Atlanta Real Estate Photo & Video FAQ
Hi there, I'm Shawn Millar, founder and President of AREPAV. This guide is intended to answer any of the usual questions that new or existing clients may have about our services and terms.
What is AREPAV?
AREPAV was started as a small LLC in January of 2013. We currently have two employees offering high end photography and video services for real estate agents and commercial clients. AREPAV is geared towards higher end luxury properties and provides magazine quality images to ensure your marketing efforts stand above your competition. We look at ourselves as more than just a photographer, we consider ourselves to be a marketing partner who can provide multiple services.
What's the difference between AREPAV and other photographers?
We do things the right way. We use multiple off camera flashes to light a scene, and combine several images together in Photoshop to achieve an image that is true to the room. Anyone can point a camera and take a picture. We deliver a composition that has the correct color throughout. White cabinets will actually be white, not yellow. If all the walls are painted a tan color, than all the walls will be tan, not tan in the middle, green on the side, and orange in the back. Windows will not be "blown out", meaning you will be able to see through the windows and see the window treatments. We deliver the best images we can so that so that you can be proud of your marketing efforts.
So how long does it take to take pictures of a house?
An average sized house, 3,500 square feet or less will usually require about 2.5 hours for 25 images. Houses 4,000 square feet and up usually take longer and may require additional images.
When will I receive my images and video?
We generally ask for 2 business days to deliver images and 5 business days to deliver video.
What are your photo packages?
We offer a tiered system based on your needs.
- 16 photos - $190
- 25 photos - $230
- Each additional photo after 25 - $8 each
- Full Coverage plan - leave it up to us. We will take a minimum of 16, but as many as needed to properly cover all aspects of the property.
Some houses, like small 60's ranches just don't have enough in them for 25 eye-popping images and are good for the 16 image plan. Other houses like 7,000 square foot million dollar houses have so many rooms and features that you can easily find 40 unique and high quality images.
You can request a certain number of images, and we will use that total to choose the best compositions for the house. Or you can use our Full Coverage plan, which will provide you with everything worthy of a image. The idea behind the Full Coverage plan is to save you some money if the property is small, or in the case of the large luxury homes, you will be sure to get everything you need to decide for yourself which images you want to use on the MLS and which alternate images would you like to put on Facebook or use in print advertising. We feel it's better to get everything you could want the first time in the large houses and leave you in charge of choosing what's right for your marketing.
Included in the listing prices above for each set of images is a usage license.
What is copyright and licensing?
This is the biggest question we get and the one most often misunderstood. Under United States law, the photographer is automatically granted copyright protection for any image they take. If a photographer is a full time employee of a company, the company receives the copyright protection. If the photographer is hired for a single job as a contractor, the photographer retains all copyright to his/her images.
Here are a few examples to explain copyright in real world situations…
Example 1: You are a business owner, and you recently bought a Rolling Stones CD. You are allowed to play that CD at your desk and listen to it. You are not allowed to play that CD over loud speakers for customers to hear without paying royalties. You are also not allowed to use that music in a TV commercial you made about your business without the Rolling Stones permission…. And by permission, I mean without paying them a lot of money for it. Yes, you "bought" the music, but you can only use it in certain limited circumstances.
Example 2: You love Game of Thrones. You pay for a subscription to HBO on top of a monthly fee to your local TV provider. You record Game of Thrones on your DVR. You can watch any episode as many times as you want in the privacy of your home. You cannot distribute that episode online either for free or for payment. You can’t hire out a movie theater and charge admission for 100 people to watch that episode. You can’t put the episode on YouTube and try to make money off of advertising, because you only paid for the right to use the episode in a limited fashion.
Example 3: You are an up-and-coming actor with a certain look. You get hired to do a commercial for the local Bill’s BBQ down the street. For your days’ worth of work, you might get paid $700 so that the commercial can use your likeness on local TV for the next 6 months. If the commercial is popular, you might get paid an additional $700 if they want to renew it for another six months. Now imagine you are Flo from the Progressive commercials. She may only spend one day shooting a commercial, but instead of $700, she gets paid $35,000 for the right to use her likeness on a national scale.
Licensing costs change with the amount of audience the marketer expects. Which is why the costs for photography licensing change, depending on the amount of people expected to view the images. A house on 123 Main Street might get 50 views off the MLS. But a kitchen shot for a magazine advertising a remodeling company might get 20,000 views, while a picture of a hotel room might end up in a national commercial and get over a 1,000,000 views.
AREPAV gives a basic usage license to all residential clients of unlimited use for up to one year or until the property is sold. Commercial clients require different types of licenses and quotes can be given for any circumstance.
So how did Shawn get into this business?
I come from a marketing background, with over 12 years spent as a Marketing Director for several start up technology companies from 2000 to 2012. My greatest success came with Discrete Wireless, a GPS tracking company, which received 2.5 million in funding, and sold for 43 million in 2010. I concentrated on online marketing by creating multiple web sites as well as managing all the pay per click campaigns, which at its height had a budget of 60k per month. I was in charge of all marketing collateral both online and print, and managed everything from trade shows to presenting marketing metrics and analytics to the board. Along the way I also taught myself web application and database design, and built several web enabled systems that the company ran off of, including a sales lead portal (before salesforce.com even existed), our customer service ticketing app, and our installation and service portal.
I got into this business when I was selling my house and buying a new one back in 2011, and was really shocked by the horrible quality of the images in most of the online listings I was viewing. I had been shooting and editing video since high school, and had been in charge of all the product photography at the start ups I worked for. When the last start up failed to produce a working product, I decided to start working for myself.