Jakob has been a long-time reader (and contest winner!) here at bubbleinfo.com.
His company, www.ranchophotos.com does real estate photography throughout San Diego County – many of the photo layouts and virtual tours you see are his!
The photos are awesome….can they be too awesome?
Using HDR to fix exposure stuff is totally benign. I’ve seen broker photos that actually stretch rooms (content-aware scale – in Photoshop speak), erase damage, and change paint color. Just about anything to get someone in the door.
Here in Portland Oregon, one guy offers to replace gray skies with blue – for $5 a shot! Very reasonable, if you ask me.
(HDR is in iPhones now, so it’s getting to be routine…)
Their pics look wide angle or slightly fish eye. They always make spaces look way larger. I’ve seen tiny living room pics look big. I’d be pissed if I was a buyer and got there and typical small rooms had been manipulated to look larger. Some of his pics are washed out too IMO. His exterior front of the house pics always get traffic to your listing though..
The saturation on the exterior shots looks other-worldly. Ocean-blue skies and glowing plants? What planet is this?
Before and after shots after a good scrubbing down.
It’s marketing.
I think you’re an exception for realtors, Jim. You have a very good eye and usually take very nice crisp photos. As I said, you’re the exception.
Jakob’s photos are reasonable (I’m a little shocked actually) and provide good angles and light to show detail.
On the down side, the wide angle can be deceiving and sometimes the exterior colors can be especially lurid. I think Jakob does a reasonable job of balancing out those negatives of the HDR photography and it must be difficult if your customer (homeowner/realtor) is pushing you to be deceptive.
I have seen horrible horrible RE photos where the photoshop has both gone wild and been done poorly.
His price is totally reasonable and his job is to get people in the door, which his photos definately do. Just like glamour photos of a person, they capture the house at it’s best and most desirable. Definately going to refer people to him. Wow!
Enhanced? OK
Altered? Prefer Not
Cartoony? Click ‘next’
I think these guys do a good job of staying this side of cartoony. It’s good that they recognize that it is a problem, and that buyers want an honest depiction.
I know this crazy Realtor who wets down driveways with the water hose for dusk photos. I wonder if the buyers get disappointed when they view the home the next day and the driveway isn’t still wet?
@9: Was that the same guy who turned on the car’s headlights to shine through the translucent garage-door? Must go through a lot of car-batteries keeping it all lit up 24/7, huh.
The interior shots are fine. It’s the exterior ones that look cartoonish.
In real life I’ve been disappointed because of photography on several occasions. I don’t think there was any photo shop funny business, but the photos didn’t capture the fact that the paint and other finishes were in poor shape or that the kitchen was dated. It got me in the door, of course, but I didn’t buy those houses. It just wasted everybody’s time.
It’s happened the other way, too. I was once very put off by a photograph that showed an enormous front lawn. I don’t see the point of large front lawns, and I certainly don’t want to take care of one. Well, that was just wide angle magic–the real lawn was quite reasonably sized.
LOL Tom! 🙂 ,
just enhancin’, that’s all.
And Tom was joking about the car headlights.
I once had to drive several hours to see a house I was very interested in based on the realtor photos. It was extremely annoying to find the room sizes were was significantly smaller than it appeared due to the lens effect.
At least I learned to check for non square corners in the photos as an indication that the photos have been jiggered. This is not fool proof though. By selective composition, the clues can be reduced substantially.
Like most everything in life, the key is moderation, the middle path.
Same with these pictures, as long as they are not stretched and overly photoshopped, and still provide a relatively realistic presentation of the house, I think it is a plus and a good marketing tool.
Your comments about the wide angle lense for back-yard shots is my biggest complaint.
I like it when agents list a floorplan as one of the photos.