Real estate twilight photography has many advantages. It can help you build your business and client base, and it can add a high-value product to your services. Let's first take a look at some of the pros and cons of twilights for real estate photography. Then we'll look at a video where I show how I edited a recent twilight photo for a property.
What is a Twilight Photo?
They showcase property lighting that a buyer generally doesn't see because they most likely are viewing the home in daylight.
They allow you to stick out from your competition by offering a service they don't offer.
They allow you to add a high-value (aka $$$) service to your product list.
They bring clients to you who normally list higher-end properties, and are more likely to use twilight photography services.
The end result can look so cool that it's not very realistic to what buyers will see in person.
They require you to schedule your shoot at sunset which could be rather late in the evening hours of summer months.
Because they are done so late in the day, you may need to lighten your schedule earlier in the day or lighten the following day so you have time to process shoots and meet deliverables.
The above photos is the end result. Click play on the video below for a behind-the-scenes look at the editing process when creating a twilight photo.
I take the twilight photo around 15 minutes after "sunset time". Sites like wunderground.com will show you when sunset is expected based off your area.
Pull the 3 selected exposures into Photoshop, via Edit In… Open as Layers in Photoshop.
Lance, It would be really helpful to have access to those pictures so we could practice. I would like to feel proficient at this before I offer it to clients. Any chance you could provide the 3 pictures and the background?
Really wonderful tutorial – I'm shooting my first house tonight and can't wait to give this technique a try for a dramatic finished product.
WOW! Amazing tutorial- thank you so much for sharing. You wouldn't believe all of the different exposures I have tried on my camera to achieve this effect… and now I see the magic of photoshop!! Thanks again!
Fantastic tutorial. Helped me a treat.
Thanks for the putting the effort in Lance. Much appreciated.
Hi Lance, I have Promote Control, but I'm not familiar with Chimp.
Chimping is just a way of finding your exposure by "guessing". You take a shot, examine the LCD, and make adjustments to your shutter as needed. You keep doing that until you find the brightest exposure you think you'll need, and you then plug that shutter speed into the Promote Control to get your desired bracket.
Great job with sky dropped behind the trees. Assuming that you edited with a 300 dpi image, what feather setting did you use for the selection?
thank you for the article. how many shots will you typically do of the exterior during twilite shoot?
Just one if all we need is the front. Will take 2-3 of the back if they have nice landscaping, pool, etc.
Hi Lance, a few quick questions on this if I may.
(1) I have had a request for a multiple shot twilight shoot so I'm looking for ways to get 3 twilight shots done in one shoot? How do you get 3 or 4 twilight shots done in one twilight shoot?
(2) For 3 or 4 shots, in relation to sunset or golden hour what time do you start and how long do you usually spend on each image.
(3) When starting earlier do you start of with the white sky image & speed up the shutter to decrease exposure for the windows and building or do you stick with the average and increase the number of images in your bracketed set to encamps the full range required? Or some other way?
Today, I just use my camera's bracketing for 3 frames, 2 steps apart for each frame. I mostly let the camera handle the exposure in AV mode, and just use exposure compensation to go brighter/darker where necessary.
Once I'm comfortable with the light outside, I take three brackets then move to the next. So it goes quick. I'm not using flashes so it's justmoving to the next location and hitting the shutter.
I'm sorry, but I can't find the video for the editing process for twilight shoots. I've watched it before, but now I can't see the link "below". Am I just missing it? I would love to watch it again.
It's back! A plugin on the site was disabling the video embed and other images on the site. Thanks for pointing it out!
Lance, starting 15 minutes after sunset seems quite late in the process. Is it not too dark by then? I assume your first image is showing the scene at or close to the average exposure setting in your camera. Is that right?
Hi Gary, I find the time the weather apps say for "twilight" is too early, hence starting 15 minutes later. Do some practice runs to see what you are most comfortable with.
What would you charge a client for this type of shoot?
Jennifer I am always cautious giving out pricing info. I clearly have my pricing info on my website, but I withhold twilight pricing. Why? Because I don't want to advertise that I do it. It keeps me out late at night, and makes editing that much more difficult when I get home late and have to have everything returned back to the agent the next day.
But in all honesty, you should charge what you think it's worth. You can only do one per day, so it has exclusivity value to it. It keeps you from your family or home and out late, and potentially makes you stay up really late editing photos depending on how quickly you give clients your images. So it may be worth $75, it may be worth $150. It all depends on what your time is worth.
Thanks! We have one coming up but we haven't don't one before and didn't know where to start. But we were leaning towards $150. Great video!
I Lance, is there a trick to make the driveway look wet? The realtor asked me to do a twilight with the driveway wet. The problem was it was a hot day with the sun on the concrete all day. I wet it down, went back to make my final adjustment and the driveway had dried out. After trying it again I had the same result, it dried out before I could finish the shoot.
I actually haven't ever wet a driveway before for that same reason! It's simply too hot here. That, and I don't want it to be spotty with puddles that haven't dried out, etc. I have been asked before but have yet to give it a shot. Perhaps there is a way to do something in the post-processing side of things in PhotoShop? But I'm not aware of what that may be.
Sorry that I don't have much input!
Would be interested to know where you get your twilight skies you use in replacements? From your own library? I am just getting started doing twilights and have an album of blue skies I use for daytime sky replacement on cloudy days but looking for dramatic skies for twilights.
Interesting observation Jo! But I can see why you would think that! Most agents think it helps their listing stick out from the rest. However with so many people doing them, I don't know if that's really the case any longer.