Vacation Rental Photography Should Sell the Stay

All right, everybody. We’re here to talk about vacation rentals and how the media, especially photography, differs from a standard real-estate shoot. It is common for Airbnb and Vrbo hosts, and the agents they work with, to hire a real-estate photographer for a vacation-rental shoot. You may be asking, "Jason, aren’t you a real-estate photographer?" Yes, I am.

However, we offer our own set of packages for vacation rentals. We will dive into those packages at a later date, but right now I just want to tell you why that’s important to have specific vacation rental options because we do everything completely different than regular real estate.

So first of all, the main difference with vacation rental shoots is the equipment that we use. Now yes, we do get a lot of the same exteriors and interiors that are just establishing shots to show the rooms and to show the property. That is all the same.

But on top of that, we use different lenses with shallow apertures and longer focal lengths to give a nice, I don’t know, atmospheric look into the home. So it’s more like you feel like you’re in the place rather than us just showing you a room from one corner to another.

Now showing you a room from one corner to another is a great way to sell a house with real estate, but it doesn’t make it feel all that warm and inviting. If there’s a nice couch or a plant, we want to highlight the feel of that space. So we spend way more time and energy swapping lenses, taking detailed shots, the shoots will typically have more photos.

It’s really, really, really about the feel of the home. We don’t care so much as to how the transition is between the living room and the kitchen or whether the two bedrooms are next to each other. It’s what’s the bed like? Those pillows, that’s not staged.

That’s how it is when you’re going to be there. Same with the plants, same with the games, same with the landscaping. That’s not real estate staging, which is a great thing, by the way. I love me some good staging, but that stuff for vacation rental, that’s what is going to be there when you’re at that home.

You want to know that that blanket is soft. You want to know that that plant is freshly watered. You just really want to know what the feel of the space is, and that is where it’s really important that you hire us to do specific vacation rental focused shoots. So let’s take a look at a couple specific images here.

You’ve probably seen them going by already, but I’ll tell you exactly why they’re different from standard real estate. This here, this is not a traditional real estate photo. We’re looking down a little bit over a chair, but this just feels really inviting. I want to sit in that chair by the fireplace, and this one here, it just gives you a really nice look of the patio.

Now this is a pretty normal shot that you would get with a real estate shoot as well, but it’s really, really important for a vacation rental. This here, total detail shot. This doesn’t show off the house in terms of real estate at all, but look at that nice chessboard, right?

And coming up here, you just, you can tell that couch is smooth and that blanket is soft and there’s a nice soft lighting. It just gives this atmospheric feel if you just want to be there. And that’s even the same for this kitchen. It’s a relatively normal kitchen shoot, except it’s framed with some foreground.

It’s cozy, and you just feel like you’re in the space. That’s really the idea of it. And just like the first photo we saw, this really just, it puts you into the space. That is what we try to do with these photos.

We try to put you into the space, but sometimes we also need to be a little more descriptive with it too. There’s a really nice knife and like specialist set here that is on offer for you to use at this really nice Airbnb. You want to be able to see that. And this is a pretty non-traditional angle of this table.

You can see the patio table as well. It gives you such a nice feeling of being there. This general idea is just continuing through all of these. You know what it feels like to sit in it.

And that’s really, really important for a vacation rental shoot. Showing what it feels like to be in the space can help potential guests understand the stay. Now, this is just a pretty simple kitchen, but what you can do is this next image here, where we just focus on the little details. We have some nice matching Mrs.

Myers and just shallow depth of field. It just looks comfy. Again, we would take this shot real estate or vacation rental, but you can’t pass up the nice descriptive shots like this as well. Laundry, nice little mudroom and a sink.

So we always want to blend of both. Now, and again, we got the pot on the stove. It’s a nice feature. You have some knives.

Again, it’s not staging. That’s actually going to be there. That’s there for you to use. That’s a big deal to some people, especially a room like this, really non-traditional up in the attic.

Those beds, you’ll be sleeping in those beds. There’s two of them. You can see the room. It’s just really important to gather the feel of that.

So thank you for sticking with us here on my little talk about vacation rental photography and why it’s different than just standard real estate. I’m Jason May with Realiant Photography. See you in the next one.