Property Photographer in London

What’s included in a property shoot

Every booking gets HDR bracketing on each room, a wide-angle lens with a vertical correction pass so walls stay straight, and next-morning delivery as standard. What changes with size is time on site and the number of finished images. See full pricing across every service for how this compares with everything else I shoot.

HDR bracketing means three to five exposures blended per shot, so a bright window and a dim hallway both read properly in the same frame instead of one blowing out. I shoot wide, then correct the verticals in post so a Victorian bay window in a Hackney conversion doesn’t lean into the room.

On skies: I don’t replace them. A composite sky looks convincing on a listing thumbnail and wrong the moment a buyer walks round on a grey Tuesday and the place doesn’t match the photo. I’ll brighten and balance whatever’s outside the window. If you want a guaranteed blue sky whatever the weather, you’ll need a different photographer.

What I won’t do: remove a tenant’s furniture in editing, or add pieces that aren’t in the room. I’ll straighten a rug and turn on a lamp on site, which is styling, not fabrication. Browse property galleries from across London to see what the finished set looks like.

Turnaround, and why 24 hours matters

A property listed on a Thursday afternoon catches the weekend’s viewing traffic. One that goes up on a Monday, three days late because the photos weren’t ready, misses it and sits for another week. That gap is the whole argument for fast delivery.

My 24-hour promise means this: shoot before 2pm, and the edited set lands in your inbox by mid-morning the next day. Book for 4pm and delivery slips to the afternoon after, simply because the edit queue runs overnight. Multiple properties booked back to back on the same day, and weekend or bank holiday shoots, both push delivery out by a day.

I’ll always tell you the actual time when we book, not the best case. What better photography does to time on market has the fuller argument, with the numbers behind it.

For estate agents

Agents who send me five or more properties a month get a standing day rate rather than a per-property invoice, which works out cheaper once you’re past three or four listings a week. I hold keys for agencies I shoot regularly, so a job can go ahead without anyone meeting me on site, which matters on a Tuesday morning when nobody’s free to let me in.

Access windows matter more than people plan for. A flat above a shop on Kingsland Road might only be reachable before the shop opens. A block with a managed lobby often needs 24 hours’ notice to the concierge. And if a property is tenanted, I need to know the tenant’s been told before I turn up. An unannounced photographer at the door is how complaints start, and sorting that is the agent’s job, not something I should discover on the doorstep.

Portal sizing catches people out. Rightmove asks for images at least 1024 by 768 pixels, landscape, and its search thumbnails crop to a 4:3 ratio regardless of what you upload. Zoopla wants a minimum of 660 by 495 and crops the sides off anything wider to fit its grid. I deliver in the ratio both portals actually use, so nothing gets cut awkwardly through a doorway or a light fitting.

• The full address and any access code or key safe number
• Whether the property is occupied, and by whom
• Parking restrictions or a resident’s permit bay to avoid
• The listing deadline, if there is one

For landlords and short-lets

A standard rental listing needs to look honest and liveable, not aspirational. A prospective tenant wants to see the actual kitchen, not a styled version of it they won’t get. Over-polish a rental and you’ll spend the first viewing managing disappointment instead of taking an application.

A short-let is a different brief entirely. Airbnb’s own guidance is clear that the first image decides whether someone clicks through at all, so that photo needs to work harder: brighter, wider, more obviously desirable.

You’re competing with fifty other listings on the same street rather than the three flats an agent shortlists for a viewing. Photographing an Airbnb listing goes through what changes in the brief.

For a period conversion or a flat with genuine character, worth pairing this with interior photography for designers and developers if you’re marketing the building rather than just the listing.

Preparing a property — the twenty minutes that change the photographs

Twenty minutes before I arrive decides more about the final set than almost anything I do with a camera. This is the honest list, not the polite one:

1. Bins in, out of every frame and off the street where possible
2. Toilet seats down, bathroom doors either fully open or fully closed
3. Cars off the drive and away from the front of the house
4. Every light on, including lamps, even in daylight
5. Blinds and curtains level and pulled to match on both sides of a window
6. Worktops and surfaces cleared down to what’s actually used day to day

I’ll move a chair, straighten a cushion, turn on a lamp you missed. I’m not a cleaner, and I won’t scrub a bathroom or do the washing up before I shoot. If I turn up to a property that isn’t ready, I’ll either shoot around it and flag what’s off in the delivery note, or we reschedule. Either way, the clock on the 24-hour promise starts again from the new visit. How to prepare a property for photography covers the rest, room by room.

Twilight, exteriors and drone

Twilight works in a forty-minute window after sunset, when there’s still enough colour left in the sky to read as evening rather than night, and any interior or exterior lighting starts to glow rather than looking washed out. It earns its place on a house with a lit façade, a garden that photographs well after dark, or a view worth showing lit up. On a mid-terrace with a plain front door and no outlook, it’s £120 spent on a photo nobody’s judging the property by.

Drone is the same argument at a bigger price. Aerial photography from £400 earns its cost on a property with grounds, a roof terrace, or a genuinely unusual plot, somewhere the view from above tells you something a street-level shot can’t. A standard terraced house or a mid-floor flat doesn’t need it; there’s nothing an aerial shot adds that a wide exterior doesn’t already cover. When twilight shots are worth it has examples of both calls.

Floor plans and virtual tours

A floor plan earns its cost. Buyers filter by room layout before they ever click into a listing’s photos, and a flat without one gets fewer views for that reason alone, not because the photography’s weaker. It’s a small add-on next to the shoot itself.

A virtual tour adds less than most agents assume, at least for an ordinary two-bed flat. Buyers already understand the layout from the floor plan and the photos; a 360 walkthrough mostly gets clicked once and abandoned. Where it genuinely helps is an unusual layout, a large house, or a property being marketed to buyers who can’t view in person.

For those, a proper walkthrough video, property video from £350, beats a static 360 tour on every measure that matters, and costs about the same. Whether floor plans earn their cost and what a virtual tour adds both go through the numbers.

When cheaper photography is fine

A £900pcm studio in Zone 4 doesn’t need £400 of photography, and I’d say so if you asked me to quote it that way. A phone shot in good daylight, or the cheapest package on this page, does the job for a fast-moving rental at that price point.

Where it’s worth spending more: anything over roughly £600,000 in sale value, a competitive rental market where a dozen people are viewing the same flat, or a property with genuine character, a period conversion, a converted warehouse, somewhere the photography is selling something beyond four walls and a postcode. Below that threshold, spend the difference on a better floor plan instead.

Send me the address and access details, and I’ll reply within one working day with a price and the next available slot.