The Difference Between Commercial and Real Estate Photography

“Commercial photography is high-quality photography of a product, service or space where the client’s photo usage rights are intended for promoting their business.” – Guadalupe Garza, CEO of Sharp Frame Media

Today, many businesses thrive by using professional commercial photography as it creates a high-quality portfolio for their customers that reflects their service or product. It is known that an image is worth a thousand words, and capturing the exact message you are trying to send your customer is not an easy task. It requires time, preparation, and creativity to set the perfect stage for commercial purposes, not to mention the skills and equipment that are necessary. 

If you are an architect, interior designer, construction company, or own a retail space, you may be wondering what is the difference between commercial and real estate photography. Commercial photography is a form of advertising photography. The general purpose is to inspire customers through an image and make them feel what you want them to feel. In many ways, that same storytelling can be delivered in real estate photography. Nonetheless, the main difference lies in quality, focus on the brand, price, and most importantly, usage rights. 

The primary reason why real estate photography may sometimes be of lesser quality than commercial photography is due to time constraints. That is not to say that real estate images do not look good, most of the time they are great and serve their purpose – which is to help sell a home and promote the listing agent. In real estate, the industry standard is to deliver photos within 24-48 hours, whereas commercial photography will take a lot longer to deliver as it requires advanced editing that takes longer to complete. 

For the vast majority of real estate photography shoots, clients who are primarily real estate professionals, are granted a limited usage license. They are often limited to using the photos for the sole purpose of selling the home, and the license expires when the home has sold. At Sharp Frame Media we love our real estate agents, so we are more flexible with usage rights. However, the main reason pricing is usually lower for real estate photography compared to commercial photography is due to photo usage purposes and usage rights.  

Commercial Photography For Your Business

There are so many benefits of commercial photography. One of them is that in this modern era, information travels in less than a second through the internet and because we are constantly being bombarded with new information every minute, videos and images have become the most viewed online. In addition, people often will spend on average no more than 2 seconds on any advertisement unless it captures their interest. Therefore, many businesses invest in professional commercial photography that will help express and explain their product or service in less than 2 seconds.