Lay My Hat

Just another thought on choosing a pro photographer: please make sure you use someone who genuinely specialises in property photography. Or even better, one who specalises in interiors. I meet so many owners who simply book their local general photographer to come and take photos of their holiday ho...

I'm a professional property photographer and photograph property for estate agents along with holiday cottages for private owners and holiday agencies. Its a subtly different approach for both. For an estate agent, your images need to present the facts clearly. Although I often 'de-clutter' a little...

I remember how we worried about moving from a Saturday changeover to a Friday. In the end it made no difference whatsover - except that we still get lots of enquiries giving us a Saturday as a start date. What the change to Friday did was make it slightly easier to offer short breaks (these can be b...

We have polished wood floorboards downstairs but like a few other posters, we have suffered from guests who must have been prancing around in stiletto shoes and have marked the floor badly. As for some of our long term residential lettings, I just wish I could tarmac the whole of the inside of the p...

I'm glad I'm not alone. I thought I was being a bit over the top.
I like the idea of both a label and a further diagram/explanation in the welcome book.

This particular problem sounds daft but has caused us a fair bit of grief recently. We had a built in stainless steel gas hob in our holiday cottage: easy to clean and looked nice too. However some enthusiastic guest got a bit carried away with their cleaning (I know its almost a nice problem to hav...

As with others on here, we take lots of short breaks. Last year we even took them during peak weeks: we simply had to as weekly bookings were a bit thin on the ground. However, we have also noticed that the cottage is often left in a much more untidy state after a short break. We can only think that...

Do not panic. In our area the quietest time of the year for bookings taken is from the end of the first week of November to the beginning of the last week of November. There is, then, a rush of demand which dies out at about the end of the first week of December. Looks like thats exactly whats happ...

Thanks for your comments everyone - I'm sure that I'll be able to contribute to the forum as both an owner and a photographer. Jim, you mentioned that interior photography is a challenge for most owners: I'm increasingly finding that its quite a challenge for many general professional photographers ...

I'm guessing that everyone gets some kind of booking form completed in, in any case? Its one situation that gets me really worried: a last minute booking who wants to pay cash on arrival and has not returned their booking form in advance (we email/post these out). I just want to know the name and ad...

Thanks Helen. I thought it meant I had to provide a link to my photography website - didn't read it properly!

Hello Helen,
Sorry I thought I'd mentioned that in my post. Yes I own a holiday property and you are welcome to check it out at www.gypsypalace.co.uk
Tracey

Hello everyone, While I run a holiday cottage in the Scottish Borders, my full time job is as a professional photographer. I specialise in photography for properties, especially interior photography which is an area that many owners seem to struggle with. I have worked for many individual holiday co...

Hello everyone, While I run a holiday cottage in the Scottish Borders, my full time job is as a professional photographer. I specialise in photography for properties, especially interior photography which is an area that many owners seem to struggle with. I have worked for many individual holiday co...