Why do you need a commercial real estate photographer in the San Francisco Bay Area?

When it comes to commercial real estate in the dynamic San Francisco Bay Area market, having a skilled and experienced photographer is essential. At Home Shots, we specialize in capturing the unique essence and high-end quality of commercial properties in this thriving region.

Our team of professional photographers understands the intricacies of commercial real estate photography. We know how to highlight the key features, architectural details, and overall aesthetic appeal of your property. With our expert eye for composition and lighting, we ensure that every image showcases your property in the best possible light.

 
 

By choosing Home Shots for your commercial real estate photography needs, you can be confident in receiving exceptional quality that aligns with the standards of the San Francisco Bay Area market. Our attention to detail, advanced equipment, and commitment to excellence ensure that your property stands out among the competition.

Whether you're a commercial real estate broker, agent, or property owner, our high-end quality photography will elevate your marketing efforts and attract potential tenants and buyers. Trust Home Shots to capture the true essence of your commercial property in the vibrant San Francisco Bay Area.

Premium Real Estate Photography in San Francisco Bay Area

San Francisco Bay Area Real Estate Photography is done best by Fine Art Real Estate Media, and we are thrilled to be in the San Francisco Bay area and look forward to serving all your real estate media needs! Our San Francisco media technicians are highly skilled interior/exterior photographers, certified drone pilots, and Matterport 3D tour operators. This means when you book with Fine Art Real Estate Media can have confidence your real estate photos, aerial photography, Matterport 3D virtual tours and videos will look incredible, enhance your online marketing and boost your brand within the marketplace. Our quality media also comes with affordable pricing, quick & easy online ordering, and next-business-day delivery (Mon-Sat). Check out these amazing San Francisco real estate photography examples here, then click here to order.

 
 

The Benefits of Virtual Tours For Real Estate

Technology has made it much easier to create  virtual tours for your real estate property. While the technology to create these virtual tours has come down in price the need for professionals images and audio has remained the same. Here are some benefits that these virtual tours offer to potential customers.

Easily capture attention – In today’s competitive industry, it’s very hard to maintain the attention of your customers for a long. Therefore, creating visually appealing virtual tours for real estate properties is a great way to increase the likelihood of attracting new clients and keep them interested in the property you have to offer. By using an interactive floor plan with hotspots to explain the amenities of a home or a commercial space, or through voice-over audio the potential client is much more likely to be engaged which in turn, is more likely to generate a lead.

Immediate results – For an online real estate property, you need to be able to get the attention of customers quickly. For this reason, you need to make sure that you provide them with high-quality imagery and virtual tours that provide instant information in a clear and concise way.

Reliable information – If you want your virtual tours to provide the exact information that your customers need, you need to ensure that you use the information provided by third parties. This means that if you’re using the information that’s already on your website, you’ll want to ensure that it’s accurate. You don’t want to provide inaccurate information to your potential clients. This will result in more potential clients turning away from your real estate business.

No need for any training or experience – Many real estate agents believe that they need to spend lots of money hiring an expensive virtual tour designer in order to make sure that their virtual tour provides the precise information that their clients want. However, there is no need to spend thousands of dollars on this.

Instead, it’s often best to outsource the job to an experienced photographer/videographer who can create the content and then upload it to your website.  If you hire someone to create the tour, you will also be able to spend more time focusing on other things – such as increasing the number of offers for the property and getting more leads.

As you can see, there are several advantages to creating virtual tours. You can easily get more leads if you create an attractive and interesting tour that provides quick, valuable information.

The bottom line: Virtual tours are a great way to make more leads for your real estate agency and property owners. Once you have more leads, you can increase your sales and ultimately build a profitable real estate business.

As real estate agents, it’s important to understand that virtual tours have changed the way many people purchase and sell real estate. In the past, it was nearly impossible for people to view real estate listings as if they were in the room, so the only real estate agents who had real success had a large investment in technology.

How Drone Photography Can Help Sell Your Property

Over the last few years, the cost of drones equipped with photo and video-capable cameras has dropped quite a bit – making high-quality drone photography affordable for many different industries.

One of the most promising areas of drone photography is in the real estate industry. When used properly, drone photography can help you sell your property – whether you’re a property owner or a real estate agent, high-quality aerial photographs can be very useful.

So, how does drone photography work and how can it help you sell your property? Read on, and find out all the details now.

How Does Drone Photography Work? Understanding The Basics

It is possible to buy a drone yourself and take photos and videos of your property. However, it can be quite expensive – and if you have no experience piloting drones, you may not get the best results.

For these reasons, drone photography is usually done by a professional drone pilot, utilizing a remote-controlled “quadcopter” drone. These drones are usually quite large and expensive and may be equipped with high-quality 4K resolution cameras that are capable of taking both video and still images.

The drone pilot will meet you at your property, then you’ll discuss the shots and video that you’d like to take. Then, your pilot will operate the drone to capture still images and video. Once this process is complete, they will process the video and photographs, and send them to you – usually within a few days.

Then, the photos and videos are yours. You can add them to your listings, post them on social media, and more – which will help you sell your property more effectively.

The Advantages Of Drone Photography: How It Helps You Sell Your Property

So, why should you use drone photography to help sell your property? Whether you’re a property owner looking to sell your property yourself or a real estate agent, it has a number of unique benefits.

● Capture video and stand out from other listings – Having an aerial video of your property can help you stand out among other, more traditional real estate listings. For example, you could capture a video of how the home looks as you come up the driveway, or provide a 360-degree video of the entire exterior of the home!

Photos and videos are very important for first impressions. 84% of home buyers say professional photos are “very important” – and if you can provide aerial photos and video, this will make your listing stand out even more!

● Provide a unique perspective – Drones can capture views that, in the past, were only possible with a helicopter. Obviously, hiring a helicopter photographer would have been out of your price range – but today, drones make it easier to capture unique views.

Compared to taking a shot of the property with a traditional camera, drones allow for a larger diversity of shots. Using a normal camera, you’re limited to shooting from ground level. If a home is very large or tall, this can make it difficult to get the proper perspective for an attractive shot.

Drones, however, can take amazing shots of your property from an unlimited number of angles. They can hover 25, 50, or even 100 feet in the air – and capture unique perspectives and photos that will help your property look its best.

● Show outbuildings, landscape & other features – When you’re shooting from the ground, it may be very difficult to show unique features and outbuildings like sheds, detached garages, landscaping, gardens, and other such things that are part of the appeal of your property. It’s likely that you’ll need to have multiple photos for each feature.

However, this is not true with a drone. Drones can provide a unique, overhead view that can capture the main building and any landscaping, outbuildings, or other features that add to the value of the property – and keep them all in a single shot. This may be particularly beneficial when selling a large home, or when selling a parcel of undeveloped land.

● Showcase the property’s unique location – With a drone, you don’t have to just say that a property is “minutes away from the beach,” “located lakeside” or is “located in the middle of downtown.” You can actually show these things to a potential buyer!

Your drone photographer can get an overhead shot of your property that showcases nearby landmarks and unique features that set its location apart from other properties on the market. By taking an aerial photo, your drone photographer can capture these extra things which may be intangible in a traditional real estate listing – enhancing the appeal of your property, and showing its unique benefits to buyers more effectively.

● Provide useful perspectives for undeveloped land – If you are a property owner or real estate agent selling a parcel of land, you may find that it’s difficult to capture any useful pictures from ground level – after all, if the land is not developed, there will not be many interesting landmarks or other features.

In contrast, shooting aerial photographs and videos with drones can help you get more useful, appealing images for your property. Not only can you capture the entire property in a single shot, but you can even add graphics and boundary markers indicating where it begins and ends, which will help potential buyers visualize the property more effectively, and enhance their interest.

For all of these reasons – and quite a few more – it may be worth investing some time and money into drone photography for your property. You will be able to generate more interest, capture unique photos and videos, and sell your property more quickly.

How Much Does It Cost To Hire A Drone Photographer? What Should I Look For?

If you want the best possible results from drone photography, we definitely recommend working with a professional drone photographer such as Home Shots. You should look for a local drone photographer who is Experienced with shooting/editing aerial photos/video – Look for a drone photographer that has a portfolio of past projects, particularly in the field of real estate photography. This ensures that you get high-quality results.

As for the cost of hiring a drone photographer, this may vary based on your location, the scope of your project, and other such details. You can expect to pay somewhere between $150-$500 for a typical residential property. Larger projects may be more costly, so contact a local drone photographer near you for a quote.

Take Advantage Of The Power Of Drone Photography To Sell Your Property!

As you can see, drone photography has a number of benefits. If you invest in aerial photos and videos from a drone, you can emphasize the unique features of your property, showcase its location, and stand out from the crowd – leading to a faster sale, and a higher asking price! So don’t wait. Contact us today to get started.

Matterport Virtual Tour

Matterport 3D virtual tours essentially creates a 24/7 open house for all of your potential buyers in the San Francisco Bay Area. It helps your property stand out by providing a virtual “walk through” of the entire property. As a viewer of the real estate virtual tour, one can click their way through the various rooms in whichever order you choose. You can look up and down to examine every corner of the room, along with the ability to take measurements through the tour as well.

Whether you are a real estate agent in San Francisco or Danville or anywhere in between and are trying to capture a larger audience for your real estate listing, virtual tours are your best solution without needing them to attend an open house. This is has been especially popular during the recent COVID-19 pandemic and shelter-in-place situation which has affected the Bay Area especially hard. Our real estate video service is another great alternative as well, but do keep in mind these 2 are different!

Matterport is the innovator and sole creator of the 3D virtual tour technology. Matterport creates a three-dimensional model and blueprint of the entire property by using an advanced camera that’s equipped with special lenses and infrared light to capture and measure all parts of the property. Using their artificial intelligence software we stitch the images together to create that virtual reality experience. With such advanced technology, it does require the real estate photographer to be expertly trained and familiar with handling the camera and software. Home Shots Real Estate Photography has created beautiful property virtual tours for homes in San Francisco, Walnut Creek, and San Ramon which you can view on our portfolio page.

Matterport helps you build your brand as a real estate expert and help you stand out from the crowd as a tech-oriented real estate agent who really focuses on high-end marketing. This has been important more so than ever especially in the Bay Area. The Matterport 3D virtual tour goes beyond a slideshow of images and real estate videos merged in the form of a property tour that you commonly see. With Matterport 3D virtual tour, you don’t just get a 3D movement within the home or office space. You also get an in-depth view of every axis and every inch of the actual property.

If you have any questions on how the Matterport technology is used for real estate virtual tours, you can reach out to us through the contact us page or give us a call!

Why Hire a Professional Real Estate Photographer?

90% of home buyers use the internet for home searching now before stepping out to any open house. Adding professional real estate photos when marketing your home or property will help bring a lot more awareness. Beautiful photographs create the best first impression. We have realized that most home buyers decide whether they like a home or not from the first exterior photo they view! The exact reason why Home Shots SF should be on the top of your list when preparing to market your property.

Not only does having high quality photos on your listing attract the attention of several home buyers, as a realtor or real estate professional it also helps show off your attention to detail and professionalism in representing sellers. If you really want to elevate your marketing, we offer aerial drone photography and videos as well. There have been several cases where real estate agents have found new clients just because the clients liked how the pictures or videos looked on a listing!

Some realtors have failed to see the necessity in professional photos. But in areas like the San Francisco Bay Area where the average home price is $1 million, it is important to upscale your sales and marketing with high quality real estate photography. The common saying goes, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” What about a home virtual tour then? Those would be worth millions! Check out our portfolio for previous examples we have done.

As a real estate agent, you are busy enough with the listing as it is. We have worked with individuals who tried doing it on their own to save a few hundred dollars. This requires spending a few hours going into the different rooms, around the outside, editing it afterwards, just to find out it didn’t come out as they hoped! Having an expensive camera doesn’t instantly make you a professional photographer. Understanding how to best capture images of a home takes lots of practice and experimentation to truly master, which we at Home Shots believe have done!

Hiring an experienced real estate photographer can save you this headache and hours of your time. We have all the right equipment, understand which angles and lighting work best, use the best software to retouch the images, and will package them all for an easily download from the comfort of your home or office.

Get Ready To Shoot

Images are only half the story. Setting the scene before we arrive helps to create fantastic pictures in a timely fashion. Staging is highly important to us and here are a few tips that can help showcase your listing at its very best. In this guide you will learn how to prepare for a photo shoot for you listing, hotel, AirBnB and much more.

Please read all the way through, doing so and preparing will speed up the shoot and make the images look fantastic. You may need a quick trip to the hardware store before we come but its well worth it.
If you are booking as an agent or broker feel free to pass this information onto your clients. If you are a FSBO (for sale by owner) then please read in detail and complete as much as you can before our arrival.

So let’s get ready to shoot!

ROOM PREPARATION GUIDE

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Kitchen

Remove all surface items like kitchen roll, kitchen utensils. Plus floor mats and dish cloths. Creating more space will help create a better ambiance as well as showing as much of the kitchen surface as possible, creating the illusion of space. Make sure all surfaces are wiped clean.

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Bathrooms

Any personal effects should be removed. Items like toothbrushes, shower or shampoo bottles and alike. Floor mats can be moved too as well as any utensils. Clean all surfaces where applicable including mirrors. Replace any bulbs with the correct color temperature if needed.

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Living Room

Any pictures that could identify the owners should ideally be removed but we can remove these in post production. Hide TV remote controls & surface items that are easily moved such as magazines. Clean all surfaces where applicable including mirrors.

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Bedrooms

Make the beds and plump the pillows. Highly recommend finding the best colors to match your room. Hide any personal effects from surfaces and make sure all draws and cupboards can close shut.

Twilight Facade

Exterior

Remove any Realtor “For Sale” signs where possible.Hide those wheelie bins from the front of the property and clear any trash that could get in shot. Clean the windows where possible.

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Garden

Hide kids toys away from view and tidy up any mess that’s been left by pets. BBQ or Grilling plate covers can be removed If they are looking less than presentable. Ravel up any hoses that are left around the garden.

FOR ALL ROOMS

  • Working lights are preferred, so where possible replace any broken bulbs

  • Surfaces should be cleaned including floors

  • Hide personal effects

  • Remove pictures that could identify owners or rental occupants

  • De-clutter as much as possible

  • Clothes and shoes hidden from sight

  • Fix window blinds that maybe broken

FOR HOTELS, AIRBNB & RENTALS

  • Working lights are preferred, so where possible replace any broken bulbs of the same kelvin

  • Remove all signage, including POS

  • Sheets & bed covers immaculate and pressed

  • Lobby free of people or recognizable faces

  • Shot list supplied 48hrs before shoot

  • Set tables for an evening dinner

  • All rooms to be deep cleaned

  • Sheers and curtains must be in working order

  • Garbage pail / boxes removed

CHECK THE WEATHER


If you are concerned about exterior shots during adverse weather or shooting in the dark. Then check the weather forecast and day light times. We can’t fly a drone if the wind is greater then 21mph or gusts are close to that speed, low cloud cover, mist, fog, less than freezing temperatures, 30 mins either side of sun down and sun rise. You are welcome to reschedule (as long as its 24 hrs before the booking) if there is adverse weather forecast for your area. Please observe the Weather Underground app available in the Google & Apple application stores, we normally go by that for accuracy or use the fast check tool here.

How to select an interior photographer...

AND TO GET WHAT YOU NEED?

When you suddenly realize you need a professional photographer it might be a bit awkward at the very beginning because there are many details to keep in mind. The most important thing is to understand, if your future interior photographer can cope with your personal case… or not.

Here I want to share my experience as a professional interior and real estate photographer in San Francisco Bay Area and to give you some useful tips which will help you to understand if your photographer can really satisfy all your needs. And give you expected result, of course.

Real Estate Photography VS Interior Photography

Though these types of photography might seems to be rather close, yet they are completely different. The only common feature between them is that both deal with interior or flat. All the rest is totally different. Like some chefs specialize in exquisite Italian cuisine, others do in particular French, photographers have their own specialization even in such close types of photography.


Real Estate Photography: Ideal Combination Of Price And Deadlines

YES, when we speak about Real Estate Photoshoot, it always deals with good price and suitable deadline. The photos should show all the advantages of the interior. These are some important features like:

• Light is ON

• Interior has NO personal items

• 16, 14 mm

• No fish eye lens

These are just few examples, of course, there are much more peculiarities which make the difference.

The Question Of Light Really Matters

In Real Estate Photography light plays significant role and it is possible to use either artificial light or natural one. Artificial light helps to make ideal combination of street light and interior lights and to make the perfect mode for the white balance. In case your space is big a lot more efforts are needed in order to shoot photos with perfect light.
If we speak about using natural light, usually it might take more time and it is not that easy to find the rich balance between street light and interior light. That's why during such shooting it is convenient to use HDR technology, combining a number of images in one.

Real Estate Photography: Some Features To Know

The professional level of shooting helps me to prepare my photos for Real Estate Photography during 24 hours, as I understand that it is important to put the object on the listing as soon as possible. Also images are usually horizontal, because in this way they are demonstrated on the listing platforms and they comply with the requirement of rental platforms as Trulia or Zillow for example.

Interior Photography:Portfolio And Other Stories

The totally different approach is used for the Interior Photography for magazines and portfolios. No more wide angles. 24 mm or even 35 mm is the best option. There is no artificial light. If you will take any interior design magazine like AD, you will see the lights are off.
The thing which matters here is the natural distribution of light, interior atmosphere, and numerous details. It is exactlyInterior photography, where you can see dark and moody style, very dark contrasting images, dogs and cats at the back, or even a messy bed as a purely shooting concept.

Details, Details, and Once More Details

Speaking about Interior Photography, here we deal with such typical elements as:

• Small details and accessories

• Mood and style of photoshoot

• Time doest not matter, matters the perfect view

• Collaboration with designers

Now you can see, that Interior Photography might require a lot of preparations and organization so the process might be long-lasting. For this reason, there is some significant different in price.

And What About Architecture Photography?

According to the rules of Architecture Photography, vertical lines should be strictly vertical and the horizon should be in the third part of the image, not in the center. And here there is a problem - when moving vertical axis, vertical lines start let's say "falling down". For this reason professional photographers use special cameras with special optical features or so called tilt shift architecture lens.
Sometimes I use this lens in my interior photoshoots, in order to show the space in a specific way. Though some people know tilt shift lens for its miniaturizing effect and nice bokeh, it was designed to control perspective. I should also admit, that sometimes it is perfect to shoot lifestyle photos, too. So if you need to have a photoshoot of huge building ask your future photographer if he has a tilt shift lens.

Devil Is In The Details

I am sure, that my article will help you to understand the differences between types of photography better, to realize your needs, and to ask the right questions for your future photographer in order to get the best results.
In case you need professional shooting or search for a professional interior photographer in San Francisco Bay Area, you can always turn to us, as photography is the thing which really matters. And which always will.