A telescopic pole to sell a house: tricks for persuasive images

Interior design and real estate are among the most 'portrayed' subjects in aerial photography for promotional purposes.
Learning good techniques for photographing real estate can be a good way to win new clients among private individuals or real estate agencies that have particular properties to offer on the market, or to make the most of a property that you yourself would like to rent out or sell.

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Let's sum up why it is important to learn how to take good professional photos of the interiors of houses and apartments (and of the surrounding spaces too), and how these high-quality photos can help those who work in real estate sales:

• Images that are not only beautiful but also give a full picture of the spaces and the light, that is, real images, help in the sale of properties even with foreign buyers. Quite a few Chinese and Russian buyers (and still many Americans, though fewer than twenty years ago) decide to buy a home in Italy even though they cannot come on site to see the property again and again.
• Skilfully made, well-planned photos can tell not only how a house is built but also what it feels like to be inside it. If a house has features that define the atmosphere of the property, they cannot be left out of the frame or underused: is there a fireplace? Good, even if it is July you need to light it when evening comes and capture it in a shot. Can you hear the birds in the trees outside the window? Good, the photos must show a glimpse of the treetops, and so on.
• A photo skilfully made and planned by a professional stands out from the others and also gives credibility to the seller, whether an agency or a private individual.

Using a telescopic pole can help convey both the reality of a house, with its true spaces and its true light, and its atmosphere, as we have already explained in the article 'a telescopic pole for different types of shots'.
Here are 3 small tricks and ideas to get the best out of our equipment for shots that really make a difference:

1 - The first MUST is actually a MUST NOT: we advise against using a wide-angle lens for interiors, as well as a GoPro for shooting video. Both of these tools are very useful in many contexts, but absolutely unsuitable when photographing spaces that need to be shown in their actual shapes. Both the wide-angle lens and the camera of many GoPros tend to distort and create a fisheye effect.
With a telescopic pole and the camera positioned at the right height, next to a light source of medium intensity, you can give much clearer indications of the real proportions and size of corners and spaces.

2 - Alternate two or three colours in the furnishings, regularly. If the furniture is dark, there should be white elements (cushions, centrepieces, rugs) every so many metres. This serves to give a sense of space and light through elements of equal colour and equal distance.

3 - The spaces themselves can be rendered best from a raised position, which however must not be part of the furnishings or of the spaces themselves: to be clearer, it is better not to place the camera on top of a wardrobe to take a panoramic shot of a bedroom. It is important to be able to adjust the verticality of the framing as well as possible, and this can only be done with a telescopic pole equipped with a tilting head.

4 - As mentioned before, it is not only important how a house is built but also how it feels to live in it. Moreover, when describing a property with a photo, honesty is the winning card: showing the interiors both at the brightest and at the darkest times can be a way to demonstrate your absolute good faith towards investors. One idea could be to make a video from the raised position mentioned in point 2... that captures the whole day from a fixed position, in speed motion. This way, whoever watches the video online will get the feeling of living through the whole day and its changes in light in just a few minutes.

The same idea can be applied, although with a few more difficulties and a lot more patience and consistency, to exteriors with regard to the changing of the seasons: if you want to promote and showcase a farmhouse in central Italy, perhaps surrounded by greenery, you could take one shot a week for a year, always from the same position, and create a short video that also shows the cyclical evolution of the exteriors.

Dare and be original! The real estate market is so competitive that a series of good photos or a creative video can really make the difference.