Casa Puro Dieces – Playa Tamarindo, Costa Rica

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I found this link to an article by Josh F. Sanders who is a Real Estate Broker and the Founder of Shiloh Street University in Seattle, WA, an online marketing school designed specifically for Realtors and agents.

Josh says:

“…it all came [...]]]> -

Casa Puro Dieces – Playa Tamarindo, Costa Rica

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I found this link to an article by Josh F. Sanders who is a Real Estate Broker and the Founder of Shiloh Street University in Seattle, WA, an online marketing school designed specifically for Realtors and agents.

Josh says:

“…it all came down to the listing pictures they saw online.  That’s one of the essential real estate marketing tips for listings!  Give buyers a great picture and they’ll jump inside the house that day.  Give them a “do-it-yourself” picture and they’ll move onto the next home.  The listing pictures make the difference, especially when you spend a few bucks on professional real estate photography!

Even when the listing pictures were better than the actual house, guess what?  It still got the buyers inside!  That’s your goal as a listing agent; get as many showings as possible.  Professional real estate photography makes that happen!”

I point articles like this out because they offer good marketing copy for real estate photographers. Josh has some pretty good catch phrases for real estate photographers. Some photographers have links to these kind of articles on their sites.

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Courtney and Edgar, were married in Chicago, like a week ago, in almost total secrecy, the trip to Costa Rica was already planned, they then had the idea to have a photography session on the beach in order to make some cards and [...]]]> -

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Courtney and Edgar, were married in Chicago, like a week ago, in almost total secrecy, the trip to Costa Rica was already planned, they then had the idea to have a photography session on the beach in order to make some cards and announce the good news to the family… They were staying at the Paradisus Conchal, but decided to have the photos shots somewhere else, I proposed them Tamarindo, we met at the beautiful newly open “Langosta beach club” (Tamarindo Preserve) and had a hour session on location and on the beach… the sunset was absolutely amazing that day…

When asked why they chose Costa Rica for their honeymoon, Courtney answered: “CR it’s our initials… so…”

A truly unique couple…

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Here is a word from the bride:

Hello Toh!

I just wanted to thank you for the AMAZING photos that you sent us. We have started to share the first few with our friends and family back here in the US and they are in awe! You captured such stunning moments, and we cannot thank you enough and looking very, very forward to see the rest!

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Wedding at the Langosta Beach Club from Bidrop.com on Vimeo.

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Wedding photography in Costa Rica

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Another one hour session, at sunset, under the rain with luckily a 3 minutes of sun…

It was for their wedding anniversary, the 20th…

In playa Hermosa, next to playa del Coco, in Costa Rica.

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20 [...]]]> -

Another one hour session, at sunset, under the rain with luckily a 3 minutes of sun…

It was for their wedding anniversary, the 20th…

In playa Hermosa, next to playa del Coco, in Costa Rica.

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20 thWedding Anniversary, Playa Hermosa, Costa Rica. from Bidrop.com on Vimeo.

20 thWedding Anniversary, Playa Hermosa, Costa Rica.
www.weddingbybidrop.com

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A one hour morning session in Playa Flamingo.

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Engagement Maria Playa Flamingo, Costa Rica. from Bidrop.com on Vimeo.

Engagement Maria Playa Flamingo, Costa Rica. www.weddingbybidrop.com

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www.bidrop.com

www.weddingbybidrop.com

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Kunoor and Austin wedding in Tamarindo. from Bidrop.com on Vimeo.

Indian wedding at the Tamarindo Diria, Guanacaste Costa [...]]]> -

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Kunoor and Austin wedding in Tamarindo. from Bidrop.com on Vimeo.

Indian wedding at the Tamarindo Diria, Guanacaste Costa Rica

Wedding photography in Tamarindo Costa Rica: www.weddingbybidrop.com

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David Paler purposefully strode through the cloud-nipping stretches of an $8.25 million Manhattan apartment, took in the set before him and called out demands with the directorial authority of Martin [...]]]> Another great article about real estate photography and its importance in dragging prospective buyers to a “live” visit and an easier sale.

David Paler purposefully strode through the cloud-nipping stretches of an $8.25 million Manhattan apartment, took in the set before him and called out demands with the directorial authority of Martin Scorsese. Then he assumed his position behind his camera, nodded in satisfaction and began shooting away.

While Mr. Paler may not be a renowned filmmaker or the favored photographer of the model Gisele Bündchen, his work is as scrutinized and touched up as any feature film or Vogue shoot. Mr. Paler photographs apartments for sales and rental listings.

These photographs, the real estate equivalent of head shots, are the bait that lure buyers to Sunday open houses. When these photos work, they help buyers picture themselves holding parties in their dining rooms.

Brokers hope that these photos will persuade bidders to pay more. At their worst, they invite derision for trivialities like a preponderance of throw pillows, causing buyers to move on to other listings.

“They’re huge,” said Suzanne Johansson, a broker who is selling an apartment at 111 West 67th Street that Mr. Paler was photographing. Photographs, she said, determined whether buyers were “going to be interested or not.”

It does not take much time with a real estate photographer to learn how deceptively hard taking marketable shots can be. Mr. Paler compares some shoots to “diplomatic missions” where you are “walking on egg shells.” Even at a professionally designed apartment like the West 67th Street home, Mr. Paler negotiated with two brokers and a stylist about dragging an elaborate dog bed out of a shot, moving around chairs and risking the safety of the selling family’s pet frog by unplugging its tank.

He tensely called for colorful items like plants and cookbooks to enliven the apartment’s neutral shades and added a basket of lemons in a photo because, “Lemon fresh — it’s psychological.” (He turned down a stylist’s offer to add a Buddha.) Toilets and trash baskets never stay in the picture. Through the shoot, he periodically glanced up at the horizon to track the ominous, chalky clouds. He would brighten skies later by combining shots and adding in light. In this market, he said, sellers and brokers were especially concerned that photos were flawless.

“It’s very acute right now,” he said. “Brokers are the psychiatrists. We’re kind of like the psychiatrists to the psychiatrists.”

Some of these photographers, not surprisingly, also do fashion and magazine work, but a few focus on only real estate. They are paid by brokers, and their fees vary, but a typical two-hour assignment, including travel time, may cost $250 for four published shots, and editing may take one more hour.

Caryn Leigh Posnansky has spent the last 16 months shooting apartments for sale, ranging in price from $250,000 to $19 million, for VHT, a Chicago-based real estate photo agency. Her less glamorous assignments have included scooping soap out of New Yorkers’ soap dishes and persuading one seller to throw away the bouncy chair he kept for his 3-year-old.

At a 19th-floor studio at 150 West End Avenue, she found herself with plenty of clutter to clear. The apartment had a renter who was less concerned about making the place listing-ready. Ms. Posnansky and a Corcoran broker, Sheila McCarthy, feverishly moved around books, took out recycling, removed mementos from the refrigerator and even pushed a desk chair into the hallway to present the portrait of a pristine and uncluttered apartment. After capturing her shots, Ms. Posnansky returned every book, magnet, fortune cookie and dead plant to its original location.

“They’ll never know we were here,” she chirped while wheeling a desk chair back into the apartment.

Some photographers spend more time physically transforming spaces. When Nico Arellano, a former set stylist from Uruguay, came in to photograph an eighth-floor, $2.3 million three-bedroom at 530 East 72nd Street, he realized that a couch and a pair of chairs swallowed up the space and did not show how large the living room actually was. Mr. Arellano, with help from two Halstead brokers, Ann Bialek and Madalyn Robbins, moved an entire living room of furniture. He would later edit the flat-screen television out of the shot.

“Sometimes we literally just change everything around,” he said.

There are more technical ways to make, say, a Lilliputian bedroom look merely small: using a wide-angle lens to fit the entire room into a single photo, or shooting the room at an angle from a corner rather than straight on.

“The wide angle is a must,” Mr. Arellano said. “The corner thing is my preference.”

Even a meticulously kept $1.15 million one-bedroom at 39 East 12th Street, with an accepted offer no less, benefited from a little magic. Its Halstead broker, Jane Greenberg, said that in this market she did not want to take any chances. So she hired Jay Bierach to take additional photographs highlighting the renovated windows and kitchen. On a recent overcast morning, Mr. Bierach wheeled in his camera and lights. For nearly an hour he snapped away and tried to add light with camera and flashes. Then he wrapped it up. He would have to find more sunshine back at his studio.

“I try to use as much daylight as possible,” he said. “I do what they want, and then I do what I need to do.”

By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY

Published: June 21, 2010

Real estate photography in Costa Rica: www.bidrop.com

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Indigo, band from Tamarindo Costa Rica, interprets “Tu verras” (Claude Nougaro). Made in Tamarindo by Bidrop.com Photography and Video in Costa Rica.

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I have been interviewed by week of life in order to be included in their remote places part of the website.

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First part is here.

Here is the second part:

4) One thing is for sure: you have good light at [...]]]> -

I have been interviewed by week of life in order to be included in their remote places part of the website.

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First part is here.

Here is the second part:

4) One thing is for sure: you have good light at your disposal during work, as the sun is the best source of light for photographers. How does the climate in Costa Rica suit your needs?
For sure the light here can be really good, but I’ll define it more like powerfully—strong and moving really quickly. Basically we have two seasons, rainy (people in tourism call it the “Green season”) and dry, I have to be precise and state that I’m talking about the pacific coast where I’m living and mainly working. The Caribbean has a different climate. So the green season has a lot of clouds, mist, and rain with a violent sun behind, so we have a beautiful diffuse light, slightly colored at the end of the afternoon; or those clouds can give the opposite effect with some really dramatic storm light with a direct sun passing black clouds, giving intense contrast. The summer (dry season) is a constant blue sky with a punishing hard sun half of the day, but beautiful mornings and sunsets. The main inconvenience is that all year long the sun is setting from 5:15 to 6:15, and lowering in the sky really quickly. The perfect Blue hour (perfect for a real estate shot) just stays for 10 to 15 minutes, so you have to be ready. I sometime miss those long European evenings that have twilight for 2 hours.

5) Since the European Union was established, there have been increasingly more debates on politics in Europe. The situation is similar in the United States. What is the situation in a place such as Costa Rica? Is anyone preoccupied with politics at all?
Well, Costa Rica just passed through a presidential election campaign, and they elected their first female president, so there was a lot of talk about national politics, but honestly as a non-voting resident, I just stayed on the surface of the talks; I’m more interested in local activism.

6) Where did you learn about the Week of Life project and what do you think about it?

I learned about it through a post on reddit.com, I browsed the website and quickly found the concept really interesting. Not long after that I registered and made my first week.
It is, as a viewer, a great way to travel through time and space; giving me the possibility to spend one week in the life of a a Tcheque photographer, a Chinese student or a designer in Samoa. From my computer screen in Costa Rica I have all these people sharing their life, their everyday life, in a beautiful way. I love it.

As a photographer or participant to the project, it gave me a subject to concentrate on for a full week, to express one day in 9 images, a morning in 3 photos. that’s an interesting challenge, it is also, as a human being, a good way to reflect on what my life is, what am I doing with it, how am I spending my days… my time… my life.

7) What would you say about awareness in your country – newspapers, magazines and information in general? What do the media focus on?
Costa Rica is a small country, so the local magazines offer a rather small output. One magazine is quite interesting, there is also, in my opinion, one interesting newspaper, doing a good job on national news: la Nacion (www.nacion.com). Sadly a lot of people here are buying cheap (in every way) tabloids full of sensational stories, graphic photographs and almost naked “models”. I get most of my news on the internet.

8 ) What would you say about Costa Rica to attract the attention of people who would like to visit this country and know nothing about it?
The classic thing would be to say that the country constitutionally abolished its army permanently in 1949, it has had 60 years of uninterrupted democracy. Maybe more important to people wanting to visit the country—Costa Rica is ranked 3rd in the world, and 1st among the Americas, in terms of the 2010 Environmental Performance Index, it plans to be the first carbon neutral country by 2021, and According to the New Economics Foundation, Costa Rica ranks first in the Happy Planet Index. It is
is the “greenest” country in the world. That says a lot about it. Another important stat is that while the country has only about 0.25% of the world’s landmass, it contains 5% of the world’s biodiversity. Around 25% of the country’s land area is in protected national parks and protected areas, the largest percentage of protected areas in the world. Everything is not perfect here of course, but it is the best I have found around the world.

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The whole interview is here.

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The project is a book in which sale proceeds will be donated to The Hunger Project.

Dynamik Media is collecting an array of portraits from different photographers around the world. The goal is to portray the idea of beauty in women within [...]]]> Bidrop.com is participating to a fund raising photography project and is looking for local models

The project is a book in which sale proceeds will be donated to The Hunger Project.

Dynamik Media is collecting an array of portraits from different photographers around the world. The goal is to portray the idea of beauty in women within different cultures.

I’m looking for 10 models, women between ages 18-32 which are considered to be beautiful in their local culture. So if you think you are or you know someone don’t not hesitate…

Contact me for more information, I’ll send you a copy of the model release and FAQ.

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Wedding and elopment photography in Costa Rica: www.weddingbybidrop.com

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