Prince George Real Estate

One of the goals that I have for this blog is to generate interest in real estate photography here in the city that I call home.  More specifically, I would like to present a fairly candid discussion and comparison of some of the shots that are out there in the real world, marketing half million dollar homes.  Thus is born my comparison series, and today I would like to lead a discussion regarding photos of the bathroom.  So without further delay, here is episode one of the PG Listings comparison series.

If there is one room in a house that can either look like something out of a nightmare, or like a porcelain paradise, it is definitely the bathroom.  I have seen some bathrooms in my 140+ home shoots that would make you run screaming….And it’s my job to make them look great and inviting.  What is it about bathrooms that make people not want to touch anything in there?  Not the books (especially), not the towels, nothing.

A clean bathroom may have only three or four of these, a dirty one has eighty trillion of them.

Being a bit of a selective germophobe (symptoms manifest only when I’m in the bathroom of someone I do not know personally), I find bathrooms difficult to deal with for two reasons.  The first is that I don’t want to touch anything or move anything or breathe anything while I’m in there.  The second reason is that bathrooms are notoriously reflective places that make taking a good picture really difficult if you plan on using a flash of any kind.

So as mentioned earlier, let’s have a look at your standard issue bathroom shot, pulled randomly from one of the many listings that have been active at some point over the last year in the Prince George area.

A shot that fails to transmit any sense of, well, anything.
If this was your bathroom, and you had hired someone for thousands of dollars to market and sell your home, how would you feel?  Would you feel that the person you hired is doing their absolute best to make your home look it’s best and stand out from others in it’s price range?  Probably not. The most common mistake that real estate agents make is that they use a point and shoot camera on auto mode (or their cell phone) which ends up basing the exposure on the bright window, resulting in a grossly underexposed interior. World, meet gloomy bathroom. In addition, part of the door jamb is showing and there is all manner of personal hygiene products on the counter, which are negotiable with the sale of the home.

Here is a shot from a similarly priced home that was placed on PG Listings.ca.  To make this shot I used one remote flash to light up the bath tub, and one bounced off of the wall behind me to light up the room.  All of the reflective surfaces in a bathroom (sink, toilet, mirror, tiling) make placement of flashes critically important, something that I am working on every day. This image, to me, transmits a feeling of cleanliness and brightness that has a much more positive impact than the previous image. Granted, both of these images were taken from homes with nearly identical prices, which were fairly low, but when it comes to justifying the asking price of the home through visual representation, the choice is quite clear. Please feel free to comment and share your personal thoughts on this comparison.

To summarize this short post.  Bathrooms, like kitchens, are of great importance to potential homebuyers because no matter how hard you try, you will be spending a significant amount of time in one.  Also, I personally feel that the ‘eew’ sensation that we sometimes get in other people’s bathrooms can quite literally be transmitted through a picture, making it extra important to ensure that bathrooms are seen as clean, attractive places when it comes to marketing.

Daniel Abraham
PG Listings
www.pglistings.ca