Playroom of Hope

A local Stoughton family that we are friends with are raising money for the "Playroom of Hope".

The family of Nevaeh Rae Wallace is working to raise money to create a special playroom at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin. Thankful to the hospital for the exceptional care their daughter received, they wanted to take action to honor her memory and help other families in need.

You can read more about it here.

If you unable to donate, you can download and print flyers here that you can hand out to kids at Halloween this year. On Tuesday nights at BounceU, they can go in and have their regular good time and help the cause!

http://bit.ly/WebYou-0 Realtors - it's about Web You.0! If you're reading this, you ARE connected. Show it off.

Don't have a video?

For whatever the reason, you don't have a video of the property.

No problem.

Our new tour interface allows you to embed up to 2 videos per property - think outside the box on this one! You may not have a video of the property, but perhaps a quick YouTube search reveals a video of the community or neighborhood!

Simply embed that code into your tour and there you have it...instant gratification of both buyers and sellers. You're doing all you can to make it inviting.

Check out this sample tour where the agent simply ordered the photos and took it upon themselves to showcase the community with a video found on YouTube!

Awesome thinking!

Want Perfect Weather for Perfect Photos?

Dynamic Range.

The two confusing words I use for agents or businesses that only want photos on perfect, sunny days. I would love nothing more than for it to be sunny everyday for personal reasons, but the fact is...it's sometimes better to shoot photos and certainly video when it's overcast.

I agree that rain and snow does pose a problem, but I love cloudy days for interior shots. Our cameras (and most) can compensate for the dreary days...while you may not see blue sky in the background (that's rare in itself), the camera will typically brighten it up for you. Especially if you're photographing a home that has a lot of shade, like below:

This photo was taken today, a very cloudy rainy day - but you wouldn't know it. I didn't even brighten it up...this is what I got.

So back to dynamic range. The best I know how to explain it is the light differences between inside and outside - when thinking about Real Estate photos. Our eyes have incredible dynamic range and can see light and details both inside AND outside.

Cameras are not quite to the human eye yet...if they are focused on a darker interior, then the light from the windows on a sunny day will really, REALLY overexpose the windows. I am sure you have seen it. Or, when you point at the windows the camera thinks "I have enough light!" only to see that the interior is now really REALLY dark!

The best, cheapest solution to get some good dynamic range going with your camera is to flash every photo. We use a very bright bounce flash that is good for about 100 feet...typical on-camera flashes are good for about 15 feet, but anything helps.

Video - since we don't use a flash to brighten the room for video, we prefer cloudy days as the sunlight through the windows doesn't overexpose the windows and you end up with a more-even light.

This virtual tour sample shows photos and video from a cloudy day - do you agree that the video lighting looks more even?