A few weeks ago, Jordan Powers decided to go live on Facebook and show everyone how he can shoot a home in twenty minutes. He mentioned he got inspiration to give this a try after listening to our podcast episode with Scott DuBose. Later that day he decided to go live again on Facebook and show everyone his rapid edit of the same shoot. We got permission from Jordan to post the videos here so everyone can see his 20 minute workflow. He made sure to add: “This wasn’t to set a new standard – just an interesting experiment and thought provoking way to re-evaluate how we all shoot.”
We agree with Jordan and it’s definitely not necessary to strive to achieve a 20 minute shoot, but it is always fun to go out and try to do something different.
If you want to see all the images from the sessions: CLICK HERE
Enjoy the videos!
How in the world have we ended up here? These are dark, dark times for the industry. How much lower can the bar go?
I have to agree Chip. Seems to be a race to the bottom. I blame it on the fact everyone is trying to do things cheaper to get agents business. This is why the experienced and quality shooters are getting out of real estate. In his video he doesn’t say he’s doing this just as an experiment but this is what he’s been striving to achieve and now does on a regular basis. He also mentioned in the podcast that he has two separate websites, one for his design work and one for his real estate and each one only shows photos from those areas, however when you go to his two sites, they both show the exact same images…? Ultimately he’s using photos that took much longer to compose, shoot and edit to lure agents in, but then delivers photos like the title photo in this post. Not trying to slag on this guy but his delivery is full of contradictions. Shooting a house also involves driving to and from, doing walk through, unforeseen delays, turning on lights, setting up gear and tear down, so ultimately even with poor quality images, it’s really not possible to do a house in 20 minutes realistically. Photographers should be striving to get better, not faster. Also why is everyone shooting run-and-gun budget real estate photography with a $3,000 tilt shift lens? It makes absolutely no sense. Does it somehow legitimize ones value as a photographer by saying “I have a tilt shift lens?” …rant complete.
“Not trying to slag on this guy”… lol, the whole post is a “slag”.
In the podcast episode, I did mention this was an experiment. This was a last minute decision to make a facebook live video on this so I didn’t consider all of the logistics and clarifying points that I would need to make to satisfy everyone’s objections, but am glad to have to opportunity to discuss them now. I had been trying to shoot homes in less than 20 minutes to see if it can be done and I have shown that it definitely can be done. That was the only purpose of it. However – this isn’t a normal thing that I do (and I acknowledge that I didn’t mention that in the video). In the podcast I mentioned that in reality I spend around 30-45 minutes shooting a home on average. The whole point of this video is to show that you don’t need to spend a significant amount of time on a real estate shoot. The dark times for this industry? Eh. I disagree. I’ve been doing this for 8 years. I am striving to get better AND faster. Since when can’t we have both? Since when was it not acceptable to shoot efficiently or quickly and still deliver quality results to your clients? You can look at it however you would like, I consider it growth.
Now, to your points about the use of images on my websites. I mean… it is advertising. I am going to show my best work in both circumstances. If you were to actually take time to look at what I offer on my website, agents hire me to shoot design work, single exposure images and flash images. I offer it all. I am going to advertise the kind of shoots that I want to shoot, bottom line. I am not misleading or “luring” anyone. In fact, I made it so that my portfolio for real estate isn’t easy to find because my business is about serving my clients marketing needs, not about my photography. My website that is designed focus show my design work and it is all about the images and not about the client.
You mentioned that I was full of contradictions. There are no contradictions, just a misunderstanding as well as a lack of information on your end about how I do business. For example, my ordering system only allows for 3 shoots per day and I have a built in buffer of several hours between shoots.
Finally, in regards to the tilt-shift lens… I use a tilt-shift lens because it is, by far, the easiest most useful lens that I own. No other reasons. I rarely shoot homes with an agent present. They wouldn’t know what a tilt shift lens is.
Anyway, I followed you on Instagram. If you want to talk more about this, I am happy to. I believe you have misjudged me and would love to continue the conversation.
Hola, me gusta tu idea de experimentar con la rapidez.
Tengo una pregunta ¿ qué programa usa para disparar la cámara desde el iPad?
Gracias
It may be a little late to make this comment but I just discovered this video and I can only say thank you very much Jordan. I have read the previous comments and at some point I can agree but in my case I would like to add some peculiarities: I work in Barcelona, Spain and I can assure you that 70% of the properties that I have to photograph are far from houses or high standing apartments. If to that I add that the budgets and the “tempos” are very tight, my fundamental need is to save time both when taking the photos but also when editing them. So this video has made me open my eyes and discover a method that can be very valuable for most of my projects. Also the recommendation of Donald Miller’s book and Gary Kasl’s Run & Gun workflow method. I have both adopted them in my day to day life. I am renovating the web and the Miller library is helping me a lot. So again Jordan, thank you very much.