Welcome to this lesson on finding your first clients. There's two steps to finding clients. Step one is to set yourself up for success by building out your portfolio to do this. If you don't have a job lined up, you might need to photograph your own home, clean up your rooms as much as possible, make it look as nice as you can and practice taking photos, then offer the service to friends and family. Even if they're not selling their homes, taking photos will give you practice and it will help you build out a portfolio. When someone's coming to your website, they'll wanna see a variety of shots. If it's just one location, one shoot, they might be unlikely to hire you compared to seeing that you've done a lot of this before. It's sort of a fake it till you make it type of thing where you want to have a big portfolio as much as possible. So reach out to friends, family members, anyone that you know who keeps their house clean, that might look nice and ask if you could take photos of their...

house. And of course, if someone is actually moving offer your services for free. I don't mind doing a little bit of work for free in the beginning to build out your portfolio. And then the second step is literally just putting yourself out there, start local, just cold email, cold call, real estate agents, agent groups in your area and send them your portfolio, send them your name, contact information. Let them know that you are a new photographer in the area. You're looking to add clients for work. These real estate agents are always looking for people to have on their roll call in case someone that they're working with isn't doing a good job. They're on vacation, they're blowing up and they need peop more people to be able to reach out to and take photos for them and building these relationships is really how you're gonna have long term success with this game. Similarly message local landlords or real estate agents do a little bit bit of sleuth work. Go on Craigslist, go on Airbnb, go on any apartment website. Try to find the contact information for the owners or the host on Airbnb. You can literally just message the host and let them know that you're a real estate photographer. This is actually a great way to build out your portfolio. You could do this and offer it for free, although I would probably try to charge for it. You can message hosts that have listings that don't look so great compared to the other ones and offer to take better photos for them. This is very similar to starting any kind of business. Start local, reach out to people cold call them, let people know in your circle that you're doing this so that if they have contacts, if someone of some, one of their friends is moving or maybe they, they're a small landlord, they'll be able to refer you. Another thing you can do is look at local social media groups face, there's often a neighborhood Facebook group for every city or every neighborhood or platforms like next door dot com. I often find people posting about housing, posting about wanting photographers. And so you gotta pay attention there. A lot of these groups often will allow people in the area to post or promote their own businesses on a certain day of the week or something. It depends on the group. Pay attention to the rules, but you can promote yourself there. There's also landlord and realtor, real estate agent groups out there. There's websites like bigger pockets dot com out there where you can create a profile, there's forums, there's people always asking for services like this and you can put yourself out there and connect with the agents there. Again, that's where you're going to find the long term work is working with agents. I promise you if you're doing all of these things, if you're reaching out to people cold emailing them, if you're finding new people through social media groups, you will find work. It just takes a little bit of time and effort up front.

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Philip Ebiner

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Ratings and Reviews

Chris

The course is a comprehensive learning experience and Philip's passion and expertise in photography and teaching are evident throughout the course. Key highlights for me included mastering lighting techniques, photo blending for high-quality interiors, and advanced strategies like the 'Flambient' process. This was straight forward, and easy to understand. I live in Australia an grateful that you kept the information relevant to any country.

TONY BARNES JR

Hey Philip, Just want to thank you for putting in the time and effort putting this course together. I’ve been shooting for 20 years but never really spent enough time on PS. This course really focuses on what you really need to know. Everything is really straight to the point. Philip provides images so you can follow along and really get a good work flow going. I personally enjoyed the

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Overall, the completeness and depth of this course are excellent. The only thing that needs improvement is during the editing portion. Philip's voice was fading in and out even when the volume on my computer was set at 100%. His voice was excellent during the photo shoot portion of the course.

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How to Find Your First Clients

How to Find Your First Clients

Lesson Info

59. How to Find Your First Clients

Lessons

Welcome to Class! What Will You Learn? Who is this Course For?

What Gear Do You Need as a Real Estate Photographer?

Camera Settings & Modes to Use for Real Estate Photography

Can You Use a Smartphone for Real Estate Photography? Pros & Cons

How to Compose Real Estate Photos - The Basics

Lighting Basics for Real Estate Photography

The Window Pull: How to Make the Exteriors Pop

RAW vs. JPEG Photos - Which Should You Shoot?

Key Lesson: What Photos Do You Need to Capture?

Basic Room Photo Demonstration with Flambient Technique, Natural, and Flash

Introduction to this Demo

What Equipment is in my Real Estate Photography Kit?

Walkthrough of the House - Let's See What We're Working With

The Kitchen - Part 1

The Kitchen - Part 2

The Kitchen - Part 3

The Kitchen - Part 4

The Kitchen - Part 5

The Primary Bathroom

The Primary Bedroom

The Laundry Room

The Living Room

A Small Space Bathroom

Introduction to this Demo

The Living Room

The Kitchen

Bathroom 1

The Primary Bedroom

Bathroom 2

Front Exterior

Back Yard & Exteriors

Introduction & Basic Editing Process for Real Estate Photography

Adobe Lightroom Introduction for Real Estate Photographers

Organizing Photos for Efficient Editing in Lightroom

Basic Editing Process in Lightroom for Real Estate Photographers

Combining Bracketed Photos in Lightroom + a Comparison of RAW vs Bracketed Photo

Natural Light Kitchen Edit

Exporting Photos from Lightroom

Copy and Paste Settings from One Photo to Another in Lightroom

Create & Use Presets in Lightroom

Sky Replacements in Photoshop

Step-by-Step Flambient Editing Process

Editing the Kitchen Dining Nook

Editing the Primary Bedroom 1

Editing the Primary Bedroom 2 + Removing Objects in a Photo

Editing an Exterior Photo with Sky Replacement

Editing a Kitchen Photo with a Natural Designer Style Look

Quick Bathroom Edit

Speed Up Your Flambient Workflow with Photoshop Actions

Replacing Photos, Wall Art, and TV Images in Photoshop

Darken TVs in Lightroom

Clean Up Smudges on Stainless Steel Appliances in Lightroom

Editing iPhone photos vs. Professional Camera Photos

What is Virtual Staging? What Tools Should I Use?

Virtual Staging in Photoshop with Generative AI Features

How to Deliver Photo Files to Clients

Tips for Creating a Real Estate Photography Portfolio

Creating a Quick Portfolio Website with Adobe Portfolio