How to Take Property Photographs in Commercial Real Estate Sales and Leasing

In commercial real estate today, good digital photographs will always help your marketing campaign.  Ordinary photographs will do nothing for your property enquiry.  For this reason, it pays to get quality professional photographs as part of every property listing.  That being said, professional digital photography in the marketing of the property should be a cost to the vendor as part of vendor paid marketing.

You can always see a difference in any property marketing campaign that is optimised with professional photographs.  The marketing material captures your interest and draws you to the detail about the property, the location, and the improvements.  Advertising and marketing campaigns will always be strengthened by this photographic approach.

When it comes to structuring your vendor paid marketing campaign, digital photographs should feature as one of the main items to be addressed.  Over time this strategy will have a significant impact on the amount of property enquiry for you personally, and also for your clients as part of the sale or the leasing campaign.  It is not hard to sell the concept; our clients want results from the advertising and marketing effort, and this is one of the ways to encourage that.

If you must take digital photographs of the property yourself, here are some tips to help you with the process:

1. Purchase a good quality digital camera with a high number of mega pixels.  The higher the number, the better the quality of image.  That being said, you will need a good storage card of sufficient size to record the images.  The greater the number of mega pixels, the larger the image, and the greater the storage requirement within the camera.
2. Get to know your digital camera so that photographs can be easily taken under a variety of circumstances and light conditions.  Some cameras today feature tools and systems that will enhance the image in size and quality.  You just need to know how the camera works.
3. A digital SLR camera will be an advantage when it comes to taking property photography.  You can look through the viewfinder to see the actual property angle and image before the photograph is taken.
4. Every photograph should be interesting and for this reason you should take many photographs from different angles both inside and outside of the property.  It is easy to delete the images that are not up to standard.
5. Whilst you will be taking images of the property, you should also take images of the street, the precinct, and surrounding properties.  That will allow you to recall locational factors when talking to prospective buyers or tenants.
6. Remove clutter, people, and cars from the image before you take the photograph.  You may only have one chance to take the image and on that basis remove the unsightly items before you take the photographs and leave the property.
7. Some properties can be successfully featured in night time shots with internal lights turned on.  You will require a tripod to support the camera as the image is taken; this will help address  the required levels of lighting and the need to remove camera shake.
8. When taking a photograph of the exterior of the building, it is best to consider the direction in which the frontage of the building faces.  It is best to get the building exterior frontage photographs either early in the morning or late in the afternoon.  The angle of the sun low in the sky at that time will produce full sunlight onto the property frontage and therefore will feature the building more effectively.
9. Be aware of the glare factor that could compromise the quality of the image.  Take many photos from many different angles so that the poor quality images can be removed.

Good quality images will always enhance the marketing campaign for the property.  Develop a strategy that incorporates this process as part of the property marketing effort.