How to take decent exterior real estate images

When you are shooting architecture for a realtor it is different to shooting it for commercial purposes of an architectural office. The creative part is less but that doesn’t mean it less fun though!

I love being creative

Don’t get me wrong. I love being creative and taking these amazing twilight images or looking for that perfect angle of a building. I like waiting for the clouds to come in perfectly or that car passing by to catch these amazing car trails.

It can be tedious

Sometimes though, being creative to a high level can be tedious as well. Think about it. When you have to make 4-6 highly creative images which takes a whole day to shoot and another whole day to post process can drag you away from simplicity.

Amazing images don’t have to be complicated!

What do I mean by that? Easy! There are a lot of amazing images, which can be captured within a few seconds and could be way more stunning than this highly photoshopped commercial image you just spend a big amount of hours on. When you spend so many hours on one image you can get lost in space. You don’t have these fresh eyes anymore and should actually make a break and look at it a day later.

I like quick results

Yeah I really do and therefore, I’m sometimes happy to get a job here and there from a realtor and finish my 10 – 12 images including the shooting on one day. Ok I earn a bit less money but I finished the entire project and don’t have to think about it anymore.

What about these exterior shots?

There is just not much about it. You set up the camera on your tripod. Look for the best angle to get everything important into the photo, set your ISO as low as possible and your aperture to the sharpest sweet spot of the lens you use. Now be aware to think about the position of the sun. Are there any nasty shadows or is there no shadow at all. Yes? Good! Wait a bit until it improves. Then bracket your image and you are good to go. With my new camera the dynamic range is even good enough to get away with one image and nothing is blown out.

Enjoy your work

Now it’s time to open your RAW-Converter and deal with contrast lighting, saturation and sharpening. I just use Photoshop for these images, if there is something I have to clone out, nothing else. So 90% of the time, I hit just the export button, double-check my images and send them to the client. That is a great feeling, if you are done that quickly. 🙂