Why hire a photographer? I have a camera.

Lenses and software. They're frightfully expensive. As are decent tripods and panoramic photography tripod heads. The right equipment and software do an excellent job and allows things to go smoothly. There are self-serve panorama services for those with some skill. The results can go from decent to second-rate to dreadful very quickly, and will cost you significant amounts of time. You can take advantage of someone with the investment in equipment and understanding of the software involved.

What is the process like?

There are at least two major steps in photographing a house. First, everything up to and including taking the photographs. Second, the computer work behind the scenes that leads to the virtual tours and photographs.

Prep:

When photographing a home, you want to show the house in approximately open-house state. You'll want to hide the animals, have the floors in a reasonable state, etc. as you would if you were showing the home. This includes both inside and out, of course. Once your home is prepared, the photography itself can take a couple hours, depending on how much you want photographed and shown. Allow 5-10 minutes per room. You might want to walk around your home and decide what rooms you want to show.

What is provided and how much does it cost?

A basic package would consist of 8-10 photographs and 4 panoramas. This allows you to show some stills on the MLS and provide some panoramas to people looking for more. All things are flexible, so you may add panoramas or stills to the package. The room-to-room tour is also available.

Once payment is made, the tour will be hosted on my server for 8 months or until you ask me to turn it off.

How long does it take start to finish?

Typically 2-4 days.

I am available at various times to take pictures, depending on my day job and family situations. Depending on your home, you may prefer to have pictures taken at a certain time of day, after nighfall, or early morning. We can negotiate when I can take the pictures. Or there may be a combination of these times to get certain effects. The day of taking the pictures, allow 15 minutes per room you want photos of.

The software half of this kind of work does take a long time, just in mathmatical calculation and network transmission time. Typical processing time is approximately 30 minutes per panorama and 10 minutes per still picture. This means it can take a day or more to process the images and have them ready to return to you. I'm not sitting around, it really does take this long for the software to calculate how to combine 7-8 images plus manual editing to take the tripod out. Stills require less editing, but require detailed attention. Transmitting large files across the internet to my provider also requires a bit of time, which is part of the estimate.

How do I get the images?

I will post them in a draft area on my web site for approval. You may forward the link to whomever you choose. I can also provide a link to the original images if you care to download them.

How long will the tour be available?

I will host the images for either 8 months or until asked to remove the images. You may have me disable your tour and images at any time on request.

What do I tell my real estate agent? (-or I'm the agent, how do I use this?)

I'm not really sure yet. Have them give me a call and we'll work it out.

Who owns the photographs?

Because the images will be used in advertising and money is changing hands, there are rules that must be obeyed legally. To not bore you with the "why"s, I will summarize as follows. There will be a written agreement that sets up these rules:

1. I won't sell pictures of your house to anyone unless I get written permission from you. This would also require me to split the payment with you at that time.

2. I retain rights to the images so I can post them to the internet legally.

3. I can use the images to show other people what I do (I can advertise myself using these pictures).

4. You and your agent(s) are allowed to use the images to sell the property, but are not allowed to sell rights to the pictures.

5. We can't use anyone's picture (or or pet's pictures) in the images without a basic modelling agreement which requires payment, so just the house in the pictures.

6. If I take a picture of the neighborhood or the street, it will be from legal distance to take pictures of dwellings (out on the street or sidewalk), so neighbors will not have reason to sue either you or I.

This is a pretty standard agreement and should be sufficient for most work.