Short-let photography is a different job to estate agency

An estate agency shoot sells a container. The buyer is imagining their own furniture in it, so the photographs work best when the space reads clearly and the styling stays out of the way. Empty-ish, bright, straight, neutral.

A short-let shoot sells a stay. The guest is not imagining anything. they are asking what it will be like to be there next Friday. That is a different photograph of the same room.

What changes

• Styling goes in, not out. A made bed, laid table, coffee on the counter. On a sale that is clutter; on a stay it is the product.
• Warm light beats bright light. Lamps on, a little evening in it. A guest is buying an evening, not a survey.
• Amenities are photographed explicitly. The coffee machine, the wifi desk, the parking space, the cot. Every one of these is somebody's filter, and an unphotographed amenity does not exist.
• The area is part of the listing. On a sale the location is a line of text; on a stay the walk to the beach is a photograph.
• More images, not fewer. Guests scroll the whole gallery, and it is the closest thing they get to a viewing, and there is no viewing.

What stays the same

Straight verticals, honest scale, no lens trickery. If anything the penalty for flattering a short let is worse: a buyer who feels misled walks away, and a guest who feels misled has already paid and will write it down where the next twenty guests can read it.

The hero shot

One image does most of the work in the search grid, and for a short let it is almost never the exterior. It is the room that shows the best thing about staying there: the view from the sofa, the kitchen island, the terrace. Pick that first and shoot the rest around it.