New Series!

Of all the listings in all the towns, in all the world...

Okay, I wasn't going to start this series for a while (until I had more material to back up my claims), but I just can't resist. There is a Real Estate Photographer (or maybe company, I don't actually know) around me that takes pictures of many fine homes that end up in the MLS. Often in these homes there are televisions in several rooms. So what this photographer does to "disguise" them is digitally edit a clip from a movie onto the screen. Now, I'm not a photographer or a designer, but even I wouldn't allow those screens to show up in my professionally staged photographs as large black rectangles in this day of easy computer editing. So my beef with this photographer comes not from what they are doing, but how they are doing it. You see, the image that appears on every single screen in every single photo of every single listing that this photographer um... photographs, is the same clip from the same movie. Is the heading above starting to make some sense? See below...

Why did the photographer interrupt the homeowners movie? And a classic, at that!

Ironically, since I'm using this photo as the beginning of my series, and as such, the launching pad of my rant against it, the image doesn't really bother me in this instance. More distracting to me, in this photo, are the couches that the occupants seem to have stolen from a hotel in Hawaii when they were there... in 1974! Also, I think that my ambivalence about the use of the aforementioned image in the photo above is tempered by the fact that in the 20 or so photos of this particular home, this is the only usage of it. In this case, I actually think that the image does a pretty good job of blending in, without allowing there to be a blank screen on the wall, which might otherwise look like a second access to the fireplace. In fact, I also found today a photo that is at the same time better and worse than my first example:

First, the bad: The reason I consider this edited photo worse than the first is that the colors of the superimposed image are so different from anything else in the photo that it becomes the immediate focal point. Click on the image above to see the larger size, and notice what path your eye immediately takes. Go ahead, I'll wait. Here's mine: first, I see the bright blue of the ocean on the TV. Then I notice the little thingy on top of the TV, presumably for a video game system. My eye continues upward to the center speaker of the audio system (horrible placement, by the way, from a home-theater perspective. Not that the TV is in a great place... DIGRESSING!), which leads my eye to the other speaker to the left, then down to that hideous birdhouse (?) thingamajig. Then I hit the button for Next Picture. So what do I remember about that room? Blue ocean (yeah, I'm going to be disappointed when I view the property and don't have that ocean view I remember) and a hideous birdcage.

The good: The superimposed image is calming, slightly thematic, since the home is near the ocean and is not also seen on the TV screen pictured in another room of this home, or, for that matter, any of the other 12 listings I've seen this morning.

Wow, that was a long introduction to this series. Most will probably just be posts of the pictures themselves. Because there are a lot! Tons, I promise. I just can't seem to find any more this morning...