You do. Plain and simple.
Unless it is agreed on by both parties to the contrary at the outset of a business transaction, South African copyright law is fairly clear in that any person who commissions work that they are paying for, owns the copyright to that work, be it photos, drawings, paintings, music, etc. We have no problem with this and once your photoshoot is paid for those images belong to you.
If there are humans in your photos you assume the responsibility of obtaining releases from them if you intend using the imagery for commercial purposes.
Most of the properties that appear in our house tours are architecturally unique in some way. If a property appeals to us visually we will likely feature it in our blog.
We have a network of licensed operators that we call on to provide this service for us. They bill us, we bill you.
The compositional and editing requirements for short term rentals such as Airbnb listings are more demanding than typical real estate shoots, so this is why these types of shoots are slightly more costly.
We prefer it if the homeowner and agent are not physically on the property while we are doing our job. From experience this creates a lot of problems with people suddenly appearing in shots we do, or they are reflected in windows. This slows us down and completely wrecks our workflow. If there is an outbuilding that owners can wait in or even waiting in a car parked outside of the property that would be preferable.
If we only do stills an average sized house (3-4 bedrooms) takes about 20-30 minutes, including exteriors. Yes, we are very efficient! For larger properties work on a maximum of 1 hour of us being on site. If you require “The Works” then budget for between 2-3 hours.
“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” said Allen Saunders.
We understand and we’re not here to make things harder for you. If you want to postpone to a later date we will happily accommodate your request and slot it into future availability. If you want to cancel entirely our policy is similar to most hotel groups.
Cancel more than 7 days before booking = 100% refund
Cancel within 3-7 days before booking = 75% refund
Cancel within 48 hours of booking = 0% refund
If you lose the images within 6 months of the shoot we will re-upload them for you and provide a fresh Google Drive link. If your shoot happened earlier than 6 months ago we will probably have them on file, but there will be an admin fee required to retrieve these files as they are stored on a different backup cloud service.
When you order online you have the option of paying via EFT or credit card. Please note that all shoots are payable in FULL upfront. We will only confirm a shoot date and time when we receive full payment.
We are based in Cowie’s Hill, Durban, but are happy to travel to other areas for assignments. We do bill for travel if we are asked to provide services outside of the Durban Metro area (e.g. North & South coasts, inland, etc) but we will always discuss this with you before we accept your commission. If you have a big project that requires an overnight stay, or you are in a different province we will prepare a quote for you.
We use the Google Drive as our primary delivery mechanism. Once your material has been edited and checked we will send you a link, either on WhatsApp or email. Typically your material will be available on the cloud for 1 month, after which time it will be removed, so please make sure that you download local copies.
Matterport scans are contained and hosted on their servers. We will send you a link to your 3D twin which you can add to your property listing, or embed using html on your website.
No. Our expectation is that when we arrive the property will be ready for photography and videography. The time allocated to a property photo shoot is limited depending on the package purchased and we can’t wait for you to “stage as we go” from room to room as this is extremely disruptive to our time schedule.
We check 2-3 different weather apps before we confirm any property appointment, but obviously these things can change without much notice. If it is inclement on the day you have booked for we can re-schedule for another day, but this could be up to 2 weeks later in our busy season (May-August).
We opened for business in February of 2008, but have been photographing people, products and property for over 20 years.
Yes we do. If you can assure us a minimum volume of 5 listings per month to shoot we would be happy to establish a working relationship with your agency. We’re fond of working out customised deals so it is best to get in touch with us so that we can discuss things in more detail. Typically these deals will involve a retainer invoice that is billed and drawn against each month.
All our shoots are payable in full, upfront, unless we have an established arrangement with you. In rare circumstances we might consider a 50% deposit if the shoot value is high (e.g. on big product shoots or where we are travelling to shoot a hotel, etc).