A different time of day - home photography at twilight
As we all know, beautiful blue skies with puffy clouds and green grass tend to be the ideal top and bottom frames for your home in photos. What you might not realize is when potential buyers are scrolling through pages of homes online (where EVERYONE begins looking now), buyers’ eyes become numb to the repetitive blue top and green bottom of every single front photo. [As a side note - a front photo will be the first and primary photo on 99% of listings syndicated from the Realtor’s Multiple Listing Service - the MLS - because it’s required under most circumstances. Third-party sites utilize this primary image as the first photo as well.]
If you want to do something different to capture buyers’ attention you can do a few things. Stark white houses will stand out tremendously compared to south Texas typical beige, brown, and green houses. I really don’t suggest you go and paint your house. Another way to make your home stand out online is to utilize a different time of day to showcase your home - sunset or twilight. While it is possible to have a daytime image “converted” into a twilight image, I highly recommend against doing so. I’ll let you know why later on.
Is your home right for twilight photos?
Not all homes are created equal and that especially applies to twilight photography of your home. For excellent results your home’s exterior needs lighting. Floodlights at the corners and a porch light really aren’t going to cut it either. The best results come from homes that have wall sconces as well as under-eve downlights that help illuminate the home without causing much lateral light pollution. Homes that feature extensive landscape lighting are also well suited to take advantage of twilight photography to help grab buyers’ attention among the monotony of blue-sky exterior photos. Another necessity is having windows without solar screens so that interior lights are able to shine through the windows creating a warm and welcoming glow and giving some life to the image. (That glow just can’t really be replicated with the daytime > nighttime conversion techniques.)
Why not do a daytime-to-nighttime conversion?
This is an example of a daytime-to-nighttime twilight conversion.
In a pinch or after the fact, these conversions can help get you a similar look to a traditional home twilight photo session, but certain care has to be taken during the daytime photo session. Another factor is that if the correct sunset/twilight skies aren’t used to replace the daytime sky in your photo, it could be considered deceptive if it appears that the sun rises or sets in a position other than where it actually does. Also, on bright sunny days that make very good daytime images, they usually make the worst daytime to nighttime twilight conversions because of the heavy shadows that are present. Finally, the warm glow that a home normally exudes from a real twilight session is just replaced by a yellowish color applied over the window exterior and gives the image an overall fakeness. With all that being said, sometimes these are necessary because a true twilight photo session of your home listing may not be feasible.
What 3 things can I do to ensure the best twilight real estate photography session?
Make sure spotlights and floodlights on the house point down or away from the street (where we usually shoot from) to prevent complicated glare and ghosting in the image
Have duct tape ready to apply to all solar landscape lighting sensors and know how to manually turn on wired landscape lighting
Open curtains and blinds on all front-facing rooms and turn on all lights within those rooms
