You could be listing your place for sale. Or perhaps putting your place on AirBnB or advertising for a flatmate or boarder to help pay the bills.
When your life is spent on the smart phone, then it's more important than ever your house looks as if it was made for Instagram.
Open2View photographer Bev Snyder, who has lost count of the number of houses, baches and apartments she’s shot in her nearly 20 years in the business, knows more than most the power of imagery when it comes to selling a house.
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She says that when she started, cherry pickers, and then cameras hoisted on poles were the only way to get that birds’ eye view of a property (and thanks her stars for drones today). Back then, three meg of memory was a big professional camera (now they’re 40). She uses only a small wide-angle lens (16-35 ml) and always uses a tripod so that “everything is absolutely level, and verticals stay vertical and not distort out.”
She’s very particular about how to get your place looking sharp (and up those likes) for the camera.
14 Brett Avenue, Takapuna. Auckland. Photo / Bev Snyder. >>> Go straight to the listing.
“The camera sees more detail, things are magnified where you don’t see them in 3D,” she says. "And the eye goes straight to the clutter in the picture - the fridge magnets, the shoes on the floor - and not the size of the room. It’s the first thing you notice.”
So de-cluttering is the top of Bev’s list, and that includes things like bookshelves, tops of kitchen and bathroom benches and furniture, even the walls.
And don’t think you can get away without cleaning - the camera picks that up too.
60 Milford Road, Milford, Auckland. Photo / Bev Snyder. >>> Go straight to the listing.
“If there’s a film on the windows, it distorts what’s outside,” she explains. “I’ve had agents complain a view was a bit fuzzy, but when you look at the image, it’s the windows that are not sparkling clean. That’s so important.”
Though strictly it’s a job for the stagers, Bev is not above rearranging furniture before she takes a photo. Again, while in real life it may make sense to have a sofa in front of glass doors, it spoils the view for the camera. She’ll push chairs out of doorways, and beds away from the camera so that the image includes a lot of floor space in the foreground (that, too, is why most shots are at an angle to the room, rather than square on - it makes it easier to read the space in a room).
7 Duncansby Road, Rodney. Photo / Bev Snyder. >>> Go straight to the listing.
She shares a tip sheet with clients before she arrives for a house shoot that always starts with first impressions: a clipped lawn, weeded front bed, swept and weeded driveway. She urges sellers to spend a bit of money and a few hours on refreshing paint on the front door and porch, planting some seasonal coloured flowers in the pots or front beds and a fresh doormat.
And what about outdoor space that we love for our indoor-outdoor flow? Bev is very particular about the location and state of the barbecue, dressing it with food platters if it is in good condition, taking it way if it is not. The same with garden furniture - she’d rather shoot an empty deck than one with tatty, mouldy old stuff. Same for pot plants past their prime.
Her bugbear in a kitchen? As well as those fridge magnets, the camera isn’t kind to drawers or cupboards that don’t shut properly and dirty ovens (the greasy glass is immediately visible in a picture). Bev tucks away appliances and stuff on the bench, likes to see polished taps and isn’t a fan of tea-towels hanging. In bathrooms, again, the camera picks up when shower glass or mirrors have a dirty film.
Her commonest problem these days is where a house has some LED lights and some still old school.
22 Glade Place, Takapuna. Auckland. Photo / Bev Snyder. >>> Go straight to the listing.
“The eye sees two different colours - a blue cast or a yellow cast - and you can’t figure out what makes things seem so funny,” she says. “Most people have no idea when they replace a bulb what colour it is, but the camera does. It’s really obvious in a twilight shoot.”
In the bedrooms professional stylists pull out all the stops with layers of beautiful linen and cushions, but for regular houses Bev keeps crisp white waffle duvet sets in her kit so she can throw them over patterns or colours that don’t work with the decor.
Bev still loves people sharing their houses with her.
“People are selling their most important asset, they are so emotionally invested in their home,” she says. “So I have to do the best job for the seller, make it look lovely in their eyes.”
