If you’ve read our “Keep Straight Lines Straight” tip, then you already know how important it is that a camera stays as level as possible during a photo shoot. The easiest place for that rule to fall apart is on exterior photos. In our local market, we have more than one neighborhood where houses are 2-3 stories tall but the lots are small. The only way you could photograph some of these houses while keeping the camera level would be to knock on the neighbors door across the street and ask if you can take a photo from the second floor balcony (yep – we’ve done that once or twice). In situations like that, you really only have two solutions:

Point the camera up to capture the entire house – This is certainly a feasible option, and sometimes it’s the only way to go. Your straight lines are going to slant in this scenario, but the good news is that this can be fixed in post-processing and it’s something we here at RealEstatePhotoFix.com do on a daily basis. The caveats are that there may be some slight distortion if the camera was pointed up dramatically, and the image will undergo some cropping, so make sure you leave room for that.

Find a way to take the shot from a higher elevation – You can go with the neighbor tip from above, but I’d discourage it. There are a few solutions for gaining some elevation without knocking on doors, but it all depends on what you want to spend.