The Future of Real Estate Photography

The Future of Real Estate Photography

Photography is undoubtedly growing as a singular technology, but more importantly, photography is becoming an integral part of a greater multimedia merge. The days when photos were viewed as static, single images are coming to an end. Photography will continue to play an important role in the future of real estate, but mainly in two ways: to provide photorealistic texture for 3D virtual properties, and as the primary medium for communal, interactive viewing systems. Allow me to explain in more detail:

We are currently building a 3D model of the entire earth so that we can tour businesses, shop, interact with others, search information, and so on. I use the term “we” because I believe we will all directly or indirectly contribute data to this project in due time. The projects currently being undertaken are time consuming, meticulous, and labor-intensive. Nevertheless, they are still undoubtedly worthwhile. This project will grow to be so large and so integral in our daily lives that it will simply consume real estate marketing and photography. To give you an idea of how massive this project will be, we need to look no further than Virtual Philadelphia:

Virtual Philadelphia is the first of what will become many interactive replicas that will eventually combine to mirror a large portion of the Earth as we know it. The platform for this technology already exists in products like Google Earth and Microsoft Virtual Earth. Companies like GeoSim Systems (the producers of Virtual Philadelphia) will be on the rise as more and more cities discover the numerous benefits of this technology. The end product will encompass exterior and interior 3D models, 360° Virtual Tours - achieved through equirectangular solutions, Google’s StreetView, 2D to 3D photo services like Microsoft’s Photosynth, and general photo/video sharing outlets like Flickr and Picasa.

I believe that in the end we will all contribute data to a multi-dimensional, interactive map that allows you to toggle between photorealistic, 3D environments, and a more jumbled collection of photos and videos that will be viewable from their actual mapped locations using GPS metadata, keywords, and advanced triangulation techniques.