An excellent article in the Chicago Tribune explains why Quality photos make all the difference in marketing your home. I don't think I could have explained it much better myself.
The article notes that lighting is extremely important. The camera sees different light sources (daylight, fluorescent, incandescent, LED) differently from the human eye, and mixed light sources can create significant problems for photography, resulting in a mixture of unpleasant, clashing color casts that do not look realistic. Furthermore, the basic quality of the light in many homes, including even high end ones, is often not that appealing photographically, and time and budget limitations tend to restrict considerably the ability to wait for the best ambient lighting in each room. Supplementary lighting is the best solution for this situation, and lighting interiors is a specialized skill that a portrait, product or event photographer is not likely to possess unless he or she also spends a lot of time shooting interiors. Usually, a specialist in architectural and interior photography will produce the best results.
One thing I take a bit of issue with in the article is the suggestion that it was the advent of mobile devices that drove the need for high-quality photos for marketing homes. Mobile devices have certainly enhanced the need for such photos; however, even before the widespread use of mobile devices for Internet viewing, realtors could present the homes online in dedicated single property websites, or on their own websites, to provide a larger and clearer view of the photos than is generally possible with the major online real estate portals (such as Zillow, Trulia, Movoto, etc.), which access the listing photos directly from the MLS feeds. I note that one major real estate portal, Redfin, has recently started displaying listing photos significantly larger and clearer than the other real estate portals.
