How to Hire a Photographer for Your Remodeling Projects

So if you’re looking for a photographer to shoot your rem modeling projects, you probably have a lot of questions around.

How do I find the right person?

How do I judge their skills?

How much should I pay them, and how do I make the best use of these photos?

Well, today’s video, we’re going to be answering all of those questions

because getting the wrong photographer, it’s not just a waste of time or a waste

of money, but you actually might be losing the opportunity to get photos of your favorite project

So we’re going to make sure that doesn’t happen to you.

We’ve been able to help a lot of our clients find photographers for

their company that they continue to use over and over again.

And so hopefully this video will be able to do that same thing

for you by answering over a lot your questions here.

So first thing first, what you’re looking for is an architectural photographer.

A lot of people, if they don’t know what they’re looking for, they’ll look up

a real estate photographer, and it’s close, but there are some key differences

So real estate photographers are often working a lot more with

realty companies and realtors, and they rely on a lot more on high volume work.

They’re shooting a full house and they’re doing a lot of these,

so they will be a little bit cheaper, but it will be much less custom

Their goals are to make the space look as big as possible and they tend

to make it just nice and bright and very polished

Architectural photographers, on the other hand

more often working with architects

And they’re trained specifically to make the space look as beautiful as possible

they’ll be less focused on the space as a whole and the capturing more unique vinettes of the space.

This is especially helpful in your industry when you’re looking to highlight

maybe a coffee nook over here or a reading space over in this way, something like that.

Whereas a real estate photographer might skip over those fine details

or craftsmanship on the cabinets or something

An architectural photographer can highlight those things better and has more experience doing that kind of stuff.

Now, real estate photographers are in general cheaper.

So when you go through and you look at these, you might be attempted to go with a real estate photographer, and you could

But if you’re like a lot of our clients who are always trying to

chase higherring clientele and continue to kind of raise that

bar of luxury for their work step by step by step, one

of the best ways you can do that is through photos of your work

Generally you want to be looking more like your photos can be found in an architectural

digest magazine than on the Zillow ad

So once you start searching for architectural photographers

in your area, some people, if you’re in a rural area, maybe you

won’t have as big of a selection of these, and in that case, you could go with real estate.

I would still judge them by the same criteria.

I’ll help you pick apart these photos to show what the differences

are with some of these photographers and key things to be looking out for.

So here’s an architectural photographer that’s here in Charlotte, where our company is.

And the first thing I’m going to do is I’m going to go to figure out, and

here it’s called work, but I want to see a gallery of their work.

Anybody worth there their salt at this point is going to have a large selection of photos for you to look at

So shots like these over here on the right is the kind of thing that

separates an architectural photographer from a real estate photographer.

While this gives us almost no information about the room or the space

It does lend itself to the feeling of the space as a whole,

and that’s really more of what they’re going for is the feeling of the space

And so you’ll see oftentimes what they’ll do is sometimes they’ll even take pictures

like this one right here where it’s mainly of a plant

You then build the plant, you know, you aren’t selling the plant,

but it helps give the feeling of the space

So that’s something to be looking for as you’re going through these, is, okay, do we have photos like that mixed in

Or are they all just wide angle whole room shots like we see on this website here?

We have wide angle whole room?

Why the angle whole room?

wide angle whole room, wide angle whole room?

No details, no vignettes, anything like that

And the other thing to pay attention to while you’re looking at these photos is not

just the photos themselves, but look at the work, and does

the work fit with what you’re typically doing?

It’s going to be different if they’re shooting wide open spaces or even commercial

stuff, definitely, and you’re doing residential bathrooms and kitchens.

Make sure that they have experience shooting the type of projects that you do

And another thing a lot of people are going to miss, because you just don’t

know the look at it if you’re not trained for this, is, are the photos themselves staged?

That will give you a clue as to if they do staging themselves or if you need to do it.

And staging is all of these little

pieces of decoration in the room that make the spaces field lift in.

So, for example, here is a space

of a kitchen that this is might be what the project looks like as soon as you finish it up

While this might be fine in a real estate setting,

something that just shows the space bland as it is, it

doesn’t really convey the feeling of the space as well, and it makes it

harder for your clients to picture them themselves in there

Your whole goal with the photos is to make it as easy as possible for your

clients to picture themselves in these spaces.

So by adding some set dressing to these photos, they can

start to see what it would feel like if somebody actually lived in the space.

And not only that, but also just aligns you more with the photos that they’d

be seeing on Instagram or with architectural Digest

It’s just more an alignment with that kind of media

If you notice that a lot of their stuff isn’t staged,

to be honest, that would probably be somebody I would have a little bit of a red flag

for, because at that point, I’m wondering, do they care about something like that?

Is that something that they’re even thinking about?

On this page here, I have stuff that is staged and isn’t,

and so it may just be that they don’t do staging themselves

but it’s not a step you want to skip

Once we get to the part where we’re talking about how to make the most out of these photos, we’ll talk a little bit more about staging

So once you have a good feel for the photos, another thing to check out on the website is, who’s actually doing the photos?

What’s their background?

I mean, ideally, you’re looking for somebody that has experience a few different ranges.

They’ve been a photographer for a decade.ade, maybe.

But they found they really like architectural photography the best.

I think that would be kind of the ideal setup

One of the things to look out for is that this isn’t some larger

company that’s just outsourcing the photos to other local photographers.

While that might be good in a pinch, if you’re looking to

set up a long-term relationship with a photographer and continue to build

that kind of company is not going to set you up well for longevity or consistency

But on this page, it looks like Tiffany is the photographer herself

So if I was looking to hire somebody myself in Charlotte, this would be somebody I would reach out to for sure

Because the main thing at that point is cost.

And so how much does architectural photography cost

So for my research, it looks like, I mean, obviously it varies based

on your location, where you are in the country, your average property values, things like that

Most charge a day rate between $1,000 and $2,000.

And I found another company here that charged that same $2,000

day rate, and then their hourly rate was $250.

The only way I see you using a fooled day rate for

something like this is if you have a whole home.

And so then you’re probably at the upper end of that spectrum, maybe even past the

two grand if you’re doing a very large scale custom build

But for your average kitchen or bathroom, you’re looking at a few hours at that hourly rate.

So, again, it’s going to depend on people in your area, but just

to give you a ballpark of what you’re looking for, that’s about right

Now, if those prices are higher than you expected, I would say two things

Well, first off, I’m not paid by any of these photographing companies

I don’t get any more money by telling you to spend money with these other people.

But I have seen the people of the higher

end remodeling companies never regret spending more on a photographer

Everything that they do, everything they touch looks better with high-end photos.

Their social media looks better.

Their website looks better.

They’re able to land more jobs, which then the jobs could look nicer

So lastly, what are some things you can do both with the preparation and

utilization of the foes to make the most out of this investment

The first thing is, obviously, having a clean and staged space

One of the things to ask your photographer is, do they stage the space themselves

And if they don’t, that’s all right.

We’ve worked with the live remolers who they just have their design team

build up a stock of props that they can go and arrange

in the areas before the photographer ever comes.

If for some reason you aren’t able to stage it beforehand

or you don’t have a design team, you don’t feel comfortable doing that, you can

also look at virtual staging of the spaces themselves.

I have a video on. that that will be linked to the end of this

And that can work, I think my main concern

with going that route is that at a certain point, you start to bring

in the authenticity of your photos themselves when

you’re adding in virtual elements, people as soon as they kick kind of a bug,

especially the way people are with AI right now.

As soon as they start to see something that’s a little off, they’ll start to question the whole thing

The next thing is talking to your photographer about timing of the space.

So, like, actually what time of day you’re shooting

Even if you’re in an interior location, the way that the

light comes in through the windows can make a big difference on the space

So you can very simply just ask your photographer, what information

do you need from me in order to have the best lighting for this area

I know some people will send over like their job site photos like

that they’ve just taken with their phone so that the photographer can prep and have some idea of what space they’re coming into

That kind of stuff will make sure that you have the best natural lighting for the space.

They don’t have to bring in tons of lights and everything

But you can show off the space in this most beautiful time of day.

Next thing is giving your photographer shot list.

So this is especially true if you have a real estate photographer,

if you have somebody that’s an architectural photographer, they won’t need as much prompting.

But the idea being, if there are things that were very specific to

the homeowner, like earlier, we’re talking about like a coffee bar or a reading nook or something like that

Think about little things that like they wanted to add on or upsell that you could offer people in the future

Highlighting those specific things can be helpful, not just for this project,

but then on your website when you’re showing other prospects upselves, you can have nice close-up photos of that

Attached in the description of this video will be the shot list that we use.

It’s kind of generic, so you have to go through and ad ones that you specifically

want, but it’s a good starting point if you don’t have anything to build off of

And lastly, utilization of the photos.

I mean, the main thing is don’t put these in a drive somewhere and put them everywhere in anywhere you can.

Have them on your social media post, do direct mailers with them

and throw them on your website.

Now, the one thing I’ll say is a lot of people do this and they just put it on their gallery page

While there is better than nothing

You’re not getting the most use out of your photos that way, which is why in

this video I go over a featured project page

Which is a page we found to be most effective for displaying your work and selling to prospects

So check that video out.

If you haven’t already, if you have any other questions, let me know down the comments.

I’d be happy to answer.

Awesome.

See you guys.