West Hawaii Real Estate | June 8, 2018 15
to discuss their matches. Photo-led
listings can be quickly devoured, but
they’re also easy to share.
“It makes it easier to visualize
yourself in the property, but also
makes (buyers) more willing to be
visit the house as well,” Lautz said.
Devlin, 39, earned a bachelor’s degree
in painting at Moore College of
Art & Design in Philadelphia but had
been working in restaurants before
she found real estate photography
about eight years ago. “A friend of
mine needed somebody and said, ‘Do
you have a wide-angle lens?’” Devlin
said, thinking back. “I’ve been doing
it ever since.”
Wide-angle lenses can help make a
room look spacious, but shooters must
be careful not to take things too far.
Realtors don’t want to face angry home
buyers who feel tricked when they see
the space in person. With a wide-angle
lens, a piece of furniture toward the
back of a shot can appear distant, while
a telephone near the front can look like
a Buick. Even without staging, Devlin
moves things around.
At a townhome in Fairmount, Devlin
removed items that could appear
clutter-ish, such as kids’ toys
and outerwear. She’ll position
a colorful bowl of produce
to catch the camera’s eye but
also nix items that could be
too bright, such as a bottle of
blue Listerine or orange liquid
soap. Trash cans, shoes, weight
scales — she’ll hide those. The
homeowners’ job is to hide
themselves.
Weather has a strong effect
on Devlin’s output. Sometimes,
Realtors want to reschedule
if the light isn’t right. Others
tell her to go for it, but even
in these cases, Devlin said,
she’ll often return to shoot the
exterior. The sweet spot for
both inside and out is a day
with blue skies and light cloud
cover, something she articulated
while waiting for a cloud
to mosey toward the sun on a
recent bright afternoon. “You’d
be surprised how much time I
stand watching clouds.”
Devlin has a quietly pleasant
temperament, an attribute
on a job that, in theory, is
supposed to be in and out, but
often calls for interactions with
residents experiencing major
life changes. Although Devlin
shoots many empty spaces, she
also enters occupied homes
where homeowners are going
through a divorce or a tenant has just
learned the landlord is selling.
And she sees “a big assortment of
care,” Devlin said. “I’ve seen bongs
being left out on the table, and it’s
like really?”
Homeowners Sumi Maeshima
and Atsushi Moriyashu in Fitler
Square seemed at peace when they
explained that they were returning
to their home country, Japan. So
did Kathie Daley in Laverock when
she described how she hopes to
downsize to a modest farmhouse in
Bucks County. Currently, Daley and
her spouse, Richard Sand, live in an
8,645-square-foot historic mansion.
Realtor Rob Lamb, who works
with Devlin often, asked her to
capture the estate. “Anybody can
have the tools,” Lamb said. “But she
has this slight artistic, creative touch
that folds itself into the photos and
becomes a part of the story.” When
Devlin submits photos after a shoot,
Lamb and his team develop the sequence
for the listing with the seller’s
approval. The goal is that each photo
will draw the viewer to the next,
Lamb said.
“You want to get them deeper and
deeper into a stream of photos,” he
said. “If you don’t catch them there,
onto the next house.”
Devlin’s bread and butter continues
to be wide room-length shots, but she
has begun taking more details for social
media. That intense closeup of carvings,
tiles, or the azalea bush
through the window might not
work in an online listing, but it
could kill on Instagram.
To shoot the dining room
of the historic mansion, Devlin
carried in a vase of flowers
to provide a centerpiece
and turned off the lights. She
tries to avoid the glow light
fixtures can create, relying on
a combination of flash and
long exposure times. She set
her camera for a 1.6-second
exposure time, so the details
of the panoramic mural wallpaper
— from a series also
brought to the White House
— would come into view.
Devlin is careful to note
that the work she does for
listings isn’t the work she’d
do for Architectural Digest. Even if
there’s careful staging, sometimes she
has to pull back and make sure that
each closet is included.
“Sometimes I take photos that
aren’t terribly pretty,” she said, “but I
need to show the room works.”
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