I mentioned in the January Frugals thread how I was going to save a lot of money on infrastructure for my photography business this year. The reason was too long to put in that thread, but it still <PeterGriffin>really grinds my geahs</PeterGriffin> on how it came about, so I'm posting the reason in Rants.

I recently shot an imminent listing for a real estate agent I haven't worked with before. I sent the seller and the agent links to the image files on my cloud service. I like them. Seller loved them. Didn't hear from the agent; nothing new there.

Last week someone in the agent's office was assigned to get the images onto MLS for listing this weekend. Assistant quickly called the home seller claiming the image files were "all corrupted". The seller called me; neither of us had trouble reviewing the exact same files Assistant was using. Assistant never bothered contacting me about her "problem". Instead, Assistant decided to make the seller clean her house ASAP so she could retake all of the pictures with her cell phone camera and then upload them to MLS. Apparently that's the only way she knows how to do it.

Of course, the pictures look terrible but they will have to be the way people are introduced to an almost-$300,000 house. For the seller's sake, let's hope viewers can get past the squished weird-looking panoramas with their J-shaped walls and mismatched colors. Seller can't believe these are the pictures they're using. I should invoice the agent and see if I get paid (since he didn't use my images)...

One RE agent I know (who takes her own pictures) told me once most agents wouldn't recognize a good picture if it bit them in the backside. I chuckled when she said that but, dammit, it appears she's right. It has been very tough to sell into a market that seems quite satisfied with crummy pictures for all but the multi-million-dollar properties.

Anyway, it has been costing me several hundred dollars a year in insurance, gear, software updates, and more to sell very little. In three years I have yet to see repeat business or even stated referrals from the agents for whom I've shot listings, never mind the cold calls. The sellers I've worked with all love the pictures I've taken. Agents said I did really nice work, too. At the end of the day, though, really good pictures apparently aren't very valuable.

It's time to try something different. I've thought for some time about fine-art photography; I think it's time to give that a whirl. I never figured there would be as much money in that as in real-estate photography. But I won't have to make much to net more than I've made so far in real estate. Disappointing....