Hello all, welcome to WFHR's Rapids Report, proudly brought to you by Crockett Sceptic for
this June 10th, 2025.
Have your host James here.
We're joined by our good friend David Farmbro for Reality Radio.
David, good to have you with us.
It's wonderful to be with you James.
I am very well, thank you, and we're going to be talking about something very close to
my heart in today's show.
We're going to be talking about photography and how that relates to real estate and selling
a house.
Really interested to dive into this topic with you, not only because I don't know much about
it, and I find it interesting, but certainly as you touch on there, you're background with
photography.
So it's going to be fun to get into.
But before we do that, you had something else that we wanted to highlight real quick.
Yes, I do want to mention the power of business luncheon, which the Chamber of Commerce
is putting on at Midstate Technical College Tuesday, June 24th, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
It is a business luncheon, so it's a networking event, but it's also a perfect opportunity
to learn about AI and what that can do for your business.
Yeah, I was talking about promise about this a little bit ago, and one of the things that
I really highlighted that I really feel like they're highlighting, I mean, is the answering
of questions.
AI is a topic that's probably going to be one of the bigger topics over the next couple
of years, and I, you know, the national media covers it quite a bit.
I think it's really important for us as locals and on the local level, around the whole
country, around the whole world, to be covering this subject and giving up people and opportunity
to ask questions or find out more about this subject matter, for all the reasons that we've
already, you know, plenty of people have already covered in everything.
I think that like a lot of things in life, the fear stems from just not knowing, and the
more information we can get out there about this, the more we can have people understand
that I think that there are a lot of layers to AI, and I think that there's a lot of
especially on the business side of things.
It gives an advantage to small businesses that could be game-changing, could be, you know,
the difference of a business making it or not, and I don't take that lightly.
On the same end of it, creatively, it has a big fear in my community and my industry.
So I think there's a lot of layers to it, and the chamber just touching on the subject,
giving our community more opportunities to learn more, it's very cool that they're doing
this.
I think so, and one of the things to remember is that the AI revolution has already happened.
It's not just coming up, it's now.
People are using AI a lot.
Also, it's good to remember that just because you may see a lot of examples of bad AI,
and that's usually where it's most obvious when it's bad, it's obvious, a badly done photograph
edit, or a badly produced graphic, or a badly written article, you know, AI is just
terrible.
But there are a lot of instances where it's used very well and very creatively that we
are probably not aware of.
So it's worth putting the AI role, as I call it, to one side, and just seeing what the
possibilities are, and creativity is one of them.
You know, you talk about your industry, it's a creative industry, but businesses rely
a lot on creativity, creative problem solving, creative approaches, and really, you need
to have that creative element to know how to use AI to the best effect.
So you're not just producing junk or copies of somebody else's output.
If you can use it creatively and in a measured way, and check everything you do, it can be
a real force for good.
Very few mom and pop businesses, or businesses that just run by locals, even franchise businesses
run by locals, can afford a marketing team.
You know, the AI can be crucial when it comes to that and helping advertise, helping with
posts, so many other things that, you know, can give a small business a real, like, a feeling
of a bigger business with the amount of tools that they have available to them with this,
you know, with AI.
That's right.
That's just one of the ways in which it can help.
And if you come to the business, the business luncheon, the power of AI, then it will be
something where you can learn about other ways that you can help your business.
And that is over at mid-state Tuesday, 24th June 24th, and it is something that you have
to register for because it's a catered event, and you can go to the Chamber's website.
I'll also be putting out information on my RapidSomes Facebook page.
Excellent.
And WisconsinRapidsChamber.com, if you want to head on over there, everybody, otherwise,
be sure to check out David's Facebook page and subscribe to that page, give up the date
and all the interesting and unique things that David is covering, and certainly the real
estate industry.
And that's where we're going today with today's headline, our main topic for today, real
estate photography, David.
I think photography is just interesting.
I've always enjoyed it.
You and I have talked on air and off air about this, and I always find it interesting.
But to get to talk to you about this particular subject, given this is a couple of your wheelhouses
and I think you got a couple of them, but these are two of them right here.
So why do you, did you feel that this was an important one to touch on?
I think it is crucial to how a house is presented for sale.
It is crucial to marketing, and you will see a big difference between the success of
a good property that has good photographs and a good property that has bad photographs.
The majority of contact people will make with a property first, will be online and photographs
tell the story of the house.
So yes, you may have a, you're real to telling you, well, I've seen a lovely house.
It's three bedroom, two bathroom, but you want to see the photographs.
You want to get your first impression.
Sometimes photographs can make the difference between somebody traveling to see what might
become their home and maybe deciding they're going to give it a miss.
Photographs can create emotion.
They can create feelings and you're dealing with more than just a logical depiction of
the, of a building.
You're dealing with telling someone this could be home.
You know, David, this, I'm just going to share this with you.
We'll just keep it between you and I and everything in the audience.
But I, I am nowhere near buying a home, but every once in a while it's one of those things
that I'll catch myself doing, looking at local homes or something like that.
And I don't know if it's daydreaming or what it is, but I'm just looking at them.
And even when I'm doing that, sometimes a, a couple of bad photos will get me to move
on to another house.
And I'm not even genuinely like in depth looking at these things.
I'm just casually looking.
I can't imagine for somebody who is genuinely looking for their next, hopefully their forever
home or something along those lines and how that first impression you touch on there
can be so key to this and them continuing to look into the house.
It's not something that I think a lot of us would think of off the cuff, but it's an
important part of the, the selling process.
And before we get into your background a little bit with this topic, I have to ask something
I meant to, I meant to ask this a long time ago to finally pop back in my head, David.
What came first photography or real estate?
Well, for me, photography is a hobby as a hobby.
Oh, it's always a hobby.
As a hobby, yes, because it's something that I started doing when I was about 10 or 11
years old in my youth club and I started using the old 35 millimeter cameras where you
have to get your light meter out and check the depth of field and adjust your exposure
levels and your apertures.
And I had that as a hobby really throughout my life, but really it only became an affordable
hobby once we didn't have to buy film.
Because I was never in a position of being able to afford a lot of film.
I tried, sometimes I'd feel extravagant and I'd buy a couple of rolls and I'd go out
and shoot two rolls of film, but that's nothing compared to what you can do with digital.
I was in Chicago last year and I probably took 600 shots in one day and you can look through
those immediately and get the immediate feedback, whereas in the old days, you wouldn't know
what you were doing wrong.
You might take 10 pictures that you've made a fundamental error on, but you don't know
until you get your prints back in the post.
Oh, remember those days.
And also, if you're short of money, sometimes you wait for six months to send your films off
to be developed.
Yeah.
But it all really made the huge difference and when I came over here from the UK, I decided
I wanted to work as a photographer and a writer.
And so I equipped myself with DSLR cameras and other equipment and started photographing
for newspapers.
I've done many photography assignments for people like the City of Wisconsin Rapids, Wood
County, the City of Nikusa, Encourage Community Foundation, Chamber of Commerce and for individuals.
I've done lots of portrait photography.
I also used to do a lot of event photography for a radio station.
So I have worked as a professional photographer and all that experience goes into what I do
as a realtor because I know how to compose an image.
I know how to make an image appealing.
Yeah.
That's where I was going to pick up on because it's one thing to know how to click a camera
and to turn it on or just to take the photos or what have you.
This set up in the presentation is so very important.
But you also come with the knowledge of the technical side.
And you just kind of, I'm not sure if it was intentional or not there, but kind of gave
us a little bit of a gateway into this where I don't know many industries who were more
impacted by the revolution of the digital age and all this stuff with being able to take
a billion phones.
We're all walking around with cameras now.
In the real estate industry, in the presentation of homes now, and certainly if you go even
farther than that with the people being able to take home tours of the home and stuff.
That's a whole other subject, but it kind of tie into each other.
So you bring that knowledge as well, not just how to take a photo right, but the technology
of getting it up loading it and all the other technical parts of it that not every myself
and many other people out there may not just know off the cuff.
And also there's another key aspect of photography for a estate which is editing.
And you have to know how to do that.
It is a technical subject.
You don't need to know an awful lot of fancy techniques, but you need to know about lighting.
So you need to know that when you go into a house and it's very sunny outside, your
camera will probably adjust automatically and darken down the image.
So you might end up with a room looking very dark just because it's a bright day outside.
And that's not going to look good when that goes up on the MLS or on Zillow or on Facebook.
So you have to know how to control that lighting and to the extent that you can't control
it because not all everything is within your control when you're on site.
You need to know how to edit it so that the photograph has an even brightness.
And I want to make it clear that you never want to do anything that misrepresents a property.
So for example, I could easily edit out a broken window.
That would not be difficult for me to do technically, but I would never do it because that misleads
people and when they get there and they see that, they say, hang on a minute and you don't
sell a house anyway.
So it's pointless as well as dishonest.
So sometimes you do want to edit things out.
You know, you photograph something and then when you get back to your desk, you notice
oh dear, somebody left a can of beer on the floor and you can just edit that out because
that's not part of the house.
Right, that's different.
That's perfectly legitimate.
One thing that some people don't expect is I do have a camera bag with two to three thousand
dollars worth of equipment in it.
But often my real estate photos are taken on my smartphone and my smartphone has an extremely
capable camera is very reactive to low light and it's also, it also is in the right aspect
ratio.
Without getting too technical, you may notice sometimes if you look at photographs that
are online, it's a sort of little thin photograph and then there's a white bar down the side
of it and that's because it's been taken in the wrong aspect ratio and all photographs
for listings are supposed to be taken in a standard aspect ratio.
Now if I use my SLR cameras, they don't have that same aspect ratio and I would have
to edit every photograph to conform which might be difficult because that might cut off
the very side of an intro I want to have the whole of.
But if I'm using my smartphone then I can monitor that, I can see exactly what is going
to be visible digitally in my phone's display.
And I appreciate the example you gave us there too.
That's a really interesting thing to hear and stuff because again, don't think a lot
of us would have thought of that, it's a very insightful and helpful that you think of
those things though and to be able to give your clients that kind of option, that's fantastic.
Yeah, it just helps to be knowledgeable of those things in advance because then you
can make good preparations for photography.
So I do often do the exterior shots on a different day from when I do the interior because
sometimes people say, well, I'm not going to have the house ready until Thursday and
you might say, okay, well, I've looked at the weather for Thursday and it's going to
be a little bit cloudy but Wednesday we're going to have bright sunshine.
And it's very funny, sometimes you can make a rather plain looking home very appealing
just by having a bright blue sky and bright green grass.
Whereas if it's on a cloudy day, it can look very drab.
Yeah.
And you know, I also can't help my brain and you know, going to what it might be like
in other states and other climates and everything and how much they have to maneuver, working
around those things or with those things.
That's got it.
You sent me down a rabbit all day but I'm going to be looking at it.
I wanted to touch on one other thing that you mentioned in your notes too that I thought
was really noteworthy about the importance of photo order.
Again, one of those things that I wouldn't have thought of but I think it's probably affected
me when I've been looking at houses before too.
So it's an interesting topic.
Yes, I always like to start with what I call the hero photograph and this is going to
be the main draw that gets people to click on that link and look at the rest of them
because if that photograph is no good, then people will just scroll by.
So for me, typically, that would be a clear, bright photograph of the front of the house.
And it does depend, though, on the type of the house and how much land it has with it
because I have also used drone pictures for that hero photograph.
So sometimes you want to see the whole of the house and you can get the swimming pool
in and you can get the woods behind it.
So sometimes the hero picture does have to be a little more than just the front of the house.
But in most cases, that's the thing which represents Tobias what they're going to get.
And you need to make sure that you include the garage because otherwise, if you're just
photographing the house and you've cut the garage off the photo, they might think there
isn't one there.
And another thing, another part of all of this, the drone option, just even that being
an availability as well, too, that's very nice.
And man, some of those drone footage things are pretty interesting.
And I actually do have a couple of drones.
I do enjoy drone photography, but I recognize that I'm not a professional in that area.
And so I do hire a drone photographer to do my drone shoots.
Now, I don't use them on every listing.
So if it's a general, you know, regular house in a street, then usually that's not necessary.
But if it's got any amount of land or if it's in beautiful countryside, then sometimes
that is, that's what's necessary.
So yes, you have your first photo, your hero photo, to draw people in.
And then usually I would go to the kitchen next because the kitchen is actually really important
for a lot of people.
A lot of people, when they're giving you their lists of wants, they say, oh, I do want
a big kitchen.
I want a modern kitchen.
No one's ever come to me and said they want an old-fashioned kitchen, but maybe one day
somebody will have somebody there.
And then you traditionally would go to the living room after that.
And then if there's a secondary living room or a family room that's, you know, that has
any visual appeal, then you'd put that in.
And then you go to the bedrooms and then the bathrooms and, and anyway, basement.
Yeah.
And I found that people don't want to see ten photographs of the basement, but they want
to know where the laundry is.
So if the laundry is in the basement, they want a photograph of that.
My, just for me at least, my final question, and you just, this is how much fun it is to
work together for a while, David, our chemistry.
And you teed me up perfectly.
The give us the order, so many of these.
Can you put too many photos on?
I certainly think that you can put too few.
But the idea of you could put too many on your, for your, your home.
I think so, yes.
Yeah.
And sometimes I see this and I, you know, I don't want to be too critical of my fellow
real estate professionals, because I work with some great people.
And there's also some really good photographers who work in the real estate industry and Wisconsin
rapids.
You know, sometimes I see them and I just think that's a stunning photo and I have to tell
my fellow real to what a great job they did.
But once in a while, I, I look at them and I think, now why did you put 45 photographs
of a two bedroom house?
And you look at the photographs and sometimes you see, well, that's a photograph of the
kitchen and that's another photograph of the same view of the kitchen.
It's like they just took all their photographs and uploaded them all.
The other thing I see a lot of is too many photographs of the backyard.
What you need to do, as you say, is to tell the story.
So you usually need to see the backyard from the house.
So you can see how big it is.
You need to see the house from the backyard so you can see the relation.
And then you need to see any features like if there's a patio or deck or a fire pit or
anything of that nature.
Oh, really good stuff, David.
Really fun conversation.
I appreciate you taking on this topic and giving our audience that much more insight into
it.
And really, love here.
Kind of the behind the curtain look you've given us too with some of this stuff too that
is just interesting and certainly going to help people out there whether you're buying,
selling or just thinking about it.
Cannot encourage you enough to reach out to David to find out more and how can they do
that, David?
Well, they can easily contact me by texting me 715-323-8594 or they can contact me via Facebook
or they can go to my website, rapidshomes.com.
And if we've got time, there's one thing we didn't talk about and that is virtual tours.
And we can just briefly go over that.
Sure, sure.
Yes.
So this is something else that I do for every listing whether it's half a million dollar
home or if it's a mobile home, I'll always do a virtual tour and what that involves is
taking a 3D photograph of every room in the house and then you map their interrelation
so that somebody who is not on site can actually walk through on their computer.
This enables people who are, say, out of state to take a good look at the property.
I did have a buyer who was looking at one of my listings that I sold last summer.
He was in Florida through the virtual walkthrough.
He was able to see that he liked the property and he put a bid on it.
His was the successful bid.
He bid several tens of thousands more than the asking price.
If I had not had that virtual tour, he would not have seen it.
So that's why for me, they are a must for every level of home sale.
It feels like something too.
All the things you said there, David, along with, it can't hurt.
There's no harm to it.
It's going to turn somebody away from a home if anything.
It just could bring somebody that's on the fence all the way through and to sellers out
there.
It's a great way to market this wonderful home of yours and everything.
It's really interesting, especially the chimichin do for all of them.
I can see why.
Now hearing you talk about it and everything.
Yes.
Like I said, with drone photography, not every home warrants that, but I think every
home does warrant a virtual tour and it is something that it also helps to establish
the relationship between the rooms and that's something you often can't get when you're
just looking at still photographs.
There's something about a virtual walkthrough that you get a feel for it.
It feels like too.
They can really be helpful.
And there's no substitute for actually seeing a property in person.
And I would advise anyone who's looking at buying a house, not to go on the virtual
tour alone, but sometimes people's circumstances mean they're not able to travel and people
in that situation, then a virtual tour is a real help.
Again, thank you for the time, David.
I do want to go back just for a second and talk about the Chamber, the Heart of Wisconsin
Chamber of Commerce's Power of Business Luncheon.
I'll be June 24th.
It'll be taking place over at Midsy Technical College, go to WisconsinRapidsChamber.com to
find out more information to register and you can also go to David's Facebook page.
He's going to put something on there about it as well.
The flyer will be out there too.
And one more time, David.
I know we already did it, but one more time about your contact information.
Make sure we get it home for everybody.
Yep.
Easiest way, just go to my Facebook page.
Just look for David Farnborough Realtor and you will see me there.
I always appreciate the time looking forward to hanging out again real soon.
Thank you for the time, David.
Thank you very much.
And thank you all for joining us and a big thank you to our friends at Crocket Sceptics
sponsoring the time.
We appreciate them and appreciate you.
We'll be back with more editions of WFHR's Rapids Report.
