This is the third and final part of "Photography: The Most Visible Reflection of Your Company's Brand." This whitepaper by Brian Balduf, founder of VHT, Inc., explains to brokers why, in the age of iPads and Pinterest, they are missing the boat if they are using MLS photos on their websites, instead of original, high-quality photography. Read Part One and Part Two here.

Managing Your Visual Assets

File sizes

If you want to display your images in "Full Screen" to really make an impact, you need to save your images in large file sizes. Nothing wrecks a photograph more than trying to expand it. You can always shrink an image but never, ever blow it up, especially one that's previously been shrunk/compressed, i.e. MLS photos.

Originals

The most impactful change any brokerage could make regarding its visual assets is to STOP using copies from the MLS. Your agents have the originals--give them a simple solution for getting them to you. That way you have the largest size and the flexibility to use the image as needed. MLSs compress, crop and watermark images. That's fine for other agents to see, but you shouldn't have to use that garbage in your consumer-focused marketing.

Optimization

Even though digital photography has made it easier than ever to snap a photo, all it's really done is make it easier to shoot more bad photos. It's almost unthinkable to have photos go straight from the camera to your marketing/website without any type of quality controls. With all of the different challenges a photographer has to deal with on site, in particular all the different types of lighting, it's best to have an image specialist correct, optimize and/or enhance every image that goes on anything with your name/brand on it. This will help create a consistent look across your inventory, or at least create some consistency from room to room on a particular property. This avoids the kitchen looking bluish, the bathroom looking yellowish, the bedroom looking too dark and the living room looking overly bright.