I have been looking for a Real Estate Photography workshop since two years ago when I started to become more serious about Photography. No luck. I did find a couple of Architectural Photography workshops but they were all out of state and some of them even require previous experience. Although I did have a Photographer willing to have a private class for me, the class didn’t happen because I couldn’t find seven Realtors who wanted to sign up for it. It was very discouraging but I was not ready to give it up. I see that many Realtors and sellers today are widely accepting the fact that Staging is very important for today’s real estate market, and I believe it won’t be long for them to realize that good photos are equally important. How could you sell a house for more money in the shortest time if buyers can’t see the values of the house from the photos online?
I came across a blog called Photography For Real Estate (PFRE) – the blog owner Larry is based in Seattle and he helps his Realtor wife shoot all of her listing. His original target readers were other Realtors but recent surveys have shown that the majority were Photographers, which surprised him (I wasn’t surprised). Then he started the PFRE Flickr group, where people from all over the world could share their experiences and opinions.
Last month I noticed that he is going to have a one-day flash light photography for real estate with Photographer Scott Hargis and Thomas Grubba in Seattle in April -- I signup right away. I know that using multiple flash lights will be more efficient, easy to carry and setup, and also more economical than using a softbox.
There was a cocktail gathering the night before the workshop for people to meet and chat, especially since some people already “know” each other from all their Flickr discussions. We had 30 people coming from all over the country for this workshop (two from Canada), 4 females and I am guessing that more than 2/3 were Photographers.
The day of workshop started at 8am for breakfast where organizer Ron Kenney told us the schedule. Basically we will carpool to a model home in a newly built community. We will then divide into three groups – one group goes with Scott and Thomas to see the demo of how the flash is setup and the results, one group goes with Phil Meadows for Photoshop and Lightroom demo, and one group goes with the equipment sponsor Bruce from Glaziers to try different cameras and lenses. Every group has one hour and then rotates. What I like the most is, of course, the actual flash light setup because I have no idea about flash. They show us how they would setup the lights and why, and we could see the actual results with different settings.
We were taken back to the hotel for lunch around 1pm. After lunch, we have another sponsor Stephen Anderson from open2view to show us his services (including photos, virtual tour, elevated photo shoots, floor plan) that was very interesting. Then Scott answered the most common questions that we have, and Larry shared the business side experiences and the license agreement conflict with MLS. In the end, Larry asked our thoughts about certain features and plans for the Flickr group. The schedule ran a little longer than my time allows since I have a plane to catch so I left before the discussion ended. I am very thankful for Larry, Ron, Scott and Thomas for this wonderful workshop because I got to meet some wonderful people, and I am hoping we will have more workshops in the near future.
ps. The breakfast and lunch in the hotel were great but I forgot to take photos, sorry.
