In a world in which everyone has abandoned Nikon cameras for cell phones, taking good pictures has become a lost art. And the end result can be poor home sales as you try to fill your vacant lots. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to review how to take great photos and use them as an important tool to get your mobile homes sold.
Episode 362: Lights, Camera, But Is There Action? Transcript
Back before I ever got in the mobile home park business, all the way back in the 1970s, I wanted to work in an ad agency. So I had a summer job for two different summers interning at a big ad agency in Dallas, Texas. And I learned back then how important photography was in selling products. In fact, in those big ad agencies, people who do the photography for food products and other of the various shoots, they're some of the best, most respected and highest paid people in the ad agency. This is Frank Rolfe, the Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast. We're gonna talk about the importance of good photography to sell mobile homes in your park. Now, back in the '70s, everyone was in love with the concept of Nikon cameras. It's hard for young people to even know what I'm talking about, but these were giant, big, heavy-bodied instruments that you took around with a whole bag full of lenses, and you tried to get just the right lens with the right telephoto capabilities and the correct lighting to take masterful photos.
And back then, people were really into the art of photography. There were lots of famous photographers, Richard Avedon and others, who made a living off grabbing the old Nikon and taking some wonderful, still-framed photography. But then with the advent of the cell phone, we lost all that. People don't buy cameras anymore. You never see them going around with a camera. Instead, they just whip out their phone, whether it's an Android or an iPhone, and they take pictures with that. But even though it's more convenient, that's for sure, the problem is we've kind of lost as a nation our respect for photography, and that's fine. You probably don't get as many good family pictures as you used to in the olden days. But the real dilemma is that if you own a mobile home park and you're trying to sell mobile homes in your mobile home park, that lack of good photography can really harm you because as they say, a picture tells a thousand words.
And if you're trying to sell a mobile home and you're using really bad photos to do so, it's really gonna crimp your style. In fact, it might bring your sales momentum to a dead-stop. So what do we need to know about taking good pictures of mobile homes? What do your managers need to be, or you, if you're the one doing it, what do you have to know about how to take a competent picture to sell? Well, the first item is the importance of lighting. Because to take a good picture, you have to have the light coming from just the right direction to illuminate whatever it is you're taking the picture of properly. So if this is going to be a picture of something that's on the side of a house and it's on the side that only gets light in the morning on that side of the home, then you've gotta shoot it in the morning.
If we're shooting in an interior shot, which looks best when the light comes in from a certain window and that certain window only gets the light in the afternoon, well then we have to shoot that in the afternoon. People today are very lazy when it comes to lighting. They just wanna shoot it when they wanna shoot it. So whether or not they know that the light needs to be from another direction, they'll just shoot it. Often, we'll have managers send us pictures they wanna use to sell a home from where they're trying to shoot the picture right into the direct sunlight. You can't even see what they're taking a picture of because the sunlight is blinding into the lens of their phone. And as a result, all you see is this washed out dark object blob into the glaring sun. So item number one is we've gotta get the lighting right, we have to stop the laziness on the lighting. Number two, always take your pictures using the horizontal format of the camera, not the vertical. Horizontal makes things look better. I know we all think well, but gosh, the vertical is so much easier when you hold your camera. Once again, let's not get lazy. Professionals shoot everything using the horizontal format, not the vertical format.
Also, you've gotta make sure you're watching the details as you frame the picture. What all can you see in that picture? I'm endlessly amazed when a manager will think the photograph of a kitchen where on the counter is a McDonald's coffee cup with a cigarette stuffed in it, that somehow that is acceptable because it's no [t. Nor is it acceptable to take a picture of a home you're trying to sell when there's a poor conditioned car parked in front of it. No, we need to make the picture after that car has left. So people need to be a little more mindful of all the various items that appear in that picture. All these things tell a story also, and they can tend to flavor the picture.
So you've gotta make sure that you've got everything within that frame that's complimentary to what you're shooting. And normally, what that means is all those things that bother us, those all need to go. Also, when you're trying to shoot interior shots of mobile homes, which are not very large to begin with, remember that the farther back you are in the room as you shoot the shot, the bigger it makes the room. Look, if I'm trying to shoot a picture of the living room on into the kitchen, and I wanna make it look as cavernous, as giant as possible, I'm gonna wanna wedge my body up in the corner there in the one corner of the living room to give it maximum capability to look big. Yet many managers will simply walk into the room, not step back towards the wall at all, shoot the picture, which makes the living room kitchen combo look insanely small.
Now, if your manager is incapable of doing the things I just mentioned, if they don't have no aesthetic sensibility at all, if they can't figure out where the light comes from, if they can't do the details of what all is seen in the frame, if they can't even hold the camera level, or maybe they can't even hold the camera still enough that the photo does not become that blurry, well, you can't just go with that. You're gonna have to get a third party then to take the pictures. Now, is it that hard to do? No, you could hire someone on Craigslist to do it for not much money. There's probably somebody else in that person's family or in the park who could just walk over and do it. Some people are aesthetically challenged and have the in... Are completely incapable of taking competent photographs. But you can't let it ride.
You can't say, well, that manager is so good in many different things. Yeah, they take terrible pictures, they're just horrible. You cannot even make out what's in them. Kind of embarrassing, but I'm gonna use them anyway. No, you can't be lazy and use that mindset. You've gotta have really good looking pictures. And one problem with many parks when the manager takes the shots is that they use a cell phone, which does not have the ability to take good shots. Now, I have a iPhone 15, in fact, an iPhone 15 plus. It takes phenomenal pictures. The clarity, fantastic, the color's incredible. But if you've got some old, old Android and you're trying to take those shots or an old iPhone, then you're not gonna get what you were hoping for. So sometimes if you wanna upgrade the photography, you're gonna have to upgrade the manager's phone, or at least again, find somebody who's got a better phone tool to take those shots.
But probably the most important part of having successful photography in your mobile home park is that you need to have a referee to approve all of the pictures. We try and do that at our company because we know the importance of having that great shot if we wanna sell the home for a good price. So we are constantly poring over the shots and in from the managers where they say, oh, here are the photographs for the home we're trying to sell, and we're looking at them, shaking our head in disbelief that they're so incredibly poor quality. At least that gives us the ability to get good pictures and to fix what they were going to submit. Because it's really hard to sell a mobile home with bad pictures.
Now, the demand for affordable housing in America is giant. It's vast in almost every market, and you can put out an ad and you can get a lot of calls even if you use poor quality pictures. But as home prices continue to escalate, as all of us are trying to get homes sold to the best customers we can find, the right person for that home who loves it dearly, is willing to go ahead and stay there on an average of 14 years tenancy and make those payments, well, then we've gotta go the extra mile and provide them good photographic representations of what they're buying. This is Frank Rolfe, the Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast. Hope you enjoyed this. Talk to you again soon.