If You Build It, Will They Come?
Space. How do you convey space in a small, Web window? You can’t poke your head through the glass of your monitor. But with 360º virtual images, you can look around—completely around!
Come on in!
I don’t do a lot of residential photography. But I got the opportunity to shoot one magnificent house in Livingston, NJ. I was working with a marketing company that offers specialized services for the Real Estate Industry. They invited me to shoot a new construction.
They built this really nice Web site for this property here.
A house like this deserves its own Web site. But the site isn’t just a showcase for this one house. It’s a virtual model home for the builder. So the site really is a marketing tool, not necessarily meant to sell this one property. Nevertheless, the property needed “Web Appeal.” If it didn’t look yummy on screen, it wouldn’t attract too many prospects.
I showed up at the property a few days prior to the scheduled shoot to take a look around and to plan the shoot. There were some trouble spots. For instance, the library was very dark. The chandelier in the great room was casting a disco ball effect all over the walls. Still, we were able to overcome the obstacles and produced what I think is a very impressive Web site and virtual tour.
This was my second or third time creating a tour in Flash. I think Flash is becoming the standard platform for virtual tours these days. And as well it should, since there are so many things that can be done with Flash tours. Some of these things include, narration and music, embedded video, popup photos, and animation. Not to mention that Flash is everywhere — no more compatibility issues.
After taking a look at the virtual tour, feel free to leave your own comments.
Photography, Real Estate, Sam's Ramblings
Thanks for the useful info. It’s so interesting
Wow that certainly is impressive, Sam. Excellent work. Thanks for sharing.