Imobiliária

Selling Spaces

One thing that hasn’t really slowed down too much during the Covid-19 pandemic is the real estate market. Certainly here in Portugal, buying, selling, building and renting properties has continued. Some things have had to change of course, such as restrictions on viewings during the most severe phases of lockdown, but agents and brokers have adapted by making better use of media to provide a showcase of their listings to potential buyers and investors.

This of course brings me to the subject of real estate photography… 

Photography has been the mainstay for real estate marketing and with good reason. We are drawn to images of beautiful things. BUT, in a world where we are saturated with images everywhere, it is vital that the images you use to promote your property listings (and your brand) really stand out from the crowd. Lets look at some stats:

• 99% of Millennials are searching for their future property online where a listing with pictures is 10x more consulted.*

• Buyers spend 60% of their time looking at listing photos, and only 20% on the listing description.**

• Homes with high-quality photos receive a 47% higher asking price.*** Listings with professional photos get 118% more online visits.****

Simply put: Professional photography gets you and your listings noticed!

[* Digital Age Study ** Wall Street Journal *** Redfin **** National Association of Realtors]

Real Estate (RE) photography is quite a different genre compared to Architecture and interior design photography. Fundamentally, its pictures of buildings, but in reality, their purpose sets them apart. A set of RE images aim to communicate a summary of a property to a potential buyer, to provoke their interest in wanting to find out more, reach out to the vendor/agents and ultimately take the step of requesting a viewing. From the agents perspective, good images also help to qualify their prospects saving everyone time.

Photographically, there are some similarities in approach to creating images for RE vs architecture clients: Carefully considered compositions that tell the story and illustrate the layout and flow of the property is key. Using tripods and the right lenses to ensure good quality interior images, upright verticals and consistency across the image set. Some degree of post processing is also required. Typically for RE photography, a wider focal length is used to convey the size of each room and in order to comply with online listings websites, a horizontal/landscape orientation is favoured. Post processing RE images is a more light handed affair as the images must accurately reflect the property. However, dealing with mirrored bathrooms and high dynamic range challenges still requires a problem solving approach and pre-visualisation as well as a helping hand from Photoshop.

At Clear Space, we use our knowledge, experience and tools to help agents and vendors who understand the importance of quality imagery to promote their luxury listings through well crafted photographs. 

If you are a real estate agency looking to raise the bar of your listings, drop Clear Space a line to request a brochure and see how we can help you.

Look good, feel good

Interior and lifestyle photography in a wellness studio

I sometimes see my job is to document a design, a space or place. Sometimes its to provide a visual narrative to a building - where is it? who uses it? what is it made of? Other times, my photography has the specific goal of conveying a feeling to the audience. Recently, I was commissioned by a local business to do just that.

Health, Beauty and Wellness is a big industry and is a very competitive market place so its important to stand out from the crowd for the right reasons. Eliane Campos Health & Beauty is a well stablished practice 5 minutes walk from the wonderful sands of Carcavelos beach just outside of Lisbon. They offer a broad range of treatments and services that go beyond most and that demand highly trained technicians that operate to exacting standards of hygiene and care. My brief was to capture specific treatments and procedures offered in the salon and to highlight the professional standards and environment that their clients can expect when they visit.

Pre-production meeting and planning gave us our shot list, organised staff, models and interior styling to make time on set as efficient as possible. I opted for high-key lighting using small strobes to emphasise the clinical surroundings of the treatment rooms. This also allowed for colour consistency and flexibility to work around practitioners and models in a series of tight spaces.

Mission accomplished!

Big thanks to Eliane and her team and models for all their hard work on the day - especially as it just happened to be in the middle of a heat wave. We all earned a cold Super Bock that night!

If you need to tell your customers something good about your business or premises, get in touch for a chat. Architecture and interiors photography often widens to include lifestyle images in those spaces and Clear Space is here to help you achieve that. 

The Physios

Interiors photography for a physiotherapy practice

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The Green Room

A visit to a healthcare establishment is most likely coupled with some form of anxiety (it certainly is in my case!). However, besides quality practitioners able to look after us, the environment is also an important factor that can influence our emotions and our mind-set even before any treatment takes place: Is it clean? Is it old? Is it cramped? Where do I go?

Having had the opportunity to work with the team at The Physios in creating a set of interior images for their practice in Sheffield, my own perceptions of how interior design plays an important part in the healthcare setting has changed. Paul Hattam (Principal physiotherapist and Director) explained how they had transformed an historic building into a set of functional and stylish treatment rooms, reception area and studio to support their services, but had taken efforts to move away from the more traditional branding associated with physiotherapy practices (think clinical blue and white colour palette) in favour of a more contemporary scheme coherent with their business and visual identity.

From entering into the bright, colourful reception area through to the colour coded treatment rooms and darker muted transition spaces between; there is an immediate sense of calm with a modern style that feels fun and luxurious but always professional. In short, it feels like a nice place to be which for a health facility has to be a good thing.

So my challenge in capturing interior images of these spaces was to represent the spaces true to form, yet highlighting the original use of colour and other design features and way-finding/signage throughout. The team had been helpful in scheduling my visit such as to minimise any disruption to normal business, yet still tied in with a good time of day to make the most of daylight through the south facing aspect the majority of the spaces share. A bit of room dressing/prop styling plus the use of a couple of staff members to provide human interest in some of the spaces helped to set the scene (particularly use of a treadmill in their run-lab!). Most images were captured with ambient light with occasional use of strobe to supplement in darker areas and to clean up colour contamination from those bright ceilings and walls. Shooting tethered (to a laptop) allowed me to check details, focus and get some client feedback on site before breaking down each scene. This is such a helpful tool in my workflow and allows on site collaboration, instant backup of digital assets and gives me absolute confidence that the shot list is complete. In post-production, some minor tweaks to white balance/colour temperature, some blending of flash and ambient frames using Photoshop, re-touching/cleanup work and perspective corrections for shots where I hadn’t been able to use tilt-shift lenses.

Paul was delighted with the images which they are now using for their web/social/marketing campaigns, and I now know where my first port of call is should I need any treatments in the future! If you or your business have a space, facility or place that you are proud of and needs to be shared with your audience, specialist interiors and architecture photography can really make the difference. We’d love to hear from you.