Moving forward with a quick look in the rearview mirror

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  One year ago my family and I moved away from Austin, Texas. Traveling to our new home in Bellevue, Washington, I had the great opportunity to make an adventure out of the road trip. If you haven’t seen them, check out some of my favorite photos [link here] from that drive.
  

  Over the past year, we have seen opportunity and growth. We have had challenges and found the power to overcome them. And, we’ve also met lots of new people and made some great new friends.

  My year was dedicated to building my photography business here in Seattle. While it’s been challenging, it’s presented some opportunities, too. I’ve learned more about me personally, and so much more about the business and craft of photography.

  I’m grateful for the lessons and events of this past year. Although I started off photographing real estate, I was also able to explore other areas like portraits, and editorial work [link here]. Thank you for allowing me to share this exciting journey with you.

Traditions and The UT Longhorns

Austin Texas is a great place to be especially when its time for kickoff. At thanksgiving The University of Texas has a match up with Texas A&M, some might call it a football game. When your from Austin its more of a yearly showdown. More than a game, its a 119 year tradition that has been a very important part of both schools. This year is the last of the great show-downs.

The University of Texas has a tradition of lighting the tower when any of the sporting team wins. After the victory over the Aggies of A&M they lit the tower. It is must see, and experience.

It was great to be home to watch the showdown, it was awesome to drive into town to get a picture of the tower after this game. But is was extremely powerful to share it with my family. Even our daughter screamed during the game.

lump of coal or a diamond?

One of the most common questions a good sales person asks is: "what will it take to sell this [insert product here]?" The answer: "Present the features and the benefits in a way that's quick and easy for the consumer to understand and apply to themselves."

The same scenario applies to real estate. And, one of the quickest and easiest ways to promote a home's features is through photography. Good photography, that is.

Have you ever seen a jeweler use a lump of coal to sell you a diamond?

Troll's come out at night

The Fremont troll is no doubt a colossal statue, the head-and -shoulders is 18-feet tall and weighs in at a mere 13,000 lbs. He is made from 2 tons of messy ferroconcrete. The troll took up residence on Halloween of 1990, under the north end of the Aurora bridge, and hasn't left since. He was sculpted by four Seattle area artist -- Steve Badanes, Will Martin, Donna Walter and Ross Whitehead -- a team calling themselves the Jersey Devils. The Fremont troll took about seven weeks to complete.

Today, as more and more churches focus their attention beyond the walls of their congregation to also serve the needs of their community, they truly begin to address the purpose they were built for. By returning to the roots of Ecclesia to create a safe place for community to happen, they are becoming the "Body Of Christ".

Navigating the line between the needs of those on the inside and outside can be one of the greatest challenges for a congregation. As with any challenge, it can create tension for the congregation and pastor. If the tension can be used to help build bridges the tension can be good, if not it can cause a divide.

Gary Dalenius is one of those pastors who walks that line. He is the pastor of Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Bellevuem, WA. Known as the Church in the Orchard, due to the apple trees that share its 3-acre grounds, the church also shares its space with a daycare center and community garden. While the orchard and daycare center have been in place for many years, it is in the last two years that the community garden was added. And more recently, the church initiated a new community outreach project with The Pomegranate Center to transform the church's grounds into a shared, public gathering space. A space were men and women from all walks of life, ages, and all faith's can come and share community.

Party with a Purpose time lapse

from time to time I have an opportunity to be creative, help a cause, and meet great people. Party with a Purpose was one of those times.

Party with a Purpose was the must attend event of the year for young Seattle professionals. 1,000 savvy Seattleites had the opportunity to dress up, dance, and network with the Seattle global health community and beyond at McCaw Hall.

After a great night of shooting it was really a lot of fun to watch the night with this time lapse
please enjoy.

Why Hire a Professional Photographer

Why hire a professional photographer?

Real-estate agents hire professional photographers for several reasons. Other than the fact that point-and-shoot cameras no longer cut it in such a competitive industry, so what are some reasons they hire a pro?

Real estate photography has to first be effective and then creative. Ultimately, the purpose of real estate photography is to sell the property. Generally, that calls for a big view of a smaller area, which requires a piece of equipment called a wide angle lens, all while making sure the lines of the room are straight and not distorted. (Most home buyers are not looking for a fun-house.) It also requires a few different technical skills from other types of photography.

Rooms need to be bright and airy no matter how large or small, dark or bright. The colors need to be bright and vivid, while staying accurate and true. Lighting is used in most cases to insure good visibility through the windows if there is a view. Other techniques can also be applied to provide both bright windows and well lit room without flash. I’ll talk more about that later in a future post.

Due to the ever increasing number of buyers looking at the listings online, there are a variety of options for a home’s online presentation. The most popular way for agents to use their professional images to show off a home is with the Virtual Tour. A virtual tour, in its simplest form, is a slide show presentation. These presentations range from very simple functionality – where a viewer can click through a series of pictures in a photo album – to more robust – which might include 360 degree photos, timed displays set to music and voice-over descriptions.

Want to see more? View an example of a tour using some of my photos.

Like what you see? Go to www.Realtour.biz to log in and order your shoot today. Be sure to ask for Drew.

Single Flash

Two days away, the flash bus tour arrives here in Seattle. I will have the opportunity to be in with the heard of photographers and the greats of Joe and David. In the excitement this came to be. Oh how fun

love for black and white

click image for jump

As many know, I have a love for black and white photography. My early start with photography was with a great Nikon F and a 50 mm lens handed down to me from my father. Although I don’t know why the strange love for b/w photography, I do know that many a great photographer inspired us with it.

Recently I have been reintroduced to the great and simple beauty of black and white, I wanted to take some time to pull a few images from the past year for you to enjoy.

On-line Presentation

Recently, my wife and I were in the market for a home. Like many buyers, we started researching homes online. Why not, the services are easy to use. What we found was not surprising. There were a lot of homes on the market, and a lot of really bad pictures. Finding the right home would be hard.

We did what 87% of the market does. We searched online first. The online sites allowed us to set parameters to help narrow the search down to the specifics. From there, we used pictures to narrow it further. If the front of the house or the interior were not appealing, we moved to the next house. Did we miss out on some good homes? Maybe! But... when your weeding through thousands of homes you have a much better chance of seeing "the one" when you weed out the ones that are not the one.

This process started over again when we started to work with a great agent in town. He helped direct us to some neighborhoods we hadn't considered, so we saw homes we never would have found. But we had to weed through another round of pictures online. As a buyer, it was extremely hard to look at the pictures of the mess, but it really helped to eliminate homes.

I would like to never think that there are bad homes on the market, but I will say there were a lot of bad pictures on the market. We saw pictures online that included dirty clothes, dirty dishes, pictures of a messy bed. But the best was the picture of the toilet, they even left the seat up. As a real estate photographer, it was more than hard to look.

However, when we get to the point of narrowing the options the real questions are these: How do we feel about the house? Can we see ourselves in this house? And how will our furniture look in this house? That's when the presentation starts to really leave impressions that later become emotions. If we have to look through "stuff" to see what our things will look like, we are distracted and our attention is lost leaving a bad impressions. If we like what we see, we focus our attention on the house and save that as a favorite.

Hear me out on this, people don't buy homes online, but the homes are sold online.

As for the result of our search. The presentation of the house we chose was "on the money". Then the walk through left me wondering if we could buy the furniture, too. It was then that I became emotionally tied.