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Bear Karry, October 18 2021

Take Perfect Shots for Your Virtual Staging With These Tips

It's no lie: the internet is the way to when it comes to homebuyer traffic. Property photographs are the first thing home buyers look at when deciding whether it's worth their time or not. If you're not inclined to investing in real estate photography anytime soon, know that you're missing out on 43% of homebuyers who looked online as their first step in the buying process.

The first step in achieving your real estate goals is to have high-quality photographs of your listing taken. Listed below are some tips and steps on attaining the perfect virtual staging photo. But before that, let's make sure we're on the same page.

What is Virtual Staging Photography in Real Estate?

Virtual staging is a type of home staging where stagers take photographs of a preferable empty (or poorly-furnished) property and then hire a professional editor to fill the interior space with graphical furniture and decor.

Virtual staging is one of the most cost-effective and most acceptable alternatives to traditional unoccupied house staging.

We all know that eye-catching visuals are essential and play a significant part in realtor marketing strategies. While traditional pictures of the property are helpful, virtual staging creates more beautiful, enhanced, and realistic images that catch a potential buyer's attention and help them imagine the property better.

How Do You Take Perfect Virtual Staging Photos?

Virtual staging is meticulously designed to match furniture, décor, and appliances as closely as possible. Most of the furniture added into virtual staging will look highly authentic, so you'll need to capture high-resolution pictures to present a coherent listing image.

1. Use High Dynamic Range Cameras

In real estate photography, cameras with an extensive dynamic range and a broad spectrum of light have an incredible edge over photos shot with a DSLR.

An HDR photograph is a series of photos of the same item, but each shot is taken at a different shutter speed and exposure.

As a result, it's preferable to use a camera with auto exposure bracketing. This enables you to employ high dynamic range (HDR) photography, making it easier to capture the optimal shot for virtual staging.

2. Ensure Adequate Lighting for Real Estate Photography

For a real estate photographer, the ideal approach is to turn on all the lights in every room. It will help to give the rooms a more natural appearance. Furthermore, adequate lighting also helps virtual staging editors do their jobs better.

3. Keep the Room, Home, and Commercial Property as Vacant as Possible

The primary goal of virtual staging is to fill your property listing with conceptual furniture and decor that matches the house theme. As a result, it's recommended to empty the room as much as possible.

Remove any unneeded clutter, such as old furniture, decorations, toys, and other items. The ultimate aim for this step is to create an empty canvas for the virtual stage artist to work their magic on.

4. Always Shoot in Landscape Mode

When orienting your photos, make sure that the areas are photographed in landscape rather than portrait mode. When potential clients browse through listing images, a broader landscape orientation helps them gather more details. Landscape-oriented images reveal more area in real estate photography, allowing graphic designers to design sharper and more detailed virtual furniture to fill the space.

Lastly, landscape images look much better on MLS and other real estate marketing platforms like Zillow.

5. Avoid Wide-View Lenses Like Fisheye

A minimum of 18 mm and a maximum of 200 mm is ideal for beginners. However, it's critical to stay away from fish-eye or ultra-wide-angle lenses. These cameras produce a great deal of deformity and distortion, resulting in walls, floors, and built-in features becoming longer or taller, potentially misleading and disgruntling customers.

Conclusion

By following the tips and steps in this post, you will have gorgeous photographs perfect for virtual staging. Once you've taken and stored your photographs, you're ready to make your virtual staging order.

If you're looking for real estate photography in St. Petersburg and Tampa Bay FL, look no further than Bear Karry. Our award-winning real estate photography service is more than capable of giving your virtual-stage ready photographs set to impress your clients. Contact us to learn more about how we can help you today!

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Bear Karry

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