Sellers' Toolchest

How to get your home ready for to be photographed

by Shelly Slovin

Photography is a powerful tool for selling your home. In these days of the Internet, it's even more powerful. A newspaper ad has one small photo. On the Internet, we can post color photographs—many more of them, and larger. A Realtor.com survey found that what buyers want most is more photographs. Don't underestimate their power. I had a listing that sold to buyers in Atlanta the second day on the market on the strength of the photographs on the Web site. They bought the house before they ever set foot in it.

So what can you do to make your home photograph better?

First, ruthlessly declutter. Put away everything you can, and more. Think of it as getting ready to move.
Open all the curtains and turn on the lights.
Wash the windows if necessary. We want as much light as possible.
Buy a six-dollar bouquet at Trader Joe's. It will look nice and you can still enjoy it after the photo shoot.
Make sure your Realtor has professional camera equipment or hires someone who does.
Make sure your Realtor has Photoshop or hires somebody who does.

I use an Olympus D20 with a wide-angle lens and a dedicated flash. The wide-angle lens is crucial in architectural photograpy (which is what we are doing). The dedicated flash is a separate flash with a swivel head mounted on a bracket. The flash is bounced off the ceiling which reduces shadows and gives light without the washed-out look of a regular flash

We then use Photoshop to make the most of the digital images. Copies of the finished images are prepared and optimized for various media: the Web sites, the Web commercial, brochures, the MLS, and print ads.