Real estate photography: how to photograph your property for sale

A buyer never views a property they have not first looked at. On a portal as on our own site, the cover photo decides in a second whether the listing is opened; the images that follow decide whether a viewing request is sent. For a prestige property, a weak set does not only cost traffic: it downgrades the property in the buyer's mind, who files it as an ordinary product and negotiates accordingly.

The stakes are higher still for the diaspora. A buyer in Paris, London, New York or Abidjan draws up a shortlist from images alone, often before a single call. Photos must therefore be both appealing and accurate: they commit your credibility, and too wide a gap between image and reality is paid for at the viewing.

Declutter room by room: remove personal items (family photos, paperwork, toiletries, fridge magnets), tidy cables away, clear worktops and window ledges. Move vehicles out of the yard, coil the hose, take bins out of frame. Clean the glass: dust and sea air leave a film that shows up immediately against the light.

Home staging in Dakar is not about refurnishing but about neutralising and harmonising: pressed white bed linen, matching towels, a tea tray or a simple arrangement to give scale, and a tight palette. Open every curtain, replace dead bulbs and match colour temperatures — mixing warm and cool white in one room produces casts that cannot be corrected afterwards.

If the property is occupied or let, schedule the shoot with the occupant several days ahead: preparation done in a rush shows in the images.

Natural light is your main tool. Under the Dakar sun, midday is the worst hour: light falls vertically, flattens volumes, burns out pale façades and cuts hard shadows across terraces. Aim instead for early morning (roughly 8–10am) and late afternoon (roughly 4–6pm), when raking light reveals relief, renders and materials.

Choose the hour by orientation. A façade and terrace facing west — the case for many villas in Almadies, Ngor or on the Petite Côte — photograph best in late afternoon, when the light comes off the ocean; an east-facing façade photographs in the morning. Keep dusk, the blue hour just after sunset, for two or three signature images: lit façade, pool, sea view.

Account for the season. During the rainy season the sky is often overcast and vegetation denser: soft light serves interiors well, exteriors less so. In the dry season, a harmattan episode loads the air with dust and veils the horizon — postpone distant views and aerial shots by a few days rather than delivering a milky sea view.

Shoot from a corner of the room, camera about 1.30–1.40 m from the floor and perfectly level: that is what keeps verticals straight and conveys space without distorting. A moderate wide angle (16 to 24 mm equivalent) is enough; go wider and walls stretch, rooms look false and the buyer feels misled at the viewing.

Allow two views per main room and one per secondary room, always showing an opening — door, window, bay — to place the room in the plan. Align the frame on strong lines (a tile joint, a bay, the edge of a terrace) and let floor and ceiling breathe. A tripod, the self-timer and a low ISO keep dark rooms sharp.

Room by room: bathrooms, lids down, products removed, no reflection of the photographer in the mirror; kitchen, worktops clear and appliances wiped; bedrooms, bed made, symmetry respected, wardrobe doors closed. An interior lit through its windows reads better than one lit artificially: favour daylight and add light only where necessary.

Exteriors sell the property as much as the rooms do, especially at the prestige end. Photograph the façade when the sun lights it rather than sits behind it, with no vehicle or bin in frame, and look for an angle that shows the depth of the plot rather than a strictly frontal view.

A pool is best photographed in late afternoon: water filtered, cleaner and hoses put away, surface still, framed to include part of the terrace and, where possible, the horizon. For a sea view — Almadies, Ngor, Mamelles, Saly or Cap Skirring — also take an image from the back of the room, through the bay: that is the one proving the view belongs to the property and not merely to the neighbourhood.

Round the set off with context: access, gate, garden, parking, and one or two neighbourhood landmarks. That answers the remote buyer's implicit question — where exactly am I?

An aerial view places a plot, a residence or a beachfront villa better than any long description, and remains the best way to show a plot's boundaries and its immediate surroundings.

Drone use is regulated in Senegal and flights are not unrestricted. Have your provider confirm in writing that they hold the authorisations required by the competent civil aviation authorities for the planned date and location, and allow ample lead time. Rule out the vicinity of airports, military sites and official buildings as a matter of principle, and stay discreet towards neighbours. If in doubt, drop it: a good ground set beats an unauthorised flight.

Retouching should correct the camera, not rewrite the property. Straighten verticals, adjust exposure and white balance, recover the highlights of a bay window, remove a sensor spot. Keep whites neutral: under tropical light a white wall drifts easily to blue or yellow.

What to rule out: replacing a grey sky with a blue one, erasing a defect, a pole, a crack or a neighbouring building, pushing a pool to an unreal turquoise, stretching a room. Beyond the disappointment guaranteed at the viewing, an obviously retouched image undermines trust — a sensitive point for diaspora buyers, who commit partly on the strength of the listing. Restraint here reads as seriousness.

A listing reads like a viewing. Open on the strongest image — façade, sea view or pool depending on the property — then run through: entrance, living room, dining room, kitchen, main bedroom, other bedrooms, bathrooms, terrace and exteriors, closing on context (garden, access, neighbourhood, aerial view). A floor plan, 2D or 3D, placed at the end of the set cuts questions and wasted viewings.

Fifteen to twenty-five images are enough for most properties: a long, repetitive set dilutes attention more than it informs. Do not show the same room from five angles, and drop any photo that adds no new information. A video or virtual tour complements the set; it does not replace it.

On the technical side: landscape framing, high resolution (long edge of at least 2,000 pixels), files named and delivered in publication order.

The most common: shooting at midday; using the built-in flash, which flattens and yellows; framing in portrait when listings display in landscape; letting a mirror return the photographer; publishing a set out of order; forgetting the exteriors; delivering low-resolution files that fall apart on a large screen.

One more, subtler: mixing sources — a few professional photos topped up with phone snaps. The inconsistency is immediately visible and destroys the overall effect. A shorter but consistent set is worth more.

For an owner the trade-off is simple: above a certain price level, professional photography is not an expense but a condition of going to market. Your part remains decisive, because you are the one who prepares the property, opens the rooms, explains what makes it valuable and agrees the hour of the shoot.

For an agent, the photo set is a deliverable of the mandate on a par with the valuation: a written brief, a shoot booked at the right hour, a tight selection, a defined publication order, and consistency across the whole portfolio.

At AfriqueRealty, professional photography is part of bringing to market the properties we represent: we arrange the shoot, select the set and publish the listing. To start selling your property, request a free valuation from the Sell with AfriqueRealty page, linked at the foot of this page; our Dakar price guide and our villas and apartments for sale pages give you the point of comparison.