How to prepare your property for picture day
- If possible book your picture day NOT on garbage day! This will avoid trucks, compost and garbage bins from appearing in your pictures.
- Remove any cars, boats or trailers off the driveway. As our drone can also capture neighboring properties, park around a corner or a few houses down.
- Turn on all lights, fireplaces and ceiling fans. These add motion to video and enhances your pictures.
- If you've worked with a staging company, we like to be there as soon as possible! That's when your pictures will look the best. Often, our agents will book the pictures a couple of hours after the staging or the following morning.
- Kids are really curious about the drone. Make sure to stay away from windows and doors while we do our job!
- Ensure that no pets are around. Quite often dogs are kept outside while we're inside (and vice versa) and cats are temporarily in a room.
- We will always review all your pictures and if needed, do a few little touchups and color corrections to make the picture look better.
- Maximize the appeal of your home. Flowers, planter boxes, magazines, books... All help in improving the curb appeal and how well your home shows.
- Minimal is good! Remove any items that might be clogging a space such as foot stools, extra chairs, coffee machines etc. Also limit the decorative items you have on mantles, counter-tops and dressers.
- When decorating or staging yourself, think neutral and theme-less! Put those seasonal decorations away and remove any pet related effects.
- Let there be light! Dark hallways and rooms are drab! Add lamp or increase the wattage of the bulbs and if possible use "daylight" color. Often curtains/blinds can affect the lighting in the room.
- As a general rule of thumb, remove nearly half of the clothing in your closets! This will make your closets look bigger and look cleaner.
- This sounds obvious but tidy up! Hide laundry hampers, remove clothing/shoes/stuff off the ground, beds and desks/dressers. Minimalize what is on your kitchen counters and put away dishes/pots/pans. Even temporarily putting stuff in a bin for the photo/drone shoot makes things go easier!
- Time Of Day matters! In any photography, it's always best if the sun is behind you when shooting. Homes that face the east shoot better in the morning and homes facing west, in the evening. However, we'll always accommodate depending on timing and we'll make any exposure work!
- We are your fair-weathered friends! We will always be able to do interior photography and interior video tours during any weather. However our drone is a little more picky! in the event of a rainy day or inclement flying weather, we will revisit as soon as the weather improves. Quite often it's the next morning. We can arrange a preferred time or let your client know we'll be there as soon as the weather clears up.
Wow! You've definitely done this many times! Extremely professional, courteous and amazing quality photos!
Up In The Sky Media has worked on dozens of properties for us. Each individual project was creatively delivered on time.
Very easy to work with, friendly and great quality work!