tips for photographing your location for use by a location scout.

R. Richard Hobbs- New York, NY, New York City, NYC area Photography Production Coordination/ Location Scouting-Mgt/ Casting Services- www.rrhobbs.com

Tips for photographing your property for use by a location scout, location agency or production
General:

Making photos of your property available greatly increases it's chance of being used as a photo, video or film location. Photo/video/film clients are visual people working in a visual environment and are therefore motivated to make decisions about using specific locations based initially on visual evidence. Deadlines are normally tight and contrary to what you may have read in some movie star gossip magazine, film production does not spend money frivolously or irresponsibly, in fact most productions are very tightly run ships. That said, a producer will never book a location sight unseen nor often take the time to go or pay to send someone to a location to scout it based on a verbal-only description and you will be seldom, if ever, be the only location under consideration for a shoot so if you can get a leg up on the competition, the better for all of us. Food for thought: You get out what you put in.

Your photos do not have to be professional, but they do need to give prospective clients an idea of what the property looks like. If there is serious interest in using your property for a particular project, production will make a request (based on pictures they have seen) to see the property in-person and in fact may shoot their own snapshots and/or may want to visit several times before making a commitment to use your property for the project.

Digital jpeg files are prefferred, however we will accept hardcopies if absolutely neccesary. Contact us for surface mail address. Note: No materials will be returned. Color photos ONLY. NO inkjet prints or photocopies. NO black and white.

1. Photographing the exterior:

a. Choose a day when the sun is shining on the building, and photograph the side(s) that are being lit by sunlight. Come back later when the other sides are lit.
b. It is important to see the entire house or building; if you can't fit the whole thing in one picture photograph it in parts from the same spot(s), we can patch them together.
c. Be sure and include the yard(s) and important features that may be present (like a pool or great landscaping).
d. Photograph the views of the street, this gives us some idea of what the neighborhood is like and what parking options may be available.

2. Photographing the interior:

a. Use a tripod and turn the on-camera flash OFF. Trust me on this.
b. Photograph inside during the day, preferably around dusk or dawn when the light outside is close to the same intensity as the light indoors. This alleviates black windows (which is all you see at night) and blasted, nuked windows that you see during the day sometimes. /turn on any room lights that are aveilable. When it is very bright outside and you include a large window in a picture it will usually make the inside very dark. Try to include a portion of wall in the picture if you can, it will help alleviate this problem.
c. Show overall views of rooms as much as possble as opposed to individual details. If you cant fit the entire room in a single picture photograph it in parts from the same spot; we can patch them togther.
d. Do not include family members or pets in the pictures.
e. Include ALL important rooms, including spare, empty rooms which might be good for a set up area for the crew. "Important rooms" would be kitchen, dining room, den, master bedroom, walk-in closet or dressing room, master bath, living room, foyer, tv or rec room, other bedrooms, interesting halls, sunroom, etc. You dont have to photograph every single tiny storage closet, but in general, more pictures are better than fewer, we can edit out what we don't need.
f. Do NOT write on the pictures or add text to digital files. We will take care of id'ing your pictures and promoting your property.

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