Freelance Real Estate Photographer

1. Introduction: Welcome to freelance real estate photographer. My name is Chris Rasmussen. I'm a former aerospace engineer's her real estate photographer. And I left engineering to pursue my dream of working for myself and being my own boss. It's actually a lot easier than you think. So here's how it works. The right camera settings, the only two camera angles you need and quality editing. And you get amazing photos every time photos, they're real estate agents will pay good money for. I show you exactly which camera to get. Even if you don't have a bunch of money, it's dropped. I show you my system for getting great photos every time. And I even show you how to go from getting your first paid gig to filling up your schedule and making 10 K or more every month. Once you learn the system that Karen basically does all the work for you. And in no time you can be your own boss and make even more money and give you exactly what you need without any fluff. I'm really excited to share what I've learned. Glad you guys found the course and let's jump in. 2. Section 1 Camera Equipment: Hey guys, I just wanna say thanks again for joining the course. I'm really excited to have you here. This journey of like leaving my old job, leaving engineering and working for myself has been amazing. This course is pretty much what I wish had existed when I was trying to do it. So I'm really excited to kinda show you how to go from working in normal jobs, working for yourself. So let's kinda jump into the material and take a look. Yeah, So as I said in the intro, that the camera basically does all the work for you That wasn't clickbait or anything like that. It's, it's one of the really cool things about real estate is probably the easiest field in photography to become really good at really quickly. Say I'm just a couple of days you can learn everything you need to know to make a $100 thousand a year. And it's also really cheap and easy to get into. So just the $1000 for a camera at all the equipment that you need and you can be out shooting and getting paid gigs. So for the first section, Let's jump into camera equipment. Now the first thing you kinda wanna know what this is, you don't have to spend a ton of money, especially with real estate. It's kinda cool the way that it works. You really don't need the most expensive camera out there to be able to get really great photos. So I'll kinda go through a little bit of the background so that you can kinda understand what goes into, into choosing a camera. But if you want to just skip ahead to, I'll just tell you which camera I recommend based on your budget. So there's really a hundreds that you could choose from out there. I'd suggest picking either Sony or Canon. Those are definitely the most widely used and probably the most reputable brands in terms of quality. And once you pick a brand, there's kinda two things to look at. So there's full frame and a crop frame. So basically inside the sensor or inside the camera you have a sensor. The light comes through the lens and hits the sensor, and then the camera turns that light into an image. So when you look at that sensor, you either have what's called a full frame or a crop frame. So basically crop frame is smaller, full-frame is bigger. With a bigger sensor, you got a bigger image. The trade-off then is those cameras are usually more expensive. So if you have the budget, I would recommend a full-frame, but it's definitely not necessary if you just want to get started. So here are my recommendations. So for crop frame, I would do the canon M5. There are about 500 bucks. Here's a link to Amazon where you can get it. And don't worry about writing all this stuff down. All include this e-book as a download so you can just kinda go through and click on this later on. And then if you want a full frame, I'd suggest the A7 3. This is what I use personally. And actually the really nice thing is Sony just launched the A7 for which I don't think you need the upgrade for real estate. So this is actually quite a bit cheaper. Now you can go on for 15, $1600, something like that. And again, here's a link to that camera. And then the one thing I want to see on cameras to don't spend all your time researching all the specs and obsessing and like posting and Facebook groups and watching YouTube videos. I suggest just picking one of these, whichever one fits your butt, fits your budget and just get started. A lot of times you'll see people spend months agonizing over which camera to get in the end, it doesn't matter. All that really matters is that you pick something, get it, and get out and start shooting. So the next thing we're looking at gear is your lens. This is probably the most important thing after you're picking your camera. The big thing that you want with the ones you want, something that's wide angle, so that'll make rooms look as big as possible. And when looking at, when looking at lenses, you want to find something that's between 15 and 18 millimeters. That's the focal length you want to shoot for. Basically, if you go lower than that, I will make the room look bigger, but you get this fish I look and it just kinda looks distorted and doesn't look quite right. And then if you go anything higher than 18 millimeters, basically you're not showing as much of the room as you could be and it's not going to look as big and inviting as it could. So yet, one thing to note with the lenses is the sensor in the camera that we talked about earlier does make a difference. So a crop frame sensor will have an effect on the The final image. Because when you have a crop frame sensor, what it basically does is it also crops in your focal length. So with the canon and 50 that we listed earlier has a crop factor of 1.6. So basically what that means is if you put a 17 millimeter lens on with the 1.6 crop factor, you end up with an image that's the equivalent of 27 millimeters, which isn't between that 15 and 18 then we talked about, so it's not going to be as wide as you want. So you actually have to compensate by getting something that's closer to 11 millimeters. Because then you end up with the 17 millimeters that we're looking for. So for the cannon 50, this is the lens I'd recommend the canon 11 to 20 to. Again, here's the link and you can just check that in the e-book later. And for the A7 3, I would recommend the Tim run 17 to 28. And because the A7 3 is a full-frame, you don't have to worry about crop factor, so the 17 will be perfect. And then looking at tripod, this is the next thing that you're going to want. There's kind of like a huge range as far as what you can spend on a tripod. Like some absurdly highly priced tripods, you could spend $1000 if you wanted to. You really don't need it. All you need is something. They can get your camera about 60 inches high and will hold it steady. That's all that really matters. So this is the tripod that I use. It's 50, $60, something like that. And it works great. And let's see. The next piece is you want to remote trigger. And what this does is when your camera is on the tripod, which you want to make sure you do is you don't want any shake and we'll get into why later. But if you were to actually physically press the button on the camera, you would get these little small vibrations in your pictures. And because of the settings we're using, that's really an ideal. So you're going to want to remote triggers so that you can have the camera take a picture without touching it and without shaking it at all. So again, if you've got the cannon, this is the one I would recommend. And if you use the A7 3, this is the one I would recommend. Again, there's links here so you can just go and grab those. They're like 2030 dollars, something like that. They're pretty cheap. And the very last thing you need is a memory card. So yes, 64 gigs is plenty. You can get something bigger if you want. It really doesn't make much of a difference. These are pretty cheap now I think they're like 15 or $20. So just pick up a memory card and you should be good to go as far as gear. So that's pretty much everything I see. I forgot what the canon setup you can get started for. Less than $1000 in total with your camera lens tripod and everything. And that's all you need to know for gear. So I would just pick what you want based on your budget. Just get it ordered. Don't obsess over gear and specs and all that stuff and just get out and start shooting. And next we'll look at how to set up your camera, which settings to use, and how to start shooting. 3. Section 2 Camera Settings: Alright, and onto Section two cameras settings. So we'll go through and I'll explain the theory behind how to set up your camera. How it interacts with light, and kind of what's ideal as far as real estate goes. This can get a little bit technical and a little confusing. And if you're not particularly interested, you can just skip to the end and I'll tell you what settings to use. But if you want a deeper understanding of how to set your exposure and why to do it a certain way. I'll just kinda run through how that works. So the basic place to start with cameras is understanding something called exposure. Exposure. Exposure is basically just how bright or dark your images. So for photos evenly exposed, it's not too bright and it's not too dark. And your exposure is kind of a byproduct of three settings. So it's your ISO, your aperture and your shutter speed. So out of those, we'll start with ISO. And the ISO is basically the camera sensitivity to light. So as you increase the ISO, the Karen becomes more sensitive. But the drawback with that is you also get a green ear and noisier picture. We're always going to want to shoot at the lowest possible ISO for real estate just so you get the cleanest and highest quality picture as possible. So moving on, The next thing we want to look at is aperture. So basically, there's a mechanical device essentially inside the camera that either lesson a small amount of light or a lot of light through the lens and into the sensor. And your aperture is denoted by a symbol of f, also called f-stop. So an aperture of four can be called like F4. You'll hear people say that way. And the way the numbers work is a little bit backwards. So a low aperture of 2.8, actually less than a lot of lay and a high aperture or something like 16. Let's add a small amount of light. So essentially that little mechanical device, I don't know exactly what you call it inside the camera. Opens and closes. So with a high aperture is going to be nice and close and only a small amount of light. And a low aperture, it's going to be wide open and let in as much light as possible. Now there's a kind of a second effect of aperture controls how much the image is in focus, which is also called your depth of field. So a low aperture will have less of the image in focus, or a smaller depth of field. And a high aperture will have more of the image in focus. So you've got a larger depth of field. So one way you can kind of think about this is you've probably seen portraits of people where the backgrounds are blurred out. So that's going to be those pictures are taken at a low aperture. And that's how you get that out-of-focus look. And then on the opposite end, landscape photos are usually taken with a high aperture so that you can see the foreground and the background and everything is in focus in sharp. So with real estate wrote, we're going to go with as an aperture of f 8. This is kind of a middle ground where you let in enough light, but you also have enough depth of field where the entire room is going to be in focus. Because what you don't want with real estate is a shallow depth of field. We're only part of your image is in focus and the other part is blurry. So that's your key takeaway for this is we're always going to shoot out an aperture of f 8. And the last thing to talk about with exposure is your shutter speed. So basically when you think about taking a picture, you push the button and you hear a click. And what's happening is the shutter inside the camera is opening. It's letting light hit the sensor and then it's closing again. And the amount of time that that shutter is open is called your shutter speed. So again, that's that click that you hear. And that's kinda the basic theory of how it works. The longer the shutter is open or the slower the shutter speed, the more light it lets in. And then, as we'll get into in the next section with bracketing, basically, we're going to set the camera up automatically to adjust the shutter speed. So again, this isn't something you really need to worry a whole lot about. So now looking at bracketing, the really interesting thing about real estate photos is there actually a blend of three to five different photos or different exposures? And the reason why is because with real estate, most of the time you have windows, right? So what's outside of a window is a lot brighter than what's inside, like inside your room. And camera technology isn't good enough yet. We're, even though our eyes can see both evenly, your camera can't. So it's either going to be the room is too dark and the outside is too bright, or the opposite. If you set the exposure, did the room's going to be to brighten, the outside would be too dark. So the way you compensate for that is you actually take three to five pictures at different brightness levels or exposures and then you blend them together and editing. And that's how you get finished pictures. Where the inside of a Rooms nice and bright. And what you see out of a window is nice and clear also without being overexposed. So here's an example of what that looks like for a, for exposure set. So this is kind of your middle ground. These are your two overexposed images right here. And these are your two underexposed. And then this is the final image that you get. So as far as how this works, we'll get to that in editing. But basically it's done with software where you tell it, you tell the program to use all these pictures and pick the right areas from each one. And then you merge them together to get this where everything is nice and even brightness inside and outside and all the way through the image. Okay, so that's what your final image looks like. And then as far as how to set your camera up to do that. So again, I mentioned three to five pictures, so I do five exposures and there are two stops apart. So a stop is just a measurement of light. I do negative four, negative 2024. So again, that corresponds to this. This is your negative four. This is 0 and this is positive 4. So underexposed, even an overexposed. And then I kinda run through and explain how to do this to how to set it up on an A7 3. So the steps are here. I'm not going to read through this, but you guys all have this e-book that you can download and just kinda run through. And the settings will be, or the method will be the same for the Canon camera. The menu system just a little bit different, um, but you can kind of go through and just follow the same logic to get that camera setup. Okay, and onto the next section, which is white balance. So it's basically a measure of how cool or warm a picture is. The thing I'd say with this as modern cameras are pretty good at setting white balanced by themselves. So I just set my camera to auto and let it set the white balance for you. And then because we are going to be shooting in RAW, There's a lot of room to adjust that later in editing. So if it is off a little bit, it can always be changed later. So again, the takeaway just leave your white balance to auto. And now we can look at focus. So again, the goal with real estate pictures is to have everything in the room in focus. So again, we set the aperture to F8. And the other note is you're going to want to focus manual. You don't want to use autofocus, especially because we're doing multiple exposures and you don't want the focus to get adjusted. Wall is taking those different exposures. So basically the way camera focus works is it's a distance perpendicular to the plane of the sensor. So basically, if you look at the lens, there's going to be graduations on it where it'll tell you what your focus distance is usually in meters. So if you set it to say five meters, everything that's five meters perpendicular from the camera will be in focus. And again, it doesn't have to be your arms to get it perfect because we're using that higher aperture. As long as you're close, the whole image should be in, in-focus. But the way I usually set that is I'll just pick the back wall of the room. I'll set that for focus. And then usually everything will be in focus in the image. And then also because you have that wiggle room, you don't have to readjust focus for every shot. I kinda just have three different settings based on the type of shot that I'm doing. So if i'm outside taking pictures of the house, I set it to five to ten meters for your medium and bigger rooms. So like living rooms, large master bedrooms, kitchens, stuff like that, I said to three to four meters. And then if you're in a small bedroom, bathroom, a closet, I'll set it to one to two meters. And that's usually a great rule of thumb to get your image is in focus. And I kinda mentioned RA earlier. So this is the file format that your camera is using. Basically Robert teens the most information and JPEG is a compressed version of RA, so you get way more color, way more information, more highlight and shadow detail with RA at the expense of a bigger file. But I wouldn't I would still whole issue and rasa that you have more information to be able to create a higher-quality picture later. So when he get your camera setup, set it to rod, not JPEG, and just leave it there. So again. So just to summarize. So just to summarize all the settings. Again, if you don't really care about the theory, this is how I would set up your camera. And the nice thing is once you have this setup, you can just save it and leave it there and shoot this way every single time. So ISO, you want to start, you want to set it to one to 200. There's only a range there because some cameras have what's called it a native ISO. So with my Sony, the lowest that it will goes to a 100. I think canon does 100. So just pick whichever is lowest for your camera. Again, set your aperture to F8. Again, the shutter speed gets changed based on the brackets. So depending on which bracket the camera is shooting, it'll adjust that shutter speed to let in either more light or less light. And the camera does that for you. Again, white balance is set to auto, and that's basically everything you need to know. So once you get your camera setup, you can save those settings and just use that every single time. And literally the camera does the work for you. 4. Section 3 Composition: Okay, and now on to section 3, composition. So composition is basically just another word for saying framing. So it's basically how you frame your image. What do you put in the picture and what's you choose to leave out? And again, one of the really cool things about real estate, if there's only two angles that you're ever, that you're ever going to need to use. One is called a one-point, are basically a straight on shot and the other is a three wall shot, so it's an angled one like you see here. And we'll get into some examples with that as we go through this section. And one thing to mention too, is the camera height matter quite a bit. So basically what you want to shoot for is having the camera on the tripod about 12 to 18 inches above the tallest piece of furniture in the room. So you'll want to adjust it as you move through different rooms based on what kind of furnitures and there and then also whether you're in a kitchen or a bathroom or not. So my starting point for most rooms with that tripod that I linked to above is just extending two of the top legs and then pulling the center column up. So if you were to measure it out, I'd be about 48 or sorry, 45 inches off the ground. And then here are my rules of thumb for camera height. So basically most living areas, bedrooms with standard furniture that isn't particularly bulky or tall. You want about 45 inches. Kitchens and bathrooms. I'll bring it up a little bit to 50 inches just because the countertop height is usually a little bit taller than most of your furniture. And then outdoor shots, I'll do 50 to 60 inches so you want to even higher and in those cases. But again, it's kind of just going off. What you see in the camera, what looks best. So these are good starting point, but feel free to adjust those as you go. Another thing that's really important is getting your camera level and making sure it's not rotated. So one of the cool things about A7 3 is it has this digital level and I'm sure they can and does also. So it'll show you here in the center if it's level and then these ones on the outside show whether it's rotated or not. And the important thing with this is this is not something that you can fix with editing. And they can create sort of a strange look if this is off. So you can see with this, it's not rotated but it's pointed down a little bit. And then if you look here at the angle up and down is correct, but it's rotated. So what you want is this, it's perfectly level and it's rotated. So all your lines are going to be vertical and everything in the final picture will look the best if you use, if you do it that way. So now we'll go through some examples of the two shots that I mentioned. So the first one is a one-point, So basically just straight on where you kinda center everything in your picture. So yeah, this is especially good in houses where there's symmetry. Different features that you want to show like a nice balance with. So we'll just kinda run through a couple examples here. So again, just straight at this wall, you've got a nice fireplace and some art and stuff to highlight here. And here's another one. Again, this is a good example of symmetry because you've got this set of windows and doors in the center. And then you're just looking straight at it. Also, this furniture kinda points and helps frame this this picture. And again, just looking straight on the cameras a little bit taller, if you can tell here. Just because these chairs are fairly high. So I did raise the camera a little bit here as compared to this picture. And then the other shot that you want is three walls. So basically you want an angle where either on the left side or the right side, you want to just show the edge of one of the walls. And what that does is kind of create a reference point. And then you fill the frame with as much of the room as possible as you kinda look around. So here's an example where your third wall is on the left. And here's an example where it's on the right. So again, you just put a small amount in the frame over here and then show as much of the room as possible. So again, using a wide-angle lens and using this technique, this is how you get rooms to look really big. And a lot of times you can make it look even larger in a picture than it actually seems in real life. And then same thing. Your third wall on the left and then showing as much as possible. And bedroom example here, third wall and image. So again, it's fairly straightforward. Year they're going to have one or one or the other. And usually I'll do a couple of each and we'll kind of get into how to shoot an entire house later on. And then this is another example of a third wall. You'll kinda notice I left him more of the wall in this one than I did in the others. And the reason for that is you kind of have a narrow hallway here. And what you don't want to do is put the camera too close to your third wall because it'll automat, sorry, it'll artificially make that wall look too big if the camera is too close to it. So good rule of thumb, this habit about one to two feet away. And then also just because of these pictures, they created a nice element. And then you just have an empty white wall over here too. So again, this is kinda like one of those scenarios where he might tweak these rules of thumb a little bit. And they don't necessarily all have to be framed exactly the same. And again, those are the only two angles you need me what you're straight on shot, and your three washout where you show as much of the room as possible. 5. Section 4 Detail Shots: Alright, and on to the next section. We're looking at detail shots. So this would be a nice quick simple section. Here's a example of a detail shot. And basically this isn't something that I do a whole lot. Usually it's just the higher end luxury houses where they want more photos and you have nice elements that you want to take details of. So the big difference with these is I switched to a 50 millimeter lens. And then you'll have to adjust focus as you go for each one of these. So the big difference with these is I use a 50 millimeter lens and you'll want to adjust focus as you go for each shot. When you do these. A good thing to do is just ask the realtor like which parts of the house they want to make sure to highlight. So usually that's like higher end appliances. Interesting parts of a room. Maybe they have a Jacuzzi tub in the bathroom. Interesting furniture, stuff like that. So here's a couple examples. Like a Viking stove, high-end appliance. Just a faucet. Not particularly anything fancy, but it's just kind of a nice picture. Again, he got this little bar area. Yeah. Just furniture. So again, it's just kinda like to supplement the rest of the pictures of the house. And again, this is something I only do for hire and homes. So if you don't have the budget to spend on another lens, I wouldn't worry about that. The 50 millimeter lenses are generally pretty cheap. You can find one, something like two hundred, three hundred dollars. But again, it's definitely not necessary. It's just kind of a nice bonus if you want to include some extra pictures for your real estate agents. 6. Section 5 Drones: Alright, moving on, we're going to look at trends. So obviously drones are a lot of fun. They also give you a really unique perspective on houses. And they're also great because when you add drowns to your normal, she is just an opportunity to make more money without doing a whole lot more work. So I typically will charge like a $100 for drone photos and that only takes 15 and 20 minutes. So it's a really great way to also make a bunch of extra money without much work. And obviously it's a lot of fun to just get a drone to get out and fly around with and take pictures. So as far as how to do that, It's a little bit different, but there's not much you have to do. So you want to set the exposure to auto. Always keep your ISO at the lowest setting. Again, shoot in RAW as we did before. And then you're going to do a bracket with just three photos. So you do negative 20 and positive two. So you don't need those severely underexposed, overexposed shots with drones for the most part. So you're negative four and positive four you don't need here. The other thing with drones is your aperture and focus are usually fixed, so you don't need to worry about that. The drone sets those by itself. And it's really good at doing that in a way that the entire picture will be in focus. So that's not really anything you need to worry about. The only thing you're really going to need to set is make sure you're in raw. Make sure your ISO is its lowest setting. And then make sure you're set to take brackets which drones will be able to do also. And we're looking at composition. So again, how you're framing, it's kinda the same rules, but it's a little bit different with drones. So there's basically four types of shots that I usually get with drones. So you're looking at the types of shots you've got your one-point or you're straight on again, just like we had with your normal shots. You want your angled shot so you'll get the four corners of the house. So rather than the three wall, you're going to want to center the house in these shots. So you'll have something like this rather than like clipping one corner. It would look kind of weird for outdoor shots. And then you've got your top down. This is really good for showing the property and kinda of what's around the house. So that's pretty self-explanatory. Just get right over the house, looks straight down, and then take a photo of that angle. And then if you have a house that's in a place that has a particular nice review. So you have a lake or a park or mountains nearby. You'll want to kinda zoom out of it and show as much of the landscape as possible. So obviously with this property like the mountains in the stream and all this stuff for huge selling points. So these are really great pictures to get in a case like this. Now one of the sort of DOM headaches with flying a drone commercially is you have to get a what's called a part 17 license with the FAA. It's pretty stupid. Like basically you can fly a drone without this, as long as you're not making money. And then as soon as you do start making my face says you have to pay us. Basically you just have to go pass a test that says you can fly a drone commercially and then you're allowed to do it. There's a whole bunch of courses out there on Lake what you can learn or on what you need to learn to pass this test. For the most part, you don't need them. So here is a link to a YouTube video That's really great. It's totally free. I think it's an hour and a 2.5 hours long and obesity covers everything you need to know. So I just watched this two or three times. There's a couple of practice tests. So once you feel confident, confident enough, after going through this, then you can go take your test. Again. Don't waste the money on trunk courses or anything like that. Just watch this YouTube video a couple of times. Take your notes and you should be good to go for that. And then as far as which drum TBI, I've got a link here, but I use the DJI air to S. I think it's about $1000. And it, It's got a one-inch sensor, 20 megapixel photos, really, really high-quality, but you don't have to spend a ton of money. So like the maverick three pros, really overkill. You don't need anything quite that expensive. So here's a link to it, but the DJI air to us is what I would go with for that. 7. Section 6 Shoot Types: All right, So on to Section 6, your different tissue types. So we've kind of talked about all the ins and outs of like how the cameras work, how to set up your settings using drones, all that. And now we're going to start talking about how you kind of bring it together and what a real estate shoot usually looks like. So there's four different types of shoots that I offered to real estate agents. 30 photos, 40 photos, drone shots in Twilight shots. So we'll run through each of those. So the most common one that I do is 30 photos. This is definitely the majority of the shoots that I do is basically what I recommend for any house that's under 3000 square feet. So 30 photos is a good number to make sure you can show the house in its entirety without kind of overwhelming the person with a bunch of photos that you just don't need. And then we can kinda go through what that usually looks like and how those how we break down those 30 pictures. So usually I start outside with the front of the house. I'll get four different pictures here. So I'll do one that's straight on angled from the right, angled from the left, and then a front porch or entryway if it has one. And then moving on to the back of the house, basically the same thing. Kind of in the center of the art, looking at the house. And then he sent out the house again looking from the left and then Ingold again looking from the right, and then also usually grab an opposite corner. So I'll stand close to the house and then show the backyard itself. And then moving on to the inside. So you want your emphasis to be your living areas for the most part. So living room, kitchen, dining room, and then master bedroom. So I'll do three to four pictures from the living room. I'll usually do one or two of the points and one to two of the three wall angle shots. And one thing you wanna do with your three walls as I like to shoot opposite corners, because that shows the full layout of each room with only two pictures. So if you think about like, you walk into the room, pick a corner, and then walk to the opposite corner and then take a picture kind of looking in the direction that you just took the first shot from. So again, I'll kinda repeat this with a kitchen wanted to three wall shots and then wanted to straight on shots. Each kitchen can be a little tricky because the layouts can vary quite a bit. But as you kinda run through and do this a couple of times, you'll get a good idea of which angles will look best. And I'm also going to run through some examples from actual shoots that I did a little bit later on. So you can kinda see the patterns in the things that I'm looking for with each shot. Dining room, I usually just do two shots, a one straight on and one angled. And then master bedroom, I'll usually do one straight on and then two angles again, opposite corners. And then for each bedroom, it kinda depends on the size of the house, but I'll do at least one of each bedroom, sometimes two. And then one photo of each bathroom and one photo of the laundry room. And another note. I don't usually take pictures inside of a garage unless it's particularly nice. So if they've like recoded the floor, have custom cabinets, stuff like that than I will. But otherwise they don't worry about it. People know what the inside of a garage looks like. So next up is 40 photos. So this is basically what I do for larger houses. So houses that are more than 3000 square feet, and it's basically the same as the list above. I usually just get maybe one extra picture of the master bedroom. Maybe an extra the master bedroom and then the rest would just be extra pictures of your living areas. So kitchen living room, dining room. And if the front or backyard is particularly nice or has something interesting about it, then I'll grab an extra shot or two there and onto drone photos. So I like to deliver ten pictures. I try not to go too far over that because again, you don't want to overwhelm the real estate agent with all the pictures that you could get. So I usually do front of the house straight on back of the house, straight on each of the four corners to top-down shots. So I'll do one thats that fills the frame mostly with the house and then I'll just go up higher so you can see the full property. And then if there's any view shots, I'll do kind of the same thing. One that's sort of medium distance or it shows the house and some of the property and then farther back where you show more of the view and more of what's surrounding the house. And onto Twilight. Twilight shoots are really interesting. So it's done basically right after the sun has set and we have all the lights in the house turned on. So these are really, really cool looking fixtures. Here's an example of what that would look like. So again, we have you you're going to want to get there early, make sure every lightened house is turned on. And then this is a little bit tricky because you have to move quick, so you wait until five to ten minutes after the sunsets, you start to get like these lights popping. And you're kind of getting that like blue, pinkish color in the sky. And then you're going to want to run through these as quickly as you can because the light is going to fade really quick. And you want to avoid having overly noisy images because they're too dark. So the shots that I usually get, here's another example from the side. So the shots that I usually get so front of house straight on. Again, your two angles from the front yard and the entry back of the house straight on again, two angles of the backyard and back patio. And then any other stuff that's particularly interesting about the house. So these are the types images that you get realtors love these. I think they're really cool way to show off a house. Especially if it's a house that has a lot of glass like this. If it's a smaller home with like just a couple of windows, these don't tend to work as well. But if you have a bigger house, I would definitely try and do twilight photos as well. And that covers all the different types of shoots that I'll offer. 8. Section 7 Prepping the house: Okay, and now we're going to look at how to stage and prep a house or apartment to get ready for a shoot. This is kind of an underrated aspect of ending, of getting really great shots for your clients. So there's a few key things that you're going to want to do. Everyone has a little bit different style of how they like to do this. I'll just kinda run through my approach. So the first thing I'll do is go through the house and open up all the blinds. And don't even in a key distinctions, if you look here, the blinds are all the way up. If you have blinds like the traditional ones that kinda rotates open and close. I don't just rotate them so they're open. I actually pulled them all the way up to let in as much light as possible. And it also makes the space feel larger and more open and inviting as well. So that's the first thing I do. The other one, this is kind of like a point of style, but I always turn the lights on. Again. There's some people that only use natural light. I find that a lot of times there isn't enough natural light to fill an entire house. So I always go through and turn all the lights on, including any lamps in the house. One thing you might find every once and awhile is if there's a light bulb that's burned out or a lamp that doesn't turn on. Go for symmetry. So see there's two lamps that are next to Sam master, or next to a bed and a master bedroom. And one works in one doesn't. I'll actually just leave them both on because it'll look strange if one lamp is on and one isn't. So that's kinda the case where I wouldn't have all the whites on. The next thing is to declutter. So I just kinda run around, make sure there's no shoes sitting out. There's no like a hide trash cans, tidy up any pillows or blankets, that kinda stuff. Usually I'll ask the homeowner to do that before I get there, put away any food that's on a kitchen counter, stuff like that. But I'll just kinda take a second and run through and just kind of do that really quick when I'm in each room. The other thing I'll kinda do is take any C like shampoo bottles. So bottles, you just kinda drop those in the shower or into the tub as long as the camera can't see it and then I'll just put it back when I'm done. That actually goes quite a long way as far as ending up with nice pictures where things look really clean basically. And then this is another little thing that was taught to me by the person that trained me. So just going through each bathroom and folding the toilet paper. So it looks like this. It's not really going to make any difference to the picture necessarily, but what it does is the homeowner will notice and the real estate agent will notice. And I've I've had this happened plenty of times where the agent will comment say, we'll just kinda make a note of like how much attention to detail you're putting into the shoot. So this is something that takes five seconds, but it's something that they'll always remember. And the Asia will think of you as somebody that goes the extra mile. And there'll be more likely to hire you just for something small like that. And one last note on PrEP. So some other things to the bathroom, make sure toilets are always closed. I open up shower curtains again to feel make the room feel as bad in open as possible. Hide shampoo bottles, hide soap bottles, Kleenex, stuff like that. Just kinda move it to a place where it's not going to be in the picture and then you can put it back when you're finished. 9. Section 8 Floor plan example: Now onto a, an example of a floor plan. So I think this is going to be one of the most helpful aspects of this course. Just seeing what a full shoot actually looks like in terms of the final set of images that you're going to deliver to an agent. So basically what I did is I took a floor plan from a house that I did. And I'm not gonna go through every single picture, but I've included a bonus that you can download and use this as a reference. So all these angles have a corresponding picture to show where I set up and where I stood and took each picture and then what that final picture looks like. So here is just a quick a quick look at that so you can see what's going on. Here's the floor plan. So you've got like sharp one here, two here, three here, four here. And then these are the pictures that went with it. So they're labeled here so you can reference. So this is shot one and this is shot one. So this angle is this picture. And then same for shot to, again labeled number 234. So you can kinda see how I move through a house and how I'm picking each angle. So all of these angled ones are going to be three walls. So this will be, this will be your third wall. And I went over here and a three wall, Same here that I did a one-point looking this way. A one-point looking this way. So you can kinda go through here. So three wall, three wall. Again, three wall on the right. The layout of this is a little strange because of the angle furniture, but this is a one-point. And this is a one-point. And I kind of go through all the way through the house. So this would be good to kinda look through. And you can kind of see as you go through this example, it's just kinda the same thing over and over. So 1.1.3 wall, 1.3 wall. And even kinda go through and see how this works for an entire house. So here's the first floor. This is a second floor master bedroom and bath. And this is a second floor bedroom bathroom. Just kind of more areas of the house. I think this was a third floor, kind of big open office area. And again, you can just kinda like run through, see what, what angles I'm using and just kinda see how it ends up being the same thing over and over and over again. And once you kind of get an understanding of that, the cool thing is you can run through these houses really quickly. So even though this is a really big house, I think the picture is only took 30 or 40 minutes once. How the lights on in the blinds open and that kinda thing. And then next I also go through and show where I'm getting the shots of the outside of the house. So again, it's kind of the same shots that we listed earlier. And I'll just show you a couple of examples really quick. So straight on front of the house, angled front of the house. Angles front of the house. Or I guess this is the side. These are a little tricky because the house is raised up. But you can see I was still able to get the camera high enough without having to angle up and still fill the frame with the house. So you've got your angles. Side of the house, opposite side, again, front porch. And I did basically a three wall here where this is this railing and this post is kind of acting as your third wall. Straight on shot. And this is kind of an angled shot, angle shot of the back patio. And there's just some more photos that you can kinda go through to see the examples of what a full chute looks like. 10. Section 9 Drone example: Alright, and now that we've gone through a full example of irregular indoor or inside, outside shots of a house will go through an example of a set of drone photos. Against the same principles. It's basically going to be a mix of straight on shots and angled shots, a couple of straight down shots. And then the big difference with this is you're just going to have varying distances. So here's a straight on, kinda fill the frame as much as possible with the house. And then we do the same angle but more zoomed out. And then it kinda depends on your perspective. This is the front of house is kinda angle. This is kind of straight on. And then this is kinda showing the front of the house, your side of the house. And then this is one of those view shots that we talked about. This is sort of a view Shaw and then just kind of a detail to show different elements of this property because it's such such a big space. And then you can even do drone shoots at twilight two. If you're gonna do twilight shoots with both a drone and the camera, I definitely recommend doing your drone first basically, right? Has the sunsets. Just because you're gonna get more dynamic range from your regular camera than you are with a drone. So it's better to do the drone earlier when there's more light. So it is pretty tricky to try and do both. You just have to move really quick and start a little bit earlier. But kinda same principles. Here's a straight on shot with the drone. This is just a little bit higher and a little bit farther back to show more of the landscape. You've got another angled shot. And one thing you want to notice what the John is, we're actually fairly close where the house is filling most of the frame. And then same here. This is even closer where parts of the house or cutoff, but this is shown here and it's not particularly interesting like this X and the house is the most appealing. Again, another straight on shot. So again, you just kinda seeing the same pattern over and over. Just angled shot, angled shot, straight on. Here's kind of a side straight on, showing some of the mountains back here. And that's basically all you need to know as far as drone photos go. Again, there's going to be I'm going to include the full set of all these pictures so you can kinda reference these later on as well. 11. Section 10 Editing: All right, and now we're gonna move on to editing. So the big thing with editing is I would highly recommend outsourcing or hiring somebody to do this for you. So kinda as we talked about before with your multiple exposures and blending those together, there's software that can do it for you, but actually doing that well and making the photos look high-quality, It's actually really difficult to do. There's people that run entire businesses that do nothing but that. And there's just, it's kinda just way too complicated for me to recommend trying to learn how to do it yourself. You'll end up wasting a lot of time. And it's pretty unlikely that you're going to be able to create pictures that are kind of up to standard for what real estate agents are expecting. It's just really, really difficult to do well. So what I definitely recommend is hiring somebody else that can do that for you. And the nice bonus of that one is it gives you a really fast turnaround time. So the company that I use is called visitors. You can get in touch with them and use them directly with this email address. And the owner of that is here in Denver where I'm based. But the team that he's trained as in Vietnam. And the cool thing about that is we can upload pictures at the end of the day and because they're in a different time zone, you upload the pictures at night, you go to bed, you wake up, and the edited pictures are in your inbox when you wake up. So it basically takes no time at all. And it's also pretty affordable at something like a dollar, $1.50, a picture that can vary a bit, but something like that. And then the nice thing, or this sort of bonus about that too, is because you're not spending time on editing. Your, you have more time freed up to do more shoots. So you can actually make more money and then you don't even have to worry about the editing. It's taken care of by people that really know what they're doing. It doesn't cost very much. And you get the pictures back really fast, which the agents love, you'll find they're kind of answer you to get pictures back. So if you can do that the next morning, you're a lot more likely to get hired over and over by those agents. So again, this is the company that I use personally. You can get in touch with them. And just to kinda be complete, here are a couple of other companies that I recommend they do good work. Prices vary a bit, but they're still around that same price range. So you can check out the three of those or visitors and decide who you want to go with as far as you're editing goes. 12. Section 11 Business Setup: Now we can look at how to go about setting up your business. This is definitely a section I wish I could have just looked up when I was starting because there's so much information out there and it's so confusing. But in the end, there's really only a couple of things you need to know and this will just save you so much time. So the first thing I'd recommend is setting up an LLC. This is going to depend on where you live. But the basic idea of an LLC, which is called a limited liability company, is it separates your personal liability from the business. So say something happened, somebody tripped over a tripod and some House decided to sue you or something weird like that. They can only sue the assets of the business. They can't come after any of your personal assets. So this is a good way of like just kinda covering your bases and making sure that people can't come after you personally. Now, the process can vary a lot. I know here in Colorado, It's really simple. You do it online. It takes five or ten minutes and it costs like $50. The best way to do it is just searched Secretary of State, and then put in your state and then file an LLC and kinda see how that works. Again, it's going to vary a lot. I know in California, it's a lot more complicated and more expensive. You have to like send in paperwork and it costs something like $700 rather than 50. So this will vary a lot. But if it's cost-effective where you live, I definitely recommend setting that up so that you're protected. And the next thing you need is called an employment identification number EIN. This is something you get from the IRS. I'm pretty sure it's entirely free. It's just something that you need to do. And then here's a link on how to apply again, just a couple minutes. I don't think it cost anything. And that's something that you're going to need as well. So once you have both of those setup, then you're going to want to go to your bank and open a bank account. So they're going to ask you for your LLC information and your EIN in order to open up a business checking account. And the big reason I'd recommend opening a separate bank account is just to keep your accounting streamlined. You don't want to mix personal transactions and business transactions. It becomes a giant headache. So I would just take an extra hour once you have this, go to the bank, get a separate account set up and run all your business expenses through that account and keep your personal stuff separate. And as far as contracts go, I definitely recommend having a contract with pretty much everyone that she worked for it, even if the real estate agent happens to be a friend. There's this lawyer that kinda says you don't have a problem until you have a problem. So you may not think you need it. But just again, to kinda be safe and for completeness, I would set up an account with his company, created a template. And then what you can do is all you have to do is put in the agent's name and email address and send off that template. And it, it, it and then it takes like 30 seconds. And then you're covered that way. I do have a sample contract that you can use as a starting point included in the bonuses for the course. So you can download that and use it as a starting point. But again, that's not legal advice, so it's definitely worth talking to an attorney. If you have the budget for that. That's just kinda my disclaimer there. And as far as accounting and payments go, so a lot of people use QuickBooks, you can feel free to do that. I actually use a service called wave. The nice thing about them is it's totally free. And even with my LLC registers and S Corp and kind of the complexity that comes with that wave is still done. Everything I needed it to do. It's really you like user-friendly. It's easy to figure out, and it doesn't cost anything. Again, nothing wrong with QuickBooks if you want spend the money, The suggests what I've done and it does everything that I need and doesn't cost anything. And that's basically everything you need to know as far as getting your business setup and ready to do shoots and make money. 13. Section 12 Pricing and Website: And I'm moving along as far as how I recommend running your business or at least how I do it, we're going to look at pricing and getting a website setup. So pricing is going to vary a bit depending on where you are. It may not hurt to just kinda call around or just see what other companies are charging. But this is what I charge for each different type of shoot. And this is kinda what I'd recommend as far as its starting point. So a 150 for 30 photos to a 100 for $4,000 for Twilight, and a $100 for drone. These are really nice upsells because the twilight photos take 1015 minutes and drone photos are the same. So you can make $200.2030 minutes just by adding those to a shoot. And it's it's just extra money because you're already there doing your 30 or 40 photoshoot. And then moving on to a website. So I use Squarespace. The big thing here is I wouldn't worry too much about it. Just find something that looks clean and professional. I would just use one of their templates and get a good set of pictures up. I'm just make it nice and clean. But don't spend a ton of time on this. I would just do a homepage with your best pictures and an About page with a picture of you. So that About page is actually going to be really, really important. Because if you actually look at statistics outside of the homepage and About page is the most highly visited page on a website. People want to know like who they are potentially working with. And then having a picture of you just kind of creates more of a connection and they're more likely to get in touch. And then on that About page I would just put a simple contact form. One list your e-mail address, but then also have a contact form where they can just type in their information there. And again, I know it sounds kinda ridiculous that like people aren't willing to copy and paste in email address. But again, if you look at statistics, the follow through rate actually drops if you don't have a contact form. So I get that setup so people can directly contact you there and it just goes to your email address. And one last note. So Rami's saints, he has this interesting phrase that he talks about called playing business. And what he means by that is like actually starting in business and getting out there and trying to find clients can be pretty challenging. So what you'll see a lot of people do is they spend weeks like agonizing over creating a logo, getting business cards made, getting their websites set up, business phone numbers, if they think they need that, all that kind of stuff. And all that really does is delay them from actually doing the hard work. So again, I would kinda keep things as simple as possible. Get a site built on Squarespace, put your pictures up, create a contact form, and then just kinda get back to work on finding clients. 14. Section 13 Portfolio and Clients: All right, Now that we've gone through all the technical stuff of camera settings, which camera to buy and getting your business set up. You're all ready now to go out and start getting paying clients and start making money. So the first thing you're going to want to do is build a portfolio. And there's sort of a catch-22 with this of to get clients who need photos and to get photos you need clients. So people kinda get stuck at this step quite a bit and don't really know where to go. So what I kinda recommend doing is first just take pictures of your own house or a friend's house. Again, he ideally you want to find a place that's, I'm just kinda nice. You don't want a grungy studio apartment or anything like that. So try to take pictures of your own place, a friend's house, that's nice. And then another thing you can do is run Airbnb and take pictures of it. And Airbnb is always going to be basically set up and ready for you to go as far as taking pictures when you get there because it's going to be clean and it's not going to be cluttered and that kind of thing. So this is a great option. It can usually be a pretty cheap investment. Just do something on a weekday when they're not busy. Find a place that's local. Go take pictures and that's a great way to start getting a portfolio together. And now once you have a set of pictures, you can use those pictures to fill up your website. And then what I'd recommend doing is starting an Instagram page that's dedicated to your business and then uploading photos there and using that as a portfolio. And then what I would do is message realtors from Instagram. So the big thing you don't want to do is send them cold emails because they just get bombarded with email and she's going to end up being ignored for the most part. But the nice thing with Instagram is it's more likely to get red. And then they can also just click right over to your profile and see your pictures. So that's the most efficient way that I've found to again, touch with realtors and get a shoot setup. And as far as how you approach it, I would offer to do the first one for free and then say, if you like my work, then we can talk about what my pricing structure looks like and go forward from there. But make sure you kill that first you get really good pictures. Be enjoyable to work with, show up on time, kind of all of that stuff. And just repeat this with as many photographers or sorry, but there's many realtors as you can. And then that's how you're going to start building up a client base. Now there's another objection that you're going to hear quite a bit. And it's that the reals are already has a photographer. Because usually once they find somebody, they kinda stick with them and use them for all their properties. But a good strategy I found for that is just say like, um, that they can use, you, can use you as a backup just in case they're photographer isn't available as sick, you know, kind of whatever. And then you can still get in there and do this shoe for them. And then 1, if the, if their main photographer can't do the shoot, then they're likely to call you. And then the other thing that happens sometimes too, is if your photos are so much better looking than their usual photographer, they could end up switching to you and using them are in easing you as their main photographer. So as far as what to say, here's a word for word script that I'd recommend. I'm not gonna go through and read this, but this is what I would send when you do message those Realtors on Instagram. I found this to be really effective. It's nice and short and simple. And you can also personalize this a little bit. You don't want it to sound canned. You wanted to sound genuine. So this is a good starting point as far as reaching out to realtors and getting your first clients and then building from there. And then once you have 1, 2, 3 shoots lined up. As far as getting more clients. One of the good things is you can kinda just keep repeating that system. And it becomes easier because as you build more of a portfolio, you kind of establish, establish yourself as a solid real estate photographer in that area and more people will start seeing your work. Another thing you can do that's really easy is as you get real tears as clients, just ask them like do they have any other friends in the industry that are looking for a good photographer. And you'd be surprised that a lot of times they do. So that's a great way of just kind of expanding. So I'll just keep doing the work. Just kinda keep doing this system over and over. And then with time it'll kinda just compound on itself where more and more agents will see your photos because you're doing more shoots. And then they'll ask their friends like, Hey, who did these photos for you, they look great. And then it just concerts fueling itself. And another option too, if you want to keep things a little bit simpler is sub-contracting for another company. And this is actually how I got started. So the person that trained me ran his own business and then I just went out and shot for him. And it's actually really easy because you don't want to deal with all the scheduling, the contracts, sending photos back and forth to editors and all that. And you can actually make really good money. So when you include it, like all my drone shoots and all that kinda stuff, I ended up averaging about $50 an hour, just sub-contracting. And it was really simple. He would just basically send me addresses every day of like go take pictures of these houses. These are the packers that they want. And it keeps things really easy. And again, you can make really good money doing that. So that's basically how I would suggest getting started. How to get your first client, how to build from there. And then some other options. If you want to just keep things nice and simple. 15. Section 14 Keys to Success: All right, and now we're on to our last section of the course, keys to success. So there's a few things that I've kind of noticed, at least in my journey. And then other people that I've noticed that do really well with this. Where they're able to create a sustainable stream of work and make good money and actually make this work in the long-term. So the first thing is, the quality of your photos is going to be the most important thing. It doesn't actually matter in the end. How much the realtor likes you, how responsive you are, how good your pricing is. If the quality of your photos isn't selling houses. So that's the first thing I would focus on. So go through all these examples. Do as many practice sheets. It's your own, at your own house as you can. And then also go through. And I would definitely recommend investing in a good editor to start with, just because your photos are going to be that much better. So I would say quality should be your first focus. And before you go out and try and get clients, make sure you've got a good understanding of all the principles and are able to create good quality pictures each time. And then once you have that down, you're going to want to focus on what kind of experience the real SAR has with you. And then also the person whose house you're shooting. And one thing that kind of, that I found kind of surprising is that I kinda thought to work in this industry, you have to be super extroverted. And while it's great, if that's your personality type is definitely not needed. You're not really there to entertain them as long as you're friendly, easy to talk to, easy to get along with, That's really plenty to do well. And the next thing I've noticed is just being responsive. You'd be surprised how often, like realtors will reach out to photographers and not hear from them for three days or four days or two weeks and times. I've definitely landed clients just because I got back to them within an hour or two. So you don't have to constantly be sitting checking your email. But I would make a point to respond to basically every email that you get within 24 hours. So if not the same day, definitely by the next day. And you'll notice just doing that. You'll get more clients that way. And kind of along the same lines, customer service is going to be really important too. So things like reschedules, last-minute cancellations will happen. Um, I know it's frustrating a lot of times to maybe waste your time, but you have to also remember that it's kinda out of the real tears hands a lot of the time. So if they're if the homeowner comes back and says, Hey, we didn't get the house clean and time or whatever. There's not really anything anybody can do about it. And while it is frustrating, and I wouldn't let it happen over and over again. If it's kinda hear on there, the realtor will definitely appreciate you being flexible and just rescheduling. I'm just kinda wrap things up. That's pretty much everything you need to know. Kinda like I said, keep it simple, just focus on the foundations. And the big thing is like get a camera, Learn the settings and just kinda get to work. Don't play business again as raw meats AT says. And then just to kind of finalize everything, I've got a good set of bonuses that I think are going to be super helpful. So we've got a private Facebook group. I mentioned the sample contracts. I also put together a cheat sheet that you can bring with you. So it has all those cameras, settings, your ISL, your aperture, your brackets, white balance, all that stuff. So that might be good to just save onto your phone or to bring with you to shoot until you kinda get that stuff memorized. And that floor plan that I went through, I've got a download for that. And then I've got a couple more photos sets. The you can see one of an apartment, one of a house, and then one of a twilight shoot. So thanks again for joining the course. I'm glad you guys are all here. I'd love to see your work, so definitely make sure you join that Facebook group and post them, your photos in there, get feedback. I'll be as active as I can and helping out with questions and stuff. And yeah, I'll see you guys in the group.