What Makes Quality Real Estate Media?

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Does great real estate media matter? Well, I’m Scott Kemp with Realiant Media Minute, and we are going to discuss that today. I have a photography company called Realiant Photography, and we do photography for real estate agents listings. So they get a new listing for the house, they need to sell it, and we have to go take pictures of it. And you would think kind of a picture is a picture is a picture.

Well, it’s not, I can tell you that. We spent a lot of time perfecting our
technique. When we train new photographers, we go over a lot with them to make
sure it looks spot-on. I’ll show you some pictures here in a little bit. I’ve
heard of Realtors—and I’ve seen some—who take pictures with their cell phones.
They go into a house and take a picture with their phone. I can tell you that
most people can tell as well. And what does that say to the homeowner? So the
Realtor, Mary, goes and takes some pictures of John’s house.

And the photos are all wonky. That looks like Mary just really didn’t care and didn’t value John’s listing. That does not make a strong impression on the seller. You want to give sellers a polished experience with great media. And that’s what we try to do for you.

We are constantly looking out for you. We want to make you succeed because if you succeed, we succeed. So we are always available for advice. If you have some complicated shoots, we’re happy to talk about them with you and discuss them and how we can best approach them. Because again, we want you to succeed. And you’re going to do that with great media.

So let’s look at some pictures here. Rael’s kind of queued up. We’ve got sunset. This is kind of a combination of an actual sunset. One of our photographers, Jason just shot and with a little bit of sprucing up with the sky because sometimes sunsets just don’t look that pretty.

And you don’t want us coming out seven times to shoot them. So.

Our next one is a beautiful shot of a house near Oakridge. It was on a lake,
and the water was so still. I wanted to show that tranquility. I love doing
these houses. I love doing trophy properties—the ones with lots of
acreage—because I grew up in Alaska. I grew up on the water, and this speaks to
me. I wanted to show that. So the next one we have is kitchens, and what you’ll
notice is the nice framing.

You’re going to notice the nice vertical lines. That is so important. That’s how it’s an instant giveaway that you didn’t hire a true photographer to do it when your vertical.

lines are not straight up and down. So the next one we have, they’re not all trophy homes. Sometimes they’re just new construction and it’s your average new construction on new construction lot and we still try to make them pop. And pretty much we want the skies to always look blue. But actually if we go out and it’s a clear blue day, we will actually put clouds in the sky because it just looks better.

The clear blue sky is why you think it might be sunny and it feels good because it’s sunny out when you look at it on the computer. It’s kind of boring. So we take that extra time and put a real sky behind that house and make it pop.

The next picture is a kitchen remodel by Thayer Construction. They do
incredible kitchen and bathroom remodels in Corvallis, and they hired us to
take their portfolio pictures. I think this is also a good example of a real
estate picture because this is what it would look like if it were a house as
well. The next one is a regular new-construction house, and the real estate
agent had it staged. Staging is super important because, compared with an empty
house, people can imagine themselves living here.

They have to really use their imagination if it’s just empty walls. Now we do
have products for virtual staging, and we can put the furniture in the picture
so people don’t have to guess what it would look like with furniture. That’s
pretty cool too. Next, we do a lot of drone photography, and this one’s neat
because it’s in the fall. We’ve got some fall color going on, but it’s also a
little mysterious, and I like that. It’s an interesting view of the lot.

So the next one we have, this is super important and if you’re using other photographers, I want you to look at your pictures that you’re getting and ask yourself.

do your windows look like this? A lot of times they’ll be blown out and they’ll be kind of white and you can’t really see through the outsides. We spend a lot of time with our technique and our shooting as well as our editing to really make the outside pop. We do that on every house, it doesn’t matter if it’s a trophy property like this one or if it’s a rental that’s got renters in it. So we spend a lot of time on that to make it look like that.

It just looks so warm and inviting, and who doesn’t want to go out on that patio
and fire up the barbecue and watch the kids swim in that lake? That’s where I’d
want to be. And then when you see that picture,

that’s what buyers are going to want to see too and that’s why this media is so important. So drone photography is also very important to us because it’s kind of what we call the establishing shot. It’s like what’s the neighborhood look like? Are you backed up against a huge subdivision? Are you next to a power plant?

Not that we would highlight if that was it, but we do have to be truthful. We can’t erase the power transmission tower that’s right over the house. We’re not ethically going to do that for you. But this one shows the property on this beautiful acreage. You’re obviously out in the country.

You have very few neighbors. You probably have a view. It’s just so cool. I
love this place. I would want to live here.

Yeah, I’m kind of a country boy, so that’s where I’d want to be. Again, we’re
going back to the windows here. We want to see through those windows. Look at
your photos and ask yourself: Can I see that view through those windows? And
does it look natural?

Again, we spend so much time on those windows. Here’s a combination kitchen and
living room—or, sorry, a dining room and kitchen combination. You can see
through the windows. I think this was actually a foggy day, so it was a
challenging one.

I remember shooting this one.

And we had to do a sky replacement in there through the windows to make it kind of look like that. That’s the best we could do because it was socked in with the fog. So we’re going to do our best to make this house pop for you. And this one’s kind of a fun one coming up here is, this is a bathroom and this is on that trophy property up in your Salem again. Who would feel comfortable using that shower out in the open with no shower curtains around you?

I mean, you are kind of totally exposed. I’m not sure I’d want to use that
shower, but it has 27 shower heads and apparently even a chair there. It’s
definitely a memorable feature.

But the picture looks cool. And that’s in a multimillion dollar home. So I guess people that have those kinds of homes, that’s what they might want. This house in Corvallis is super cool. You’ll see it on our website.

I just love it. This is a natural shot. There’s no virtual editing on this. We shot it at Twilight and it just looks really cool. I love doing one point shots where it’s straight on basically one point means it’s straight on and it just makes a really cool effect.

It doesn’t work for everything, but when it works, it really works. This looks like it could be on a magazine. It’s just so cool. And yeah, I love this one. And this is.

actually the room inside the house. They’ve got great views through there and super tall ceilings. Super cool fan. I love it when people get artistic with their fans. The fans can be so boring, but yeah, I love those kinds of fans and I love those tall windows.

When you have unique fixtures, when it’s obviously that the house has something that’s really special and this could be like a clawfoot tub, a big soaking jacuzzi, a nice fixture like this in the kitchen sink that doesn’t look like it came from Home Depot, maybe another nice fireplace. We’re going to highlight those and give it to as part of your media package.

This one in Waldport, I loved so much. This is what I would consider the finest
house in Waldport, Oregon. It was at the top of the hill. They could see all
the way up the bay to the bridge, all the way over Bayshore, and out to the
ocean. They had about 270 degrees of view, and that was incredible.

I think we captured that with the drone footage. If they hadn’t ordered drone
with their package, they would not have gotten that picture. These are the
kinds of pictures we can deliver. It’s important to hire a media company that
can deliver that and wants you to succeed.

and we’re going to do everything we can to help you and we look forward to working with you. Give us a call and I’d love to talk with you guys. We like to build the relationships with our agents because we want to know when we’re doing a good job, when something didn’t go right, we’re going to fix it. We want those relationships. So I’ve instructed all my photographers to spend a little time with you guys, get to know you, get to know what you like because those relationships are important.

We just don’t want to have a blind relationship here. We want something real.
People want to connect, and we want to do a good job. We’d love to hear how we
can do better on every shoot, and we’re always open to advice. I think we do a
great job, but we’re looking to get better every day. So we’d love to hear from
you. I’m Scott Kemp with Realiant Photography.