Taking great pictures is sometimes hard work. Just ask professional real estate photographer Robert Holowka who was hired to photograph a mansion that could not get sold.
Holowka used a 16-mm lens and took hundreds of indoor and outdoor shots to eventually blend a few different exposures that showed off the house in its best form: the home’s 30 front windows softly lit against a deep blue twilight sky, and a long cobblestone driveway. It’s a stunning photo that should garner lots of interest from serious buyers.
He was, however, not expecting the online storm that erupted when accusations of “photoshopping” started to pour in. Holowka says the show-stopping effect was unintentional:
“The intention wasn’t to make the house look like it was on a huge piece of property,” says Holowka, owner of Birdhouse Media. “It was to portray its grandeur.”
But the photo was that good and it did just that: it made it seem that, according to The Star which investigated the property, “this Mississauga Rd.-area mansion appear more sprawling country home than what it really is: a builder’s dream that got much too big for its Saxony Court cul-de-sac neighbours.”
I say it’s a beautiful picture that shows off the skills of the photographer well. But this story shows that we must still be careful about how we portray “reality” in our pictures that may just be too good to be true.
Read the whole story and see the pictures at: The Star.