Head-Start a Sky Replacement

Suppose it was an overcast day, you shot the exterior of your listing, and you're now ready to go back to the digital darkroom to do some sky-replacement magic - that's when you realize that you don't have a replacement sky. Instead of fast-forwarding to that day, do yourself a favor and start shooting skies now. 

It's so easy - just be disciplined about shooting clear skies when you see them. Personally, I just open the back door of my house when it's nice outside and snap a few, download 'em and file 'em away. If you have multiple cameras with variable resolutions, do yourself a favor and shoot with the highest-res camera you have. I'm not a pixel-peeper by any stretch of the imagination, I'm just trying to save you a headache. If you have a folder full of 6 MP skies and you're shooting exteriors with a 12 MP camera, things may not add up with you put the pieces together later. Sure, you can resize the layer giving you the trouble, but just save yourself the time and shoot with the best you currently have.

Embedded Picasa Web Albums for Agents (and Photographers)

So check it out - Embedded Picasa Web Albums are fantastic little snippets of code that allow agents and photographers show off their listings in a very clean and simple style.

Pro's - it's clean and simple (already stated). You can set it to auto-play or not. It requires virtually nothing for the end-user to do but watch the show. If the user does want to control the show, they can. You can customize the border with just a little knowledge of the embed-code. Because it's embedded code, you don't have to host anything on your site or know the slightest bit about the backend of Flash Player. Clean and simple, eh?

Con's - requires the end-user to have Flash Player already installed. In today's day and age, almost everyone has already cleared that hurdle - but there are plenty of folks out there who will have to install it just to see the photos. The other con, no looping. As of this writing, there isn't a way to tell the slideshow to repeat itself, so the user has to click play again. I've seen that feature be requested by many people online, so maybe it's coming soon.

Overall, it's a neat little tool that can make your photos more presentable online.

Check it out here.

Episode 114: Composition Tip #2

Episode 112: Composition Tip #1

Bracketing Roundup

HDRIBlog just posted a quick and dirty roundup of various makes and models of DSLR's and their AEB abilities (or lack-thereof in some cases).

They point out that Canon, for the most part, is lacking on the AEB features on many of cameras - from consumer to prosumer. Nikon's fine, as well as a bunch of the other manufacturers - which leads to the question: why in the world is this feature an afterthought? Seriously, it is a matter of a few lines of code. The camera already knows how to meter the light and can adjust in the intervals you want it to - why can't they just allow you to do that in AEB, to the degree that you want to? Eh? If the answer is simply to get you to buy the 'better' camera, then 'thanks, but no thanks.' Come on people, get with the program. Real Estate Photographers eat up AEB, and pushing people away from the Canon line-up (from the 50D all the way up to the 5D Mk II) is ridiculous, and I'm not even a Canon shooter.

One last thought - 3 isn't enough, but 9 is plenty. This isn't really a message to the manufacturers, but rather to the photographers. If you want to spend your whole day shooting and your entire night processing, be my guest. If they come out with 21 exposures, I would suggest skipping that one as your computer, no matter what one you have, is going to choke and your productivity will more than likely diminish. Exporting 20+ full-res TIFF files, combining them, then processing them will probably be your end. More than 3, less than 21 - that's the expression, right?

Check out the complete post here.

MLS Tips

Photography for Real Estate posted some good tips on MLS upload specifications. Here's a clip:
"One of the challenges of real estate photography is to prepare photos for upload to the local MLS in such a way that the uploaded photos look their best. A related consideration is that you’ll want the photos to also look great on your client’s broker site as well."

Check out the complete article here.

Exterior Shot Tips

Shot Addict recently posted an entry on architectural photography that I thought was worth sharing here. The article is geared towards teaching the basics like focus points, lenses, backgrounds, light (very important!), etc. Even if you are a working professional, I still recommend the article because you never know what you'll pick up.

Check out the complete article here.