue was that it was so highly reflective, and the overhead lights that were in the studio were so predominant, that if you looked at the floor, it was impossible not to see the reflections of these necessary lights.

Since the main point he understandably continued to hammer home was to ‘make sure to focus on and bring out the detail in the tiles, specifically the white veins,’ I had to figure out how I was going to do this. One thought was to shoot an exposure with the lights off, and one with the lights on, and then paint in the floor in a composite, but that seemed like much more work than it was worth, and the last thing I wanted to do was make it seem unnatural. There had to be a more organic way to do it. Then I thought maybe we’d dim the lights, so at least it would minimize the reflections, but that would still be distracting enough to take away from the focus of what he wanted the images to be…the white veins.

Immediately following the day that I scouted the location, I found myself on an impromptu trip to the eastern Sierra Nevada mountains, specifically in Mammoth Lakes, Yosemite’s Tuolumne Meadows, and Mono Lake. I know, strange segway right? But this is where it hit me. Yes, Cha’s studio was in the concrete jungle of Downtown Los Angeles, and yes, where I found myself 24 hours later was the complete opposite of that, but I have a set of filters that I use in almost all landscape and outdoor shots, and one of the filters that gets the most action, which I happened to pull out for a sunset on a lake shot, is the circular polarizing filter. Why? well, it’s designed to minimize reflections, especially in water.

Duh!

I had found my solution. For the first time in my photographic life, I was going to use the polarizing filter indoors for an architectural interior shoot. And I must say, it worked brilliantly. There were a few instances in which I had to clone out some particularly strong ceiling lights in post, but it was a mere fraction of the retouching job that would have lay ahead without those polarizers. The reflections were 90% gone, the tile was the star of the show, and, most importantly, the client was happy.

So yes, if you happen to be shooting real estate or architectural interiors, and the reflections get to be too much, taking away from the detail of the texture or design, whether it be in tile, or glass, or distressed concrete, or waxy hardwood floors or shiny metal surfaces, don’t be afraid to reach for that polarizer. It can save the day (and the shoot).

If you want more, click here for 7 Tips For Shooting Real Estate Photography, and click here to learn How To Expose For Interiors And Exteriors.

And if you’re in need of real estate photography services, whether commercial or residential, please feel free to contact me or check out my Property Photography website.

And, finally, for more of my madness: Instagram: @wasimofnazareth Twitter: @wasimofnazareth Google+: www.Google.com/+WasimMuklashy Facebook: www.Facebook.com/WasimOfNazareth

August 27, 2014
7 Tips For Shooting Real Estate Photography

If you read this blog regularly, you’ll know that one of my primary sources of income is photographing real estate and properties for various clients ranging from Airbnb to real estate companies and management companies. After doing this for the past 3 years, I’ve managed to pick up a few tips and pointers along the way that have made my job a LOT easier. Here are 7 of them:

1. Do A Walk-Through – Walk through the space before you begin. Have the host or the agent give you a quick tour so that your mind can begin to work out any issues that might arise ahead of time. Plus, sometimes they’ll have some ideas of what could make for special shots and features of the space that they’d like to highlight. What ends up happening is you find yourself subconsciously thinking of solutions as you shoot other parts of the house, so by the time you get to the problem or feature areas, you’ll have a few ideas up your sleeve.

2. Lights! Turn on every light you have available to you. It helps make the space look inviting and comfortable and homey instead of dry and sterile. The exception is if all the lights are fluorescent. If that’s the case, try to switch out the lights if you can for something warmer or perhaps use a piece of CTO gel (Color Temperature Orange) to wrap the bulbs in while you take the shots for those rooms. Warmer tones are more inviting. To avoid a lot of glare and light leak in rooms with lots of light, underexpose your shot by a stop or so and pull out the shadows and darker areas in post, or for more advanced techniques using multiple exposures, check out my post on Exposing For Interiors And Exteriors.

3. Lines. It’s all about the lines. Always be on the lookout for leading lines – the armrest of a couch leading into the fireplace, the line of barstools leading into the brick oven, a row of spice jars leading to the fridge, a shelf full of trophies leading towards the bed. Not only do they make for a more pleasing image, but they help make the viewer feel a sense of harmony to the space.

4. Clutter Sucks. The less clutter the better. sometimes you can try to shoot around clutter, but it’s often much more effective to actually spend some time moving it out of the way. Yeah, it can be more work on set, but it will save you hours of frustration and clone tool mishaps in post-processing. This is especially evident in tight spaces like bathrooms, where even a toothbrush holder and hair dryer can ruin the aesthetics of a shot.

5. Close Windows & Doors. Close the windows in all the rooms. The last thing you want is to go back to the studio or home to process the images and realize that there are obstructing window frame lines that end up super distracting and time consuming to fix in post-processing. They take focus away from the window and the scene or light outside. Regarding doors, when they’re wide open, they tend to distract from the room you’re trying to showcase. Often it’s aesthetically more pleasing when the doors are either closed all the way, or only left about 1/4 open, which can help show the flow of a room, especially if some warm light is leaking in from that crack in the door. That’s always swell.

6. Deflect Reflections. When shooting in rooms with mirrors or reflective surfaces, like shower doors in a bathroom, and keeping yourself and your gear out of the shot is unavoidable, try to use the timer on your camera or a remote shutter release to fire the exposure(s). That’ll give you much less mass to have to clone out or clean up in post. It’s a LOT easier to just remove a camera and tripod than a camera, a tripod, and a human body…TRUST ME! Additionally, try to position the camera in a way to minimize any surrounding furniture or elements, so that when you do have to clean up your, or your equipments, reflections in post, you’ll have less that you’ll need to work around.

7. Mix It Up. Use a mixture of wide-angle and telephoto focal lengths. While wide angle lenses, from 11-24mm, show much more of the space and are pleasing to the eye, they can be a bit distorting, and this is where vignettes and tighter focal lengths come into play. That way you get the wide establishing shot, and you can have a focus on some unique details of that space using tighter lengths such as a 35mm, a 50mm, or even an 80mm. These are the shots that help a viewer more intimately connect to the space. Plus, if you’re ever intending on shooting for larger publications such as Architectural Digest or Dwell, if you notice, very few, if any, of their images are shot using wide-angle lenses.

Also, I have an extensive post about Exposing For Interiors And Exteriors In Architecture Or Real Estate Photography that you might want to read. It’s a very detailed step-by-step guide to achieve proper exposures for both what’s inside the window and out, especially useful for rooms with great views or backdrops.

I hope these tips help you get that ‘money’ shot every agent seeks. For them, that shot is the one that will bring potential buyers to the property. For you, that shot is the guaranteed call-back.

And if you’re in need of real estate photography services, whether commercial or residential, please feel free to contact me or check out my Property Photography website.

For more of my madness: Instagram: @wasimofnazareth Twitter: @wasimofnazareth Google+: www.Google.com/+WasimMuklashy Facebook: www.Facebook.com/WasimOfNazareth

July 15, 2014
How To Expose For Interiors And Exteriors In Architecture Or Real Estate Photography – Part 1 – On Location

If you’ve shot architecture or real estate photography, you already know the rub…exposing for interiors as well as exteriors! It’s a finicky art all in itself. Starting when I lived in Los Angeles, sandwiched in my little hippie canyon between Malibu, Pacific Palisades, and the Hollywood Hills, and throughout my time after moving to the Pacific Northwest, I had the opportunity to shoot some very high-end real estate for some very high-end and particular clients, and through that process, I’ve learned some incredibly helpful methods to help pull off results that even surprised me! While it would look incredibly unnatural to have both exposed for perfectly, especially when shooting a scene where big windows are involved on a bright day with a to-die-for view in which blown out windows are just NOT an option, there are a few ways to do it that will please both yourself and the client. Most importantly, they can provide a very accurate and attractive representation of the space.

HDR is certainly one of those methods, but HDR in its traditional sense more often than not results in very unnatural surreal images. While they can sometimes (and I emphasize ‘sometimes!’) look pretty cool, they’re more often than not neither an accurate representation of what the scene actually looked like, nor do they represent any sort of (sober) reality anywhere on earth (and if they do…please tell me where…I’m moving!).

My preferred method was taught to me by Michael McNamara of ShootingLA.com, a client I did some occasional work for in Los Angeles and this method has changed the way I approach real estate photography and has made my job a LOT easier. In addition to your camera and obligatory tripod (a MUST), here are the things you’ll need:

1. A decent off-camera flash (with an optional bounce-card). Does NOT need to be name brand. I use the Yongnuo speed-lights and they’re MORE than capable and a third the price of name-brands. If you really want to get crazy, you can use a Cheetah Light or equivalent, such as the Cowboy Studio or Neewer versions of the same speedlights.

2. Wireless flash triggers such as the Pocket Wizards or what I use are Yongnuo RF-603 flash triggers. A pair cost me 30 dollars and they do just as good a job.

3. Adobe Lightroom software

4. Enfuse Plugin by Photographers Toolbox (donationware) or Photomatix Pro by HDRSoft ($99) or Skylum’s Aurora HDR, especially their updated 2019 version. While I used to use Enfuse, since the original publication of this article, I have begun using Aurora HDR as their tools have become infinitely better. Enfuse is certainly more economical and absolutely gets the job done, but Aurora HDR and Photomatix are much more detailed programs that give you more control over certain parameters that you might want to consider after you get the process down and are looking to advance to the next level. Also, as of the original date of this writing, Adobe has included a very very good HDR Merge feature directly into Lightroom, which is an excellent option as well.

Now when you’re in the space, find your shot, frame your shot, lock the camera on the tripod, and set it at an aperture you’re happy with for the size of the space to get everything in focus, typically between f7.1 and f11. Also, make sure you shoot in RAW to get the most latitude out of your data. Now, either set your camera to bracket 3 shots as if shooting HDR, or if your camera doesn’t have an automatic bracket feature, you can fire the brackets yourself – one exposure centered at 0, one exposure at a stop underexposed and one exposure a stop overexposed using exposure compensation. I typical expose for the mid-tone in the scene so as to preserve as many details as possible. And if the window is blown out, don’t worry, that’s where the fun part comes into play.

Once you have your base exposure and the two bracketed exposures, turn off bracketing, and turn on your flash and the wireless flash triggers. Set your exposure centered at 0 and move your focus/exposure point to expose for the brightest part in the scene (typically the window). Increase your ISO to somewhere between 400-600 in order to boost the sensor’s light sensitivity to absorb as much of the flash light as possible. Now fire an exposure using the flash as a bounce flash aimed off the wall either behind the camera or the ceiling above the camera if it’s white or a light color that will bounce the flash. If there is no light surface to bounce the flash, use the bounce card or a white piece of paper. If you did it right, what you should see now that you didn’t see in the brackets is the window frame or door frame detail, as well as the scene outside the window well exposed. If there are shadowed areas in the exposure, don’t worry, you’ve already exposed for those areas in the brackets. All you’re looking for here is a well exposed exterior scene outside the door or window with little to no light leak or fringing on the door or window frames. Sometimes, depending on the scope and size of the window or door and intensity of light, you might have to shoot that exposure at a stop underexposed. What you’re looking for is a result similar to following image:

For more advanced shooters and once you have this process down, you can even shoot multiple bounce-flashed exposures to expose for different parts of the room or space.

Next step is to post-process these exposures. I cover that process in How To Expose For Interiors And Exteriors In Architecture Or Real Estate Photography – Part 2 – Post Processing. In the meantime, go fire off a few images using the methods above so you can follow along with the post-processing techniques.

And if you’re in need of real estate photography services, whether commercial or residential, please feel free to contact me or check out my Property Photography website.

For more of my madness: Instagram: @wasimofnazareth Twitter: @wasimofnazareth Google+: www.Google.com/+WasimMuklashy Facebook: www.Facebook.com/WasimOfNazareth

July 2, 2014