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Virtual Tours For Homes & Businesses



Adding a virtual 360º tour to your real estate listing is quickly becoming a necessity as we all learn how to cope with life during and after this current health crisis. For Realtors and their clients, adding more ways to virtually show a home is the safest way to attract and engage potential buyers. Most agents are familiar with Matterport, which is a wonderful (but typically quite expensive and lets face it, confusing) way for agents to provide this service. On the other side of the spectrum, using something like Zillow’s free service that you create one with your phone’s camera is very time consuming & typically unprofessional looking (and it’s only on Zillow).

I’ve added 360º virtual tours as a new add-on or stand-alone service option for my real estate photography offerings. This service gives you the ability to add the tour to your listing in the MLS, as well as embed it in a website as I’ve done above. You can even share the tour straight to social media and it looks great and is easy to navigate. I’ve priced it competitively so that you can add it to all of your listings.

I’m also offering video tours. There are a couple of options to choose from, a standard quick hybrid video/slideshow, or a slightly longer & more detailed video (as featured below). Video is great not only for social media sharing, but also to give the potential buyer a curated look into what makes the home special.



When agents look for “a real estate photographer near me”, the offerings they need are now going far beyond traditional photography. I aim to provide more ways to increase your ability to sell your listings as safely & quickly as possible for you and your clients. Please contact us today with any questions or you can simply book a service here.

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Architectural Details

I recently sat down with an architect to poke his brain about what he looks for in architectural photography. It was quite the eye-opening conversation to hear what the things that the person who designs a home or building is looking for. The number one takeaway I got from the discussion was the importance of how the light flows, which is balanced by shadows. For most real estate photography, us photographers shoot very wide to show as much of each room as possible. The problem with that in the architect’s point of view is that that is not how we see a room with our eyes.

The other difference is that with most real estate photography, you want everything in focus. You’re showing off the room, so you want to make sure that the room is fully in view. With a more architectural shot, you might focus on a point of interest and let the rest of the room fall out of focus using a more shallow depth of field. This light and airy look is popular in portraiture, but it can be effective when used with the  color, direction, and quality of the ambient light in the room to create a mood.

These concepts alone wouldn’t work for most real estate agents as there is a very valid reason that most real estate photography has a specific look. But, if you combine the different styles to tell a more complete story, you can often convey a feeling of a room beyond just the clinical representation of it. That might be the eye-catching photo that makes a potential buyer save that listing!


Edisto – The Lowcountry’s Best Kept Secret!

This past week was one of the most amazing Summer weeks we’ve had here in Charleston from a weather standpoint. On Saturday I had to take a quick drive to Edisto to take some preview pictures for a potential real estate investment property for an agent. I took the drone out to get a closer look at the roof, and I was amazed by how quiet the beach was on a weekend morning on one of the most perfect days you could imagine. Edisto is a quiet beach community/vacation spot that feels like the kind of classic beaches where there’s not much to do but enjoy the beach and relax. Alas, I had to head back to Charleston that same morning but not before I enjoyed the scenery, snapped a few aerial pics for myself, and breathed in the ocean air.


K & G Properties

Kelly & Angela of K & G Properties

Kelly & Angela own a property investment company called K & G Properties. They came to the studio to get some updated headshot images for their new website launch. They both met on the College of Charleston basketball team which means I had to stand on a stool to get these shots! 


Jennifer’s Headshot

Jennifer Swanson is a designer who’s company Magnolia Home Staging stages homes for real estate in the Charleston area. After only showcasing her work to market her business, her colleagues & friends convinced her to get a professional headshot. Her response? “This is incredible!!”

During the session, she shyly requested the Hip Hop sounds of “NF” as her happy place music. You never know who’s gonna like what to get them comfortable!


One Last Wedding?

ChipPie

Last fall I came to an important decision in regards to my photography career. I realized I do not love shooting weddings. Don’t get me wrong, I love to see a couple make a commitment to each other. But, I don’t like the traditions. I don’t like to see a young couple start their life together with a giant expense for what amounts to a party they feel obligated to throw. There’s this pressure to keep up with the ever expanding Disney-style princess wedding day that they’ve been brainwashed to believe they’re destined to experience through a lifetime assault of commercialized popular culture. The fire is fueled with Pinterest boards to find the perfect decorations and party favors, and countless wedding blogs telling you what you have to spend your money on. Not to mention local, regional, national, & global bridal magazines to make every decision feel inadequate unless you go all out.

So I stopped taking wedding jobs altogether. I would rather someone pay their hard earned money with a photographer who’s passionate about wedding photography, of which there are plenty in the Charleston area.

It was like a weight was lifted off of my shoulders – I gave something my all and learned that it wasn’t for me.

But…

There’s always a but.

CHip

Look at that face on the groom as he catches his first look at his new bride-to-be walking down the isle. That’s my brother-in-law Chip. How could I not shoot this guy’s wedding? Look at him – He’s awesome. So, I strapped on my 70-200 and decided to ride that horse into battle one more time. Besides, look at his wife – She gorgeous! This won’t be hard at all.

Pie

The Wedding of Chip & Pie | May 30th, 2015 | The Martha Washington Hotel in Abingdon, VA

ringsstairs

The Bride & Her Bridesmaids:

girls

The Groom & His Groomsmen:

boys

The Wedding Ceremony:

ceremony

With this ring…

ring

Just married:

just

The Reception:

dances

Dinner, dancing, & this guy:

jump

So, this Grinch still managed to let his heart grow a few sizes bigger that day.

I’ll admit, I had a lot of anxiety about writing this. It’s not fair to the couple to attach my personal baggage, but I just didn’t want to publish a wedding blog post and have the brides I’ve turned down see it and think I was a liar. I’ve been nothing but honest on this blog about my journey in photography and art, so I hope you understand.

Good luck Chip & Pie, you guys rock.

wlk


Transitions

Wow – The last you heard from me on the blog I was selling off a bunch of gear, and then… Nothing.

If I wasn’t me and I saw that happen to another professional, I’d think that they gave up and closed shop.

2014 was my best year in the photography business yet, but by the end of it I didn’t appreciate that fact at all. I realized that the sole reason I got into photography was to be creative, and I started to become bitter at a lot of the business side of things. I already run a very busy consulting business and I was burning the candle at both ends. I hired staff to run my other business so I can focus on being more creative, but guess what? I ended up managing those people, which took up even more of my time.

I also began resenting requests to recreate what clients saw on social media from other photographers. I couldn’t help but think “Why don’t you find the person who shot that and hire them instead?” Combine that resentment with people contacting me for jobs and saying things like “I love your work but I don’t want to spend a lot of money” or the constant requests for usage with no compensation.

It’s more than enough to make someone walk away.

But I’m not walking away. I’m transitioning my focus.

I’ve been saying no a lot. Not to jobs that make me nervous, but to jobs that I’ve tried before and realized are not for me. It’s not about what I’m good at, it’s about what I love doing. If I’m not loving the work, there’s no point in doing it.

I don’t want to capture templates of life.

I wan’t to capture real moments and authentic emotions.

You know, actual life.

Louis Mendes Outside of B&H Photo

Furthermore, I want to create. But how do you create something using real life? Once I direct a subject, or manipulate a scene, aren’t I manufacturing reality and creating something that wasn’t there naturally? How the hell do I interpret a real emotion or moment and make something out of it without betraying the authenticity of the medium?

I just don’t know.

But I’ve got to ask myself, do I even care about the authenticity of the medium in that way anymore?

I do care about capturing life. I do care about making art. So I began focusing heavily on something else while looking for answers.

I found a group of artists from all walks of life, both amateur and professional, who attend drawing from life sessions at different locations in the area every week. I tried doing something I’d never done before – Drawing live models. The focus on drawing a timed sketch of a human is not on the exact realistic representation of the model. It’s about the gesture. It’s about the body language. The essence of the subject is more important than anything else.

I really liked this one tonight - Mary at #TheArtistsLoft in #MountPleasant 15 minute #sketch #FigureDrawing #graphite #fabercastell #livemodel

Pastel #FigureDrawing from life #20Minutes

Like photography, technique comes into play. There are also tools of the trade (although pencils and paper are pretty accessible in comparison to lenses and lights). I do find myself “geeking out” over a brand of pencils or a type of paper. It’s part of who I am. Give me too many pencils and I’ll stress out over which thickness is best for whatever I’m drawing. It’s just like packing too many lenses for a job. I make better work when I limit myself (I hope that sinks in one day). The gear is all a noisy distraction.

I also started to practice drawing from photos again. When there’s more time to draw, I find that the muscle memory of drawing gesture from a live model is taking over first. Once I realize that I have time to relax, I’m able to focus on the technique again. The more I practice both drawing live models and from reference photos, the better I’ll be equipped to capture both gesture and accuracy without even thinking about it.

Here’s a pastel drawing I recently made from a reference photo:

Trying a different medium tonight. #Pastel #FigureDrawing #PhotoReference #fabercastell #Strathmore #Female #Nude

This is a piece I made for my wife using a photo I took years ago as a reference:

Pastel Elephant Drawing for Amy by Joseph W. Nienstedt

So, what does this all mean?

What I’m looking to create photographically and through drawing and painting is starting to come a little more into focus for me.

I know I want authenticity, but not technical authenticity.
I want emotional authenticity.

But how do I achieve that? I guess the simplest way is for me to believe it first. I have to believe the image. If I know I’m not being genuine, then chances are everyone else knows too. I’m a terrible liar anyway. The challenge is to take that authentic gesture, or emotion, or general essence of whatever I’m trying to capture and use my technical skill to push the envelope. I need to marry the real with the surreal but not force it.

So while all of this is swimming in my head and weighing on my heart, I happened to catch a very inspiring talk at The Citadel last night by an artist and gallery owner named Robert Lange.

As he told his story and talked about his craft, I was mesmerized. Here’s a guy who’s clearly gone through all of this shit already and is still struggling with identifying himself to himself. I know it’s not necessarily news to most people that artists don’t tend to settle, but the honesty he used in conveying that was enlightening.

He reflected on his college years and how he worked harder than anyone in his classes – Staying up all hours working on his paintings and making work that looked exactly like his subjects, and when it was time for a critique from working artists, they all told him that art wasn’t for him. They said he lacked soul in his work. So, feeling dejected, he decided make paintings of his puppy and his fiancée because he genuinely loved them and they made him feel good about life. Lo and behold, when the artists saw these new paintings, they praised his work. They could see his passion through his brush strokes – He just needed to paint what he truly cared about.

He showed us the different bodies of work that he’s created, and his natural progression of creativity covers 15 years of artwork. 15 years is a long time, but it’s also a blink of an eye. It’s easy to download a band’s whole catalog of music, or see an artists whole portfolio of work and get discouraged. We get this instant gratification but lose the sense of time that went into creating that work. We immediately think “I’m nowhere near as talented as that guy” and put down our camera/guitar/paint brush in disgust.

There’s something missing in conveying that time in the creative world. The journey is just as important, if not more important than the work for an artist. In the end though, the work is what lives on. It’s sad until I think of the current popular culture of people being famous for being famous. When they die, there’s no work to show for their fame so their fame dies with them.

During Robert’s talk, he mentioned that photographers should take as many portraits of strangers as possible. He does that to capture people off guard and being themselves. If he uses their portrait to create a painting, he sends them a print of that painting. They have no idea that he’s going to do that either, so there’s no pretense to it for them – I imagine that they’re just signing what amounts to being a photo release and then months later a print of a stunning piece of artwork shows up at their door.

After his talk, I ran to my car and grabbed my camera. I decided as the talk came to a close that I would take his portrait. Who knows, maybe I’ll make a painting of it one day…

Very inspiring talk from @paintdifferent of @RobertLangeStudios at #BehindTheLens tonight at #TheCitadel - I took his portrait when he was done #CHS #CHSArt

So, what exactly is it that I’m transitioning my creative focus to?

I’ll let you know when I find out.

Until then, I’m going to enjoy capturing the search.

Thanks for reading.

-Joe


JWNPhoto Gear Sale

I’m selling a bunch of my gear in order to fund newer gear and to clear out equipment that I’ve long since upgraded. While I was listing these products on eBay, I started adding images I made using said gear and I thought I’d share those here as well.

I’ll link to the listings before each image if you care to buy any of this equipment (or if you know someone who’s in the market this holiday season).

Here goes. First we’ll start with my Nikon D40 – My first ever Digital SLR! Check out this image:

Gorilla Face

Then we have my Nikon D90 – I really pushed this camera to its limits and then some:

Day 233 - Christopher The Grasshopper

My street/travel camera, the Nikon Coolpix P7000 is up for grabs. I made this image with it:

Manhattan 2011

All right folks, now we’re going to get real serious here. My flagship camera, the Nikon D800 is currently up for sale!!!

Grand Canyon Sunrise (Nikon D800)

OK, so let’s talk about lenses. I’ve got some DX and FX Nikon mount lenses for sale.

The Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 is a wide angle beast. Here’s one of my all-time favorite images, which was taken on my D90 with the Tokina:

Day 358 - Abandoned Trailer

**SOLD** The Nikkor 28mm f/2.8 is a fast prime lens that I used to make this image (it’s also a full-frame lens that works on DX cameras as well):

Day 13 - Rusty Red Ford V8

The Nikon 55-200 DX lens is a steal for what it can do:

Snuggle

**SOLD** The Nikon 55-300 DX lens goes a little farther. It’s like it goes to 11!

Dragonfly At The Beach

**SOLD** You can’t beat a nifty 50, and the Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 D lens is a great choice (and it also works on full-frame Nikons as well as cropped sensor ones):

Day 191 - Old Sunflower

A 50 is nifty, bbut on a cropped sensor camera, the Nikon 35mm f/1.8 DX is where it’s at:

Angel Oak 2009 B&W HDR

**SOLD** And finally, the best DX lens you can buy for under $50 is the Nikon 18-55 VR:

ZIp Line

Please share this post with anyone you know who’s interested in getting some Nikon gear because there’s stuff here for every level of shooter! Have a great Thanksgiving everyone.


Multiple Exposure at BarCampCHS 6

Barcamp-2014

I’ve led a photographically themed session at the annual BarCamp “unconference” in Charleston since 2010, with sessions on post-processing, lighting, retouching, and iPhonography. This year I tried to tap into the technical aspects of creative photography that have existed since the film days – Multiple exposures. We explored two different techniques, one involving a long exposure with multiple speedlights, and the other using the in-camera multiple exposure feature.

The first demonstration involved off-camera lighting. I used two speedlights and radio triggers to get this effect. I use Cactus v5 radio triggers, which allow me to assign a separate channel to each flash as well as fire them both at the same time. I set the flash on camera left to channel 3 and the one on camera right to channel 2. I set the camera to bulb mode, shut off all of the lights, and shot at ISO 100 and f/9 from a tripod. Rachel is the model, and her brother controlled the radio channels. As I held the shutter open, I had her do each pose and had her brother switch to the appropriate channel and fire the flash. This was the result:

Rachel - BarCampCHS

That’s not a Photoshopped image. It’s all one exposure as far as the shutter actuations are concerned. The multiple exposures come from the separate speedlight actuations. Pretty cool, huh?

The next technique is a function of most DSLRs – a feature called “Multiple Exposure”. I learned something new about this feature on my Nikon – It’s not available when you’re shooting tethered! Oh well, after a long minute of trying to figure out why I couldn’t get it to work, I unplugged my camera from the presentation computer and got started. The way I set my camera up this time was to set the Multiple Exposure setting to 2 images in a series and then disable the auto-gain. For the effect of constraining the 2nd exposure within the 1st exposure’s silhouette, I wanted the background to be blown out (which is why you want to disable the auto-gain). This technique doesn’t require any special lighting, but since we were in a classroom, I used my speedlights to blow out a white wall behind my subjects.

This is John, who certainly had the best beard in the whole conference (probably in all of the Charleston peninsula for that matter). Another attendee had this vibrant purple paisley laptop bag with her that I used for the second exposure. Together they made quite the juxtaposition:

John - BarCampCHS

We had time for one more example, so using the same technique, I had this idea that came from something I saw that day at the College of Charleston campus. All over the walkways there were messages about speaking out about rape. There were hashtag messages such as #nomeansno and #itsnotyourfault written in chalk everywhere.

I asked my daughter Mackenzie to pose with a very sad and angry expression, and then I got a few people to stick their hands out for the second exposure. The idea of the shot was to see where you can take the technique creatively. In trying to make a visual interpretation of these messages we all saw that day, this was the result. I didn’t let on that that was what I was going for while we were setting this up because we were having fun during the session, so I hope that anyone who was there didn’t misinterpret my light-hearted presentation as making light of the seriousness of sexual assault in all of its forms.

Mackenzie - BarCampCHS

Finally, I once again had the pleasure of shooting the group photo for the conference. Here’s most of the attendees and volunteers who make BarCampCHS happen every year:

BarCampCHS 2014 Group Photo

And here’s a photo of me taking that photo, courtesy of Andy Paras form the Post & Courier:

Joeonladder


Photo Walking In Historic Charleston

Worldwide Photowalk 2014 - Charleston SC

Welcome to the 300th post on my blog! I’ve had some posts here that have been pretty popular, a lot that have been virtually ignored, and hopefully some that have struck a chord with my readers.

But this isn’t about that, this is about Scott Kelby’s Worldwide Photowalk 2014. Just take a look at this crew of local photographers who ventured out on the historic streets of the lower Charleston peninsula:

Worldwide Photowalk 2014 - Charleston SC

Weather-wise, it may have been the most perfect day ever conceived. It was like San Francisco perfect. I brought my daughter again this year, and she invited 4 of her art-school friends who all took to the streets in true teenage fashion.

Worldwide Photowalk 2014 - Charleston SC

Worldwide Photowalk 2014 - Charleston SC

I was sporting my trusty Fuji X-T1 camera, and my approach this year was a little different than the past. Possibly because I was herding 5 teenage girls around, or maybe because I was carrying a smaller camera, but I just let the pictures come to me instead of seeking them out. Plus, I was able to get the girls involved to make a memorable and creative experience with them.

Worldwide Photowalk 2014 - Charleston SC

Using the environment to influence a photo, I was able to setup a shot with the girls, but then this woman walked into the frame walking this massive dog, making for a cool street photo:

Worldwide Photowalk 2014 - Charleston SC

It’s pretty common this time of year to see another photographer earning their living by shooting a beautiful couple. When I stumbled upon this scene, I thought to myself, “What better street photo in the French Quarter than one of a wedding photographer at work?”

Worldwide Photowalk 2014 - Charleston SC

Cooler still, the entourage had a limousine complete with a silver-haired driver in a tuxedo. I asked the driver if I could make a portrait of him, and asked him to stand naturally just like he was before I approached him:

Worldwide Photowalk 2014 - Charleston SC

My favorite shot of the walk came by the harbor in the reeds. I saw this cool lone purple flower in the reeds and decided to get low and shoot it. One of the girls came walking into frame and this photo came together – I asked her to turn around and look back in my direction to capture this:

Worldwide Photowalk 2014 - Charleston SC

Strange thing about this photo – It became one of the most viewed photos of all of the photos in my Flickr stream overnight. Sometimes the less you try to create something special, the more likely something special will present itself to you. You just need to have the eyes to see it when it happens and enough skill to capture it in a concise fashion that lets the photo do the talking. As Seneca once said, “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”


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