Kay Walten

Kay Walten

The Business Side

What Your Listing Photos Are Actually Costing You

The photographers who showed up to give away their secrets.

Kay Walten's avatar
Kay Walten
Jun 19, 2025
∙ Paid

I was sitting in a conference room in Vermont watching two professional photographers give away everything. Chris and Pam of Dirt & Glass get paid to shoot short-term rental properties. They know what bad listing photos cost an operator. And they stood in front of a room full of hosts and handed over the playbook anyway.

That’s the kind of thing you don’t forget.

Bringing Your Spaces to Life with Smartphone Photography

Chris and Pam have spent over eight years photographing short-term rentals, from rustic cabins to urban apartments. Their session was built around one premise: you don’t need expensive gear. You need to know what you’re doing with what’s already in your pocket.

Photos by Dirt and Glass

Maximizing Your Smartphone’s Potential

Today’s smartphones are genuinely good cameras. One thing Chris and Pam pushed hard: enable RAW format on your iPhone. It takes up more storage, but it holds detail in shadows and highlights that compressed formats throw away. When you edit later, that det…

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