Virtual Staging Gone Horribly Wrong

I was talking about real estate photography the other day, when we visited the late Peter Lindbergh's apartment in Paris. That brings me to today's post.

(By the way, just by chance, the "handbook" sized edition of Peter Lindbergh's retrospective book is available from Taschen at a list price of $25, and currently discounted at Amazon. It's a smaller size than the coffee-table version. The larger one is not terribly expensive either at $70 list (currently less at Amazon). It's 9.8 x 13.8 x 2 inches, has 440 pages, and weighs a hefty seven pounds. The smaller size is 6.4 x 8.8 x 1.7 inches, 512 pages, and weighs less than half what the larger one does. Take your pick. I ordered the smaller one, to familiarize myself with more of his work.

Sorry, I'm getting sidetracked.)

Bizarro World
You probably know what "virtual staging" is. Staged homes sell better, to the point that "home stager" is now a real job and rental outfits will rent temporary furniture to make houses look more inviting to potential buyers. It seems like a lot of work to me, but then, I'm good at visualizing—to imagine a couch under a window, I don't need there to be an actual couch under the window. Most people have a hard time doing that, though, and homes that have been staged sell faster and for higher prices than homes that are empty.

One way around the cost and expense is to do it virtually—take a photo of an empty room and then "Photoshop in" the images of furnishings. Some listings will show you both images—the photograph as well as the Photoshopped illustration. One is the documentary photograph, you might say, and the other, a helpful suggestion as to how it might look if you lived there.

The following is from a real listing, I'm not playing with your mind here:

Here's an attic. A rather nice-looking attic. Lots of open space, sturdy old-fashioned framing, honest plank flooring. So far so good. Not able to picture how this space might look were you to purchase the house? Well, you're in luck. Get ready...

I think we need to take a minute here to appreciate this.

First, the spaces between the joists have been filled with white panels, leaving the joists exposed for a sort of faux-Tudor look. The bare light bulb has been replaced by a pair of stylish cans. A skylight has been added, from which hangs a chandelier, because, well, that's right where you'd put that. Without replacing the old 2x4's of the stair railing, spindles have been added—apparently ones cut from cardboard, because they appear to be two-dimensional. The spindles on the far side only reach halfway to the floor, which might be a hazard to crawling babies. The warm, welcoming furniture—note the gray paisley on the bedspread—is subsiding into the floor like an old rowboat slowly sinking into a bog. Finally—and I really do love this, because it leads us straight into Bizarro World—right in the middle of the room, like a trapezoidal dirigible, floats what looks like the top half of a giant refrigerator.

It makes this room, if you ask me, and, if I lived here, that's what I would want in that spot.

The really funny thing is that not only did a virtual stager have to create this, presumably a realtor also had to approve it before posting. I love collaborations. However, they forgot to add a monkey.

Onward and upward with the arts!

Mike

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Book of interest this week:

Picture This: How Pictures Work, By Molly Bang
(clicking on the link above takes you to Amazon from TOP)

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Moose: "Now that was fun!"

Speed: "Photoshop and Photoshop for my iPhone has a sky-replacement tool which is a favorite of real estate agents and photographers. After you know about it and notice one instance you'll see it everywhere. Technology! Speaking of technology, the house in the above picture is in Oak Park, Illinois. $820,000. Took about a minute to find it—which I find amazing."

Mike Chisholm: "The truly stylish touch is the vestigial black stick-thing (lamp standard? wiring conduit?) entwined, Escher-style, between the stair rails. You may not be playing with my mind, but someone is."

Mike replies: There is so much going wrong with those stairs that it's wondrous to behold. Notice also that there are no spindles at the end, where the fall would be the farthest.

Malcolm Myers: "We are currently building a new house according to the architect's 2D plans. However, we now have to start fitting out the inside and I was at a loss until I bought some Architect 3D software. I've created our new house in 3D and am currently fitting it with furniture, lights and electrical sockets. It is surprisingly helpful to wander around the house seeing how things are laid out and deciding where sockets and fittings should go."

Jeff Warden: "I think that bed is likely depicted much smaller than it would be in reality. I've seen CGI virtual staging that has been done very well and would be an asset to seller and buyer alike, but this one looks like a graphic artist was given no budget or time and had to punt something by lunch."

Mike replies: Yes, I've even seen complete illustrations that were fabricated virtually—for buildings that are only proposed and have yet to be built, for instance—and they look for all the world like photographs. I gather that's a big thing in the catalogue industry as well now. Years ago I wrote about an artist who spent months fabricating complete fake photographs using Photoshop, down the tiniest details. So it absolutely can be done well, done very well indeed. In fact we probably sometimes look at things we feel certain are photographs which are actually not. But that's a subject for another day.

Jim Arthur: "I didn’t know virtual staging was a thing. Soon after reading this post I came across an interesting story about clandestine real estate photography that made me laugh. The story is about an artist who posed as a Hungarian billionaire buyer to get into 25 New York penthouses and, once inside, she photographed the spectacular views using a film camera. She has produced a book of the pictures and its publication is supported by a crowd-funding campaign. I gotta say…the girl's got moxie."

Sroyon: "I wanted to post this as a comment on your earlier real-estate photos post and missed the window of opportunity, but this post is even more topical: please Google "terrible real estate agent photographs" and go through some of their crowd-sourced posts on the main page. The photos are incredible; the captions frequently verge on genius."

wtlloyd: "Bad real estate snaps, terrible MLS listing photos, is a whole genre. There are copious web articles and even whole sites at your Googling fingertips to be found. Truly amusing but best taken in short doses to avoid nausea."

Mike replies: You're so right about that "short does" advice. I honestly cannot look at dreadful interiors for very long.

Joe Rukenbrod: "Provided a much needed laugh. The faux spindles are awesome, as is the 'Fridge.'"

John Willard: "I will leave this virtual comment. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Integer nec odio. Praesent libero...."

Mike adds: For those who might not get John's joke, Google "lorem ipsum."

Comments

[robert e]

Wow, what a flashback to the 90's and faux-3D computer games like "Duke Nukem 3D". They presented a "Potemkin 3D" like this, made up of 2D images. Many "objects" could present only one perspective, and as you got close, they'd simply magnify, pixels and all; and you could wander to a spot where suddenly you were looking at the cut-out edge-on. Software was available to make one's own "maps" for such games, which was essentially virtual room-building using 2D photos and graphics. Makes perfect sense to use similar tools to show and dress up actual rooms.

Ah the good ol' days! Well, not good for one's body--I'd have been better off playing pool!

[David Bateman]

Well it worked. You posted it. I now know about it and may look into the house.
Free wide spread advertising.

Just like having people dressed in super hero costumes.

[Fred Haynes]

I’m not sure that adding ‘furniture’, digitally, helps. I don’t get a sense of scale, especially since the photo was taken with a wide angle look.
I’d prefer to see a person, standing between the two windows.
When you come right down to it, the digital art does more to turn me off, because it’s not very good.
Maybe others might find it helpful.
Fred

[Charlie Ewers]

Destruction of actual photographs starts (to my mind) with horrible cartoon-like HDR modifications. As you have shown, that's only the beginning of the possible abominations.

[Nige]

I think they've got their proportions out of wack!

[c.d.embrey]

Nothing new about rental furniture. Here in SoCal you could rent furniture by the month, 50 years ago. Abby Rents is still in business.

When I started in the movie biz (1970s), I worked on low-budget features. Movies like this were normally the second show on a double feature. We would find a house the owner had already moved out of i.e. no furniture. We'd pay the real estate agent $50.00 for a five day rental. Move-in Monday, shoot three days and move-out on Friday.

Abby Rents would deliver Monday morning, and pick up Friday afternoon. They loved us! No damage, and thirty days paid for one week one weeks use 8-)

[Speed]

Funniest to me is the apparent furnace or AC or at least a blower for same right next to the faux bed. Good luck sleeping through that racket.

[c.d.embrey]

I live in Orange County, California. Rich foreigners send their children here for high school. Then on to Stanford, USC, Cal-Tech.

A retired teacher friend taught English as a Second Language, She speaks Hmong as well as many other S.E.Asian languages.

She told a group of us, one evening, how parents would rent a house like this in a high-rent part of town. The parents would tell the school district that the kids were living with an aunt. Every room in the house would be full of high-end furniture, large screen TVs, etc. The home would look like the home of a prosperous aunt.

Of course the aunt would never be there if someone from the school came by—because she didn't exist. True story.

[richardp-london]

A "pageant retouch"?

[MarkB]

I highly doubt this was done by anyone other than the estate agent, in order to save a few bucks on real or virtual staging. Just proves that there are as many potential "Photoshop fails" out there as there are copies of Photoshop, which is like grains on a beach.

Now, if the ceiling was painted a nice, neutral-dark grey...

[Daniel]

The white between the beams gives an impression the place is like that. Might open the realtor to false advertising action by a potential buyer.
Unless one shows reality next to the fairy tale with clear explanation of it you are asking for trouble.

[Dan]

With the two windows, where does all the light come from?

[Chuck Albertson]

I've had the mondo edition of the Peter Lindbergh retrospective for several months, and I get something new from it every time I pick it up. Also, it's great for flattening prints. I may order the smaller edition just so that I can loan it out.

[John Krill]

In the orginal photo it appears the photograpger use a very wide angle lens. It was downhill from there. They should have used a nornal lens or maybe a short tele and stiched to together two or three photos for a more realistic image.

[Kye Wood]

Please Mike, this is a serious question here, is there anything, anything at all in this world, that someone hasn't co-opted and/or coerced for the purposes of evil (or at least, stupid).

The quickest way to sell something? Be genuine. That's it. We all have a radar for genuine people and information. We make not like it, but we know it when we're presented with it.

I could sell a ketchup popsicle to a lady with white gloves on the hottest day on record in New York. And honesty is always, always the ticket. Or a monkey. Can you believe my wife won't let me buy a monkey? Yep, spousal abuse is rife in my household. But I do have a chocolate labrador - so... pretty close.

[Rob Campbell]

Somebody please let Kyle know that he's too late: the monkey picture has already been shot by none other than Garry Winogrand.

A true, personal tale of monkeys from the part of my youth spent in India, a little adventure during the train trip with a bunch of other kids along the way to wherever we lived, a couple of days of heightened joy on release from the prison of our boarding school.

The trip required the day be spent in Madras waiting for an evening Calcutta-bound connection. During that day, we wandered around the station and the area surrounding it, and I was clever enough to buy a monkey on a string from a vendor. All went well until the following morning, when the monkey turned very antisocial, baring its teeth to one and all. I decide that I had better not try to bring the thing along with me when I alighted and met the family, so I bequeathed it to another kid who was tavelling further down the line. I never heard from of him or the monkey ever again. His father was jockey.

[Dave Glos]

Ahh, but what would it look like with a nice pool table in there?

Seem to remember seeing an image Samuel Clemens attic billiard room.