When scrolling through galleries of photos for residential (and some commercial) properties, it always seems like the perspective is off. But each picture seems a little differently off – almost like a fisheye lens, but not. What are they using to do that and why has that “look” become industry standard, even when we all know the pictures aren’t true to life?
In: Technology
High-profile architectural photographer here on a burner account. Normally I just like to lurk but this is an interesting thread and I wanted to weigh in. This starts with a simple enough question — basically, why do real estate photos tend to look “off?” And then a mix of responses ranging from the reasonable to the absurd.
A lot of you are blindly mentioning techniques and equipment. It’s HDR! No, it’s fisheye lenses! Wait, it’s flambient! Maybe it’s tilt-shift! Each of these things can be used effectively, applied to the appropriate context. The poor craftsman blames the tools, right?
The reason real estate photos look the way they do is based on economics. And simple economics at that — there is no financial incentive for the real estate agent or the photographer to invest the time and effort to produce quality images. Sometimes it happens, when one or both of them have standards, but it’s not common.
The best reply here is by ah-chamon-ah, demonstrating how quick-n-dirty editing applied to quick-n-dirty shooting produces the results you all know and love.
P.S. All you professional real estate photographers out there, can you just make this room look a little bigger?
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