The twenty minutes before the photographer arrives

A photographer can fix light, verticals and colour. They cannot fix a car on the drive, a bin by the front door, or a vendor who is still in the kitchen. The difference between a good set and a set somebody asks to be redone is usually decided before anybody takes a photograph.

This is the list worth sending to a vendor the day before. It takes about twenty minutes and it is the cheapest thing in the whole process.

Outside

• Cars off the drive and, if you can, off the front of the house.
• Bins out of shot. Round the side, behind a gate, anywhere.
• Hose coiled, toys in, garden furniture straightened.
• Front door mat straight, and the door itself closed. An open door reads as an interruption.

Every room

• All blinds and curtains fully open, all lamps on. Mixed light is the single biggest cause of a room needing to be reshot.
• Every bed made. Not tidied: made.
• Surfaces cleared. Worktops, coffee tables, bathroom shelves. The toothbrush, the washing-up liquid, the phone chargers.
• Toilet seats down, bath mats away, towels matching or gone.
• Pets and pet bowls elsewhere for the hour.

And the practical half

Somebody has to be there to let the photographer in, and it should not be somebody who then follows them around. A shoot goes fastest in an empty house. If the property is tenanted, that conversation happens days before, not on the doorstep. A tenant who was not told is a cancelled slot, and a slot is the thing there is least of.

One more: if there is a key safe, a gate code or a parking restriction, put it on the booking. Every minute the photographer spends on the phone outside is a minute off the shoot.

Why the reshoot happens

It is worth knowing what a photographer can fix afterwards and what they cannot, because that is the whole reason this list exists. Light, colour, straightness and a grey sky are all recoverable, and that is editing, and it is included. A car on the drive is not: removing it convincingly means rebuilding the gravel and the shadow under it, which is retouching nobody quoted for and which rarely looks right. Same with a bin, a hose or a wheelie bin lid poking into the frame.

So the reshoot is almost never triggered by the photography. It is triggered by something in the frame that should not have been there, noticed by an agent three days later when the listing is being built. By then the vendor has to be asked again, the diary has to give up another slot, and the listing goes live a week late, which on a new instruction is the week that matters most.

Who sends the list

The agent, not the photographer, and the day before rather than the morning of. A vendor reading it at 8am with a photographer on the doorstep will do the visible half and none of the rest. A vendor who read it the night before has moved the car, and moving the car is most of the value in the whole list.