Recent Real Estate Photography-Gentry Ad

My photos featured in a double page ad in the March 2014 edition of Gentry Magazine.

707 Westridge Drive-Gentry Ad

Recent Real Estate Photography-707 Westridge Drive, Portola Valley , CA

These are examples of the kind of interior photos that real estate agents tend to like: quite wide and showing a large amount of the room. This kind of view presents some significant technical challenges.  The placement of supplementary lighting tends to become much more difficult because there are fewer places to position lights without them appearing in the scene or causing reflections (at least to achieve attractive lighting). Frequently one must place lights within the scene and move them around while doing several exposures. Then the exposures are combined in Photoshop and the lights edited out.

An additional challenge is wideangle lens distortion. While all wideangle lenses distort to some degree, the type of very wide-angle lens used for this type of composition can cause a considerable amount of distortion. Real estate agents tend to be less concerned with this type of distortion than, say, an architect might. Nevertheless, a conscientious photographer will try to mitigate the effect of such distortion by careful selection of the perspective and composition. Also, objects within the scene may need to be moved further away from the camera or away from the edges of the frame.

Client: Hanna Shacham-Coldwell Banker

Home Staging: Green Couch

Living Room

Dining Room

Kitchen

Master Bedroom

Media Room

Recent Twilight Photography

Here is a recent twilight photo I did for a real estate listing in San Mateo, CA, for Geoffrey Nelson/Pacific Union International. I can't emphasize enough that twilight photos are not only useful for fancy, luxury properties, but can really highlight more ordinary homes as well. In fact, in some ways they can be even more useful for ordinary homes.

Residential Twilight Exterior

Recent Headshot Photography

While my primary subject matter is buildings and interior design, I also need to periodically remind people that I have a secondary specialty in business portraiture. Here is my updated portrait/headshot portfolio: San Francisco Bay Area Portraits/Headshots

Congratulations to Matt Zampella

After 5 brokers had taken a crack at selling 5070 Alpine road in Portola Valley, CA, over a period of 5 years, my long-time client, Matt Zampella (Sereno Real Estate) was the one who sold the property, so congratulations are in order. Although located in a very desirable part of the San Francisco Bay Area, very large (the main house alone is 12,000 square feet) and relatively expensive properties such as this have a much smaller pool of prospective buyers than is the case with more mainstream properties, which often makes them harder to market and sell.

5070 Alpine Road, Portola Valley, CA

Recent Real Estate Photography

Here is an example to illustrate the range of properties I may shoot. That's right, I don't just shoot fancy estates and smart, contemporary homes. This one is from a listing in Palo Alto, CA, one of the more expensive cities in which to live. While this property may look as though it is in a rural area, it is actually located near Stanford University in a typical suburban location. The only difference between this and most other suburban properties is that this is listed at $1,895,000 for two rundown cottages that are, um, just a bit beyond their effective useful lives, on a 6,250 square foot lot. Obviously, someone would buy this for the land and build a new home on it.

Palo Alto Cottages (Land Sale)