Ready to elevate your photography and attract high-end clients? Host Pat Miller sits down with Team USA member, commercial and portrait photographer, speaker, and educator Sabrina Casas to reveal what REALLY sets luxury photography—and photographers—apart from the crowd.

Episode Highlights 🎤💡:

(05:09) - What Makes Luxury Real Estate "Luxury"

(15:49) - How Competition Makes Her Better

(24:23) - Treating Clients Like Long-Term Partners

Connect with Pat Miller ⬇

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Connect with Sabrina Casas ⬇

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I'm Pat Miller and this is The Professional Photographer Podcast. Today's episode is about two things, quality and excellence. And who's going to ride in and teach us about that? None other than Team USA member, Sabrina Casas. Sabrina is a luxury real estate photographer and portrait photographer in Texas. And our episode today talks all about the needs of the luxury real estate clientele and how much of her heart and soul she pours into her photography business. We will also talk about competition and how competition has made her a better photographer. And really what does it mean to represent Team USA. It's going to be a great episode, all about quality and excellent. If you want that in your images, stay tuned. Sabrina is with us next. Sabrina, welcome to the Professional Photographer Podcast. How are you today?

I'm very well. How are you doing today? I'm happy to be here. Sorry.

I'm happy that you're here as well. And I can't wait to get into today's subject about luxury real estate and all about your business. But if someone hasn't met you yet, tell them who you are and what you do.

Well, I'm Sabrina. I'm a portrait and commercial photographer. I'm a speaker and also I am an educator. I and have my PPA with the, my master photographer with the PPA. I have my CPP. I like to be involved in the photography community. So I am a council for the state of Texas for the PPA. I also am in, I am in the board of directors of the TPPA, the Texas Professional Photographer Association.

I do enjoy that. I enjoy being in competition. I usually participate in IPC and other competitions. Being selected two times for the Team USA two years in a row is the highest point of my competition career, we would say on my competition path. I do enjoy teaching. This year was my first time teaching at Imaging USA and my class was about luxury real estate photography for portrait photographers and how that help or how that is an opportunity for other portrait photographers. I do a lot of things you

do and thank you for your service to the industry. It sounds like every day you're out there trying to help people get further in their photography career. And we get to ask you some questions today about luxury real estate. But your entire business isn't just the real estate photography. You also do portraits. Is that tough to balance those two styles?

Well, it is. Basically it is tough because, you know, you need different skills to do both different kind of photography. You also need different tools. You need to have different lenses, different. You need lightings for one and you need the drum for the other one depending on the style you do. So you need different tools, you need to learn different skills to do it and you need to marketing. Do the marketing differently for both of them. I have two websites, so every website is explicit for the business that I'm doing and promoting that business.

So it is tough, but it's also a blessing. I think it's a blessing, because of the way I am. I like to be. I'm very curious and I like to be entertained and I don't want to. I don't like to do the same thing all the time. So when I'm shooting real estate, I feel like it's a break for my portrait business and when I shoot in my portrait is a break from my real estate business. So it is a blessing for me to be able to do these two different things that give me a break from the other one.

I'm curious which one came first, the real estate photography or the portrait photography? Or did they both start at the same time?

Portraits. Portrait come first and then one that I was already taking pictures of images of people I found out about real estate. But both are coming from a special place in my story, you know, like. And there is a reason why I like both of them. I think it has to be a reason why you focus on. For me to be able to do one thing good. I want to do good. I want to do a good job. So it had to be something that I love to do. And I do love both of the styles.

So now I'm curious, what do you love about taking portraits and what do you love about doing luxury real estate? Now I'm really interested, well, for portraits,

like a lot of people that I know, a lot of photographers that I know, we don't like to be on the other side of the camera. We want to be on the back because we don't want to people when I don't feel comfortable when people take images of me. So my goal when I have my clients in front of me is make them feel comfortable and make them feel that we can work together to get the job done, you know, like. And they usually like a lot the image that they receive. So I have plenty of people that tell me this is the best image that I ever got of someone got of me. And that is for me the best thing to someone can tell me. Some clients can tell me about the image that they working with. But on the real estate side, it comes from before that.

My father worked on oil and gas. He was an engineer and he has a double major. It was geophysics. And when I was little, he working in different places and we travel all around the country, all around, like everywhere. Not standing in the same house more than one year. So the contracts were from one year and my father changed the home because you usually find something. So we change a lot homes. So when I start, when I work on real estate, I do want to help my client to get a good image for selling the home.

But I also want to help them to have images to remember the home, that they have memories and life there. And I want them to have the opportunity to get those images to remember this space that they have for some time. So I don't have images or the homes that I've been and I don't remember all of them, but I would like to have them. So I'd like to create that for my clients and I think it's very peaceful. When you are shooting real estate, how do you feel? It's just a different kind of photography that I really enjoy.

Thank you for sharing that. It's interesting to hear how you arrived at those two styles and that you're doing luxury real estate and a portrait business. Does one feed the other? You'll get portrait leads from your luxury clients and the other way around?

Yes, yes. I have many portrait clients that when they work with me, they would just connect and they know that I'm doing my best and I just happy with the quality and they recommend me when they want to sell their homes to the realtors that they work with. So they call me and sometimes it works and I ended up shooting the homes for them. And then I have realtors because I work with the realtors and you have a relationship with them for it's not a client that you see for once a year. You know, like you have a relationship with your client and you see them a lot of times during the month, during the week, they call you, they. They have a relationship and we. I have clients, many clients that ask me, we work together for personal branding sessions or they recommend me to their clients, the. The owners of the home for any kind of product they need.

We don't get a chance to talk about luxury real estate very often on the show. So I have a thousand questions, many, many questions. So let's talk about just explaining a real estate business as a luxury real estate business. How do you position your photography to a luxury client?

It again started with what I feel comfortable doing. Okay, so luxury real estate for me is just a name that I give to the work that I do. Usually it means that I going to work with luxury homes because they have more budget for marketing. So that is the case when I'm working on real estate. But the main point for me when I talk about luxury real estate is quality and the service that I provide for. To get quality, you need more time. That means that I'm not going to shoot down many homes and that also means that you get more time, the price change, you know, so it's just more about the quality that I provide to my clients. And that's what it means to be a luxury item for them.

It's just the time, extra time that you put not only during the shooting but also on your preparation, on the tools that you are using, on the. All the education that you get to get there when you are there. You know, like the competition even to be able to improve yourself and being better and better. That's what they are looking for, the luxury clients and how do they behave?

Is there a difference between a luxury client and an everyday client? What are some of the things you've learned about working with luxury clients?

Again, I try to put the luxury worth like for people that want something else and not a business, it's not just a business for them, you know, like it means more than the business. So while that is true, there is a lot of real estate images that are done just to represent the space and to show the space that you're buying and to show it. And this is like an idiom that you had to check on your list. You know, I need images to put this house in the market check. But I just, I want and I offer something else more of that, more than that is when I shoot a home for a luxury home. Luxury homes has more upgrades so they are more thought about. They thought more about how you're going to use those spaces. It's not just the locations and the biggest space.

It just has better electric things inside the home. Like I don't know, examples, like a lot of a great. Like if you like to cook, you have the best tool to cook your meal there with. And then want to show that, that is different than the regular home. So instead of having one or two images of the kitchen, you end up having like the general images but also close ups of the appliances. You know, like just close ups of the views. You know, you have to show the views of the home, the lifestyle of the people that is going to live there. It's not only a representation of the home.

You had to go even a little more to the showing the lifestyle, showing how people is going to live in that home. Imagine you create a set of images that show the space and help them to imagine them living there.

That's really smart. How do you handle the volume of real estate photography? Because I would imagine when it's working there are a lot of homes to shoot. So how do you personally handle the volume of the business?

Yes, volume is something that is not happening usually in my, the way I do it because I appeal to this is my offering is more about quality. And when you do volume, I. When I do volume, if I do that, it just limit the time that I can dedicate not only to the shooting, to the editing, to the contact with the client, to the preparation of the home, to the, to being there and help them when they need help. If I go to the listing and the client had a problem, I took my time to help them to solve that problem. Being sometimes a scheduling time that had to change because they have something broke in the home or some other one vendor didn't show up when they should show up. So it taking the time to do that and to educate my clients and to help them that limit my possibility to do volume.

So I don't have exactly a problem with the volume the time except sometimes when we have high season on real estate. Because high season on real estate make everyone its the time that everyone want to have the home prepared to go to the market. Its one time of the year that I stopped promoting my boat ride business and focus more on the real estate. And then after that high season finish, I can go back to promote my portrait business and working more on the portrait and real estate at the same time. But I have a time of the year that I had to focus exclusively on real estate.

Let's talk about the portrait side of the business. Is the portrait brand also a luxury brand or not?

I think more than a brand. I will say that it's my name. And I always want to associate my name or my work with a luxury product. A product that I value the quality that I deliver in and the time. I don't want to be short on anything. Not in the attention to the details, not in the time that I give to my clients, not in the in looking for a way to help them. So my portrait business, it is a luxury brand in a way that it is associated with me and what I do and what I want to deliver to my clients. So in a way it will be a luxury Brand I do the same values that I have for real estate.

I have it for my portrait business. Have it.

Let's talk about you being on Team USA. So exciting in the Photography World Cup. What does that feel like to be on Team USA that gone?

It was a surprise to me the first time that was last year because I was not expecting that image that is an interior of a home that it was last year image were selected for Team USA. I was not expecting that but it was great. It was a big honor and I was, I work very hard this year to be in there again and I try different things. This year I'm in the Team USA with a sport photo - sport photograph. So it's just something that I found. I tried different genres and different things just because I want to try again and also because I'm working to become a judge for the PPA and I thought at that point that trying different genres, different categories and try by myself it will help me to understand better what the makers had to go through and be able that way be able to judge better the work that I was looking at.

So I look for that trying to understand different kind of photography because I like to do that because I am a curious person and it was great for me to understand. I didn't try everything. I didn't try weddings. I don't think I want to do that. But I don't know. Maybe I can go to one as a second shooter. But I want to see what problems they have. What happened with the lighting when you try to judge other people's work, I like to understand how that happened and how it's not only what I'm seeing, although it's important, very important.

But it's also what challenges and how difficult is to get that image. You know, like to be able to judge better that. So, trying to do that. I put some images in image competition and one of those were selected for Team USA again. And I was really excited about that, yes, really. Also I do love that image more than any the other ones, more than many images that I made because I like to create feelings on people and I feel like that image create a feeling of happiness when people see it. So I do love, it was an honor to be part of the team.

I'm not a photographer, I'm married to a photographer. So this may be an obvious question to a photographer, but as someone that's competing in image competition and learning how to judge an image competition, how important is that emotional component, the fact that there's emotion in the photo, does that help you either come up with a great image to submit, or when you're judging images, if it's got a bunch of emotion in it, does that help you score it higher?

Yes, I think I agree. I think, yes. And because impact, that will be emotion will be the impact of the image. To me, it's not only the visual that you see, the emotion that it caused on the people that is looking at the image. And I think that impact in an image is one of the 12 elements, its what makes the judge stop and think. I want to keep looking at this so it gives you more opportunity to score higher if you have emotion or that kind of impact or something new that they never saw before, or it just gives you the opportunity to score higher with the judges.

Yes, you've got the two business lines, but you're also now on Team USA and you're competing with your images. How has competition made you a better photographer?

Well, there is. You can learn a lot of things with books, with going to college, with watching videos in YouTube, but there is something that you cannot learn. There is a limit on what you can learn. And what I found out with competition is that you get feedback because you get so involved in your image and what you create that you cannot be objective. You need other people to see your images and tell you sometimes something simple like just a dot in the image, you are seeing the image so much that you don't see that. So other people's view help you to understand and to pay more attention to little details and the composition and the position of the body of the other people. So you can learn all that. But when you start trying to do it, it's just different.

And to be able to get feedback on your images, image competition, in this case, make you a better. Make me a better photographer. And because of that, I think that is why I, I am what I am now, and I'm as good as I can be now because of image competition. But I'm not as good as it's going to be in next year, next month, because I'm going to keep growing and learning. And image competition is a tool for me to learn that, to be better.

What do your clients say when you say, oh, hi, I'm on Team USA. How do they respond?

Well, it's something that you had to. I don't think you have. I present myself that way with them, but I should have to use the jacket all the time. You know, I thought about that. I thought about going with the jacket to my business appointment. And explain to everyone that want to know what it means. But in general competition, when you show your clients that you are competing in general, even if you don't score very high, especially at the beginning, I think that it give them a message. They understand that you are not only want to do a job, you want to improve, you want to grow and you want to do better, you want to be better at your job.

So show them that you compete even if you don't win something at the beginning, it show a different kind of mentality. It show that you want to do better. When you start, of course, when you start getting awards and everything, you start showing it in your social media, in your webpage and everywhere. With the Team USA in particular, I did a newsletter for my clients, sending that to them with all the information about what it was and what it was important to me and the Team USA image that they took this year. So it is very good to show that the quality of your clients want to see that what you're growing. They also use that information to show their clients. This is the quality of professional that I bring into the table because remember, I work with realtors, so these persons that I have a relationship with and I have to see and I have a meeting with them once a year to talk about what they are doing, what the goals for next year are. And this is a tool for them to show their clients.

This is the quality of the professional that I bring to the table. This is the person that is going to come to your home and take the photos of your home. So it is something that you certainly image competition, elevate your work and elevate the way that people perceive you.

You've described luxury real estate as a partnership between the client and the photographer. What do you mean by that?

Well, it means for me, it's a good question. By the way, it means for me that I'm invested in my client's success because his success or her success is my success. So I really value the relationship with my clients and I want them to grow and get more listings so we can keep going and keep working together. So once a year we try to get with all clients, have a meeting with them. On that meeting. We talk about the this year, what happened, the challenges that they have for next year and the goals that they have for next year. We thought it's good for me to understand what my clients, the business, how is going on and what is going on in the business and how I can help them with that. We talk about the webpage we talk about the images that they have on the website and we also talk about to create images for images or personal branding images for them.

These personal branding sessions are paid personal branding sessions. And it's not just like a regular. We go to a home or a builder let us use a home to shoot all the photos to the personal branding session. I try to plan the session. So we talk about what images they need for the year, during all the year, what they want to convey, what they want to show. And we work on each one of these images. I have a storyboard and I just plan every image with expressions with the background that we are looking for, especially when they want to promote, for example, like Valentine's.

If they want to promote Valentine's, I can add some items there that are about Valentine's. It force them to plan the marketing ahead and it makes the session more productive. So we work together to get those images that are going to help them with the marketing. And that's what it means. It means being involved in your client's success.

It probably proves to them how dedicated you are to every other photo that you take. And I would imagine if you sit down and plan an entire year with your client, it ends up with you being with them for the entire year. It's a little bit of client retention. Do you find that?

Yes, but also especially talking about that one thing that I do different too is that and I think anyone that work in the luxury real estate, this branch of real estate had to understand is that not every person that call you is going to be an ideal fit client. So you're going to. I work with the same clients all the time and we have a contract. It's not that just we talk about this at the beginning when I introduce my business model to them. I had to educate them. They had to understand that I'm okay if they only need me to use for the luxury listing. And they can have another photographer to do the listing that are not. They don't need my special kind of shooting.

But most of them only work with me even when they don't have like the special luxury home. Because they are used to work with you. But I let them choose another photography. They need it. The thing is, it is a relationship is a contract. They usually don't change the photographer. So when we plan the session for the full year, it's just one added value to them. They're working with me and they see this very positively.

But yes, it just helped to keep working together.

It's been a great discussion on quality and excellence. Congratulations on being awarded the Team USA again this year. We'll be cheering for you. And thank you so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate it.

Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.

Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of The Professional Photographer Podcast. Before you go, click like click. Subscribe and tell us what Sabrina said that made you go, yeah, I'm going to be able to use that in my photography business. Those comments really help us know if we're on the right track with our episode. So take a minute like subscribe and comment. Also, if you're not yet a member of Professional Photographers of America, you're missing out. PPA offers incredible resources like equipment insurance, top notch education and a supportive community of photographers ready to help you succeed. It's perfect for photographers who are serious about growing their business in a sustainable and profitable way. At PPA, you belong here. Discover more about [email protected]. That's PPA.com. I'm Pat Miller, founder of the Small Business Owners Community and your host to the show. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you right here next time. Take care.