When selling your property, especially land and acreage properties, your photographs represent the listing. As we spoke about in our last article, 5 Easy Tips for taking a Great Land Listing Photo, large properties are different. The wide expanses, fields, and forests can be difficult to represent in a photograph, but here is how you can make these pictures really ‘wow’.
The ‘Golden Hour’
The worst time to take photographs is the middle of the day, and by contrast, the best time to take them is during the golden hour. Well known by photographers, this refers to the dawn and dusk hours where the wind is still, the shadows are long, and the light is golden. Pictures during this time can make just about any bland landscape look good with blue skies and golden fields. Just make sure you hold the camera steady to avoid blurry pictures.
Color Saturation
You can’t always get out during the golden hour, and sometimes the landscape is washed out with no color. There are ways to fix this with image post-processing and filters. This is what made Instagram famous, and you can find filters and saturation on many free image programs and camera software. Look for the saturation slider, or available filters to apply. You will quickly see colors and shadows emerge, brightening your image. This can be over used at times making the photograph look fake, over exaggerated and cartoony, so control yourself!
Viewpoints & Perspective
Most great photographs don’t show a subject straight on, but rely on a unique perspective to spruce up the subject and gain interest. With low-lying grass or crops, try taking the picture low, while lying down. Or try taking a wide-angle shot from up high, pointing the camera down for a more above the earth look. An interesting picture will always beat out a common one for capturing peoples attention.
The Rule of Thirds
Another photographer trick is to use the rule of thirds. Once you have selected a subject for your photograph (say a barn), rather than centering the picture on the barn, imagine a tick-tac-toe grid on your viewfinder. Now place the barn over one of the intersecting lines (see image). This will instantly make a more interesting picture by drawing the eye away from the center. If you don’t have a subject, try moving the horizon line up or down to mirror the horizontal lines from your graph. This will also give the photograph weight with more sky or more land, making the image more interesting.
These more advanced techniques will give you the edge to set your rural property, land and acreage apart. To see more inspiring images of land and properties, most of which are currently listed on Lands of America, check out our Lands of America Instagram page.
The header image for this article was from a property listed by Larry Lynch of Rose Capital Realty in Van Zandt County, Texas.
Originally published July 16, 2015. Updated on November 4, 2020.