Rudolph Duran Photography

Home of Tried and True Photographic Techniques

After shooting images for our jewelry and home decor businesses for many years, I took photos of a home we were selling in Fairways II in year 2000. We listed it on Ebay and a woman from Washington DC flew to Green Valley and purchased the house with all the furnishings just as it was shown in the photos for more than market price.
This lead to shooting homes for friends and later for various real estate agents in Tubac, Green Valley and Ojai, California. I have also created websites for homeowners and shops.
We have returned to Southern Arizona after spending time in California and I am now ready create beautiful images and video tours of your real estate listing, rental, AIRBNB or retail shop.

My Tried and True Techniques

Drones

Drones are great for showing large properties but can distort exterior photos of a home and show too much roof and unsightly scenery.

In place of a drone, I use an elevated (6' to 30') tripod adjusted to enhance the home and surrounding landscapes without showing undesirable views or other buildings.

When showing the surrounding area I use Google Earth Pro with Photoshop instead of a drone.

Earth Pro panning and zooming can be added to a video.

Wide Angle

Extreme wide-angle shots distort the depth of a room and the width of windows, doors and furniture.

Here wide-angle shots are tempered so that furniture, walls, windows and doors appear natural. I also use a modified Tilt + Shoot process to minimize ceilings while showing the expanse of the room.

HDR

Using High Dynamic Range (HDR) to resolve camera limitations when exposing ambient light and window glare more often than not perverts colors and shading and defaces textures resulting in a cartoon-like appearance.

To process shots with extreme contrast I use flashes along with layer masking in Photoshop to balance the inside and outside lighting. On occasions when exposure blending is needed I use Lightroom Enfuse which minimizes the "halos" produced by HDR tone mapping.

Cellphone and 360° Videos

Walk-through cellphone videos are almost impossible to adjust to show realistic lighting and if done too quickly, it is difficult to know what the viewer is seeing.

To compose video tours I take the best images and combine them using pan and zoom features in the video software. This process maintains much better lighting and color exposure than the cellphone walk-throughs and 360 degree pans.

Turn on your speakers.

When the hoopla is through,

Retrieve Tried and True.

- Rudy