About Ottawa's Kanata

This is a photo of a window in my house. I am especially proud of my creative way of decorating this problem window but this photo should never be part of a listing. At a recent Digital Photography course for real estate people (worth a couple of CE credits) and using this photo as an example, I learned the following:

1. Never shoot a photo towards the light. As you can see the cream coloured walls look black.
2. Use an external flash to fill in the room with enough light. The built-in flash on the digital camera is not strong enough. Again, the walls around the window disappeared.
3. No fancy frames around a photo or soft focus edges. A house listing is about seeing the rooms not the wonderful options available in Picnik or Photoshop.
4. People love to see windows in a room. You will certainly want to include them. Try taking a minimum of 4 photos in each room, one in each corner. If there are slate blinds, have the homeowner raise them as the blinds will give a moray pattern on the photo.
5. Try to get 90% of what you want in the original photo. Most listing services have standard landscape and portrait sizes to upload. Anything unusual, like this square cropped photo, will not show well on the 10 or 12 photo spaces available.

I like to take a few photos of homes that I list but I always hire a professional photographer for the all important MLS® photos and I use every allowable space.

Don't shoot your listing in the foot with bad photography.