Vacation Rental Photography Service

We offer photography for full-time rental properties

If you are interested in taking your own pictures, you might be interested in the following.

This is the best you tube I have seen on the subject

Great info at the 20-minute mark
Fact: 60% of users on Airbnb are most interested in pictures

Here are some key tips from the video:

Rule of thirds - place the interesting part of a photograph so that it aligns with a grid that creates thirds
Do not take pictures of things
Rule of Three - Another rule where taking a picture of one three or five items is better than two or four

Shoot from around 3 to 4 feet high - 5 degrees up
Shoot at arm's length and slightly up
Shoot all of it at the same height
Be careful about pan - counters should be even
iPhone features
2x zoom for closeups
.5 for spaces
Pano for bathrooms

Hi Dynamic Range Photos - takes light medium and dark photos
Use Lightroom to stack the HI Dynamic
F8 to F14 aperture setting

Staging
Set the table simply - shoot across the table
Cutting board with a knife on top
Pots and pans on the stove

Set up the house and outside area as it should look like when you have friends over? You can actually combine a photo shoot with an event where you are actually inviting people over for. This is know as killing two birds with one stone.

Flowers
bottle of wine and glasses
snacks, grapes, cheese
uncover the grill
move the car out of the driveway
etc.

Hero Photo is your best photo
The thumbnail has to be good enough to get you to click - Airbnb interest algorithm
Hero will come with 4 other photos
those 4 shots are mini-hero shots
The first 5 need to be diverse
Walking through the house starts at photo 6

3 living room
2 of master
1 of each bed and bath
Kitchen wide shot and close-up of
coffee station - stove - cutting board
IF THE PHOTO DOES NOT SELL THEN IT DOES NOT GET TAKEN
Use portrait to do glamor shots of kitchen highlight
rice cooker on the best part of well-lit countertop
blender, air fryer
No pictures of the cabinets
Do not take 50 when 20 will sell - do not bore the user
No redundant shots
8 pictures are the minimum
Look at the homepage of Airbnb and see how what they are pushing looks
Best photos are
- super bright
- 1 in 3 have water in hero picture
Zoom in detailed shot of fabric, sculpture

See also this briefly for how a professional does his work. You may decide to let him do it all for you.

A key concept from the video is to capture the experience of staying in a place
Detailed and lifestyle and wide style shots
In other words, Close Medium Wide

EXPORTING

Pixels should be 72 dpi for WWW

Most picture files are supported, including PNG, JPG, GIF, BMP, etc. I like jpg

Picture dimensions should be 2x3 / 4x6 / This is similar to the way a TV screen appears

We recommend uploading photos that are 3840 x 2160 pixels or higher for the best quality but keep the size no larger than 400 for speed on our website

On other websites like Airbnb and OwnerRez you can run higher resolutions because they will compress them. Aim for 2mb

Common export sizes that are similar are 16x9 = 1920 x 1080

The minimum size of the photo required for upload is 1024 x 683 pixels but you want bigger.

Please provide a number at the start of the file name indicating the order that they flow through the house.
Here is an example of a good naming convestion. Let us know what we are looking at. IMGXXX.jpg is the original file name in case you need to find it again.

01 - Front of house - IMGXXX.jpg

2- Back Porch -

This should be the natural order you view the home in while walking through it.

The first picture is your HERO shot and should look good at 100x100 thumbnail as well as full size

The next 4 pictures are you mini heros. Then you do your walk through.

TO transfer them consider a Google Drive. That way you can do the final edits there.

Click Here - Boatsetter Photo Suggestions