Prepare your space for a capture day
Switch every light on and replace the dead bulbs. Clear the floor and the surfaces, including the ones you think are behind the camera — in a 360° photograph there is no behind the camera. Unlock every room you want in the tour and decide which doors stay open. Have each room in the state you would want a guest to find it, because that is the state it stays in for the life of the tour. You do not have to close: we shoot around a working business rather than emptying it.
This is written from what our delivered tours show — what helped, what got in the way, and what could not be repaired afterwards at any price. It is not a transcription of a form we hand out, and none of it is a condition of the booking. Ignore all of it and you still get a tour. Follow it and the tour is of the building at its best rather than the building on an ordinary Tuesday morning.
There is no behind the camera
Almost everything else on this page follows from this. An ordinary photograph has a frame, and everything outside it is somebody else’s problem. A 360° station has no frame. It records the ceiling, the floor, the corner behind the tripod where the mop bucket lives, and whatever is stacked against the wall you were not thinking about. It also records everyone in the room, which is why the crew steps out of it.
Before we arrive
Light
- Switch on every light in every room going into the tour, including ones nobody uses during the day. A tour is mostly looked at on a phone, and dim reads as dirty on a phone.
- Replace dead bulbs before the day. A dead bulb appears in every panorama of that room, and it is not what colour correction fixes — removing it afterwards is retouching, priced per panorama, and it costs more than the bulb.
- Decide about curtains and blinds. Open shows the view and pushes the interior darker; closed evens the room out and hides what the window looks onto. In a room whose selling point is the view, open, every time.
- Say in advance if a room has to be shot at a particular hour. The light we get is the light in the tour permanently, and the day can be built around two or three rooms easily enough.
- Night is not a problem in itself. A seafront shop in our published work was captured after dark, lit and trading, because that is the hour it looks like itself.
Clutter
The floor matters most, because it is the one surface every single panorama shows in its entirety. After that it is the low horizontal surfaces — counters, desks, window sills, the tops of cabinets — because those sit at eye level in the finished tour and they are where things accumulate.
- Bins, cleaning trolleys, delivery crates, stacked chairs, boxes waiting to go somewhere. Anything in the room because it has not been taken out yet.
- Cables and extension leads across a floor. They read badly and they retouch badly, because the floor pattern has to be rebuilt underneath them.
- Personal belongings: bags, coats, photographs, and paperwork with names on it. A panorama can be zoomed, and a document legible at full zoom is a document you have published.
- Anything needing four people and a trolley has to be gone before we arrive. Anything that takes ninety seconds, we will move with you and put back.
Doors, mirrors and glass
- Doors
- Unlock everything you want in the tour and decide open or shut for the rest. A closed door is a wall for the life of the tour, because the visitor cannot open it. Doors held open also give the tour its shape: a corridor with the rooms open reads as a building; the same corridor with every door shut reads as a corridor.
- Mirrors
- The camera is in them. A mirrored wardrobe wall will show the tripod, and that can be reduced but not always removed. Tell us which rooms are mirrored before the day, because it changes where a position goes.
- Glass and screens
- Glass reflects whatever is behind the camera, which here is the whole room. Televisions read as black rectangles when off. If you want them on, have them showing what you want the world to see, and remember it will be legible at full zoom.
People
We shoot around a working business rather than closing it, and that is deliberate as well as convenient: a restaurant with nobody in it is a warehouse with tables. What we need is one position at a time to ourselves — the room clear while the camera is standing in it — which is a very different thing from needing the building. How the visit works is set out in full on the services page.
In a hotel, a room with a guest in it is not a room anyone can shoot, so the order of the day follows what is free. That is why our hotel tours are organised by room type and room number rather than by every door in the building: a guest being offered a particular room can stand in that room. Tell us which types have to be in the tour and the day gets built around those.
Rooms are recorded in the state they were in
There is nowhere for a bad decision to hide in a 360° photograph, and it stays in the tour until somebody goes back to the building. Make each space up the way you want it found: beds made to the standard you advertise, tables laid, the counter stocked. In two of our published tours the whole information layer hangs off what was on the counter that day — the dishes in a self-service restaurant, what was in the cabinet in a bakery — and neither could have been built over an empty counter.
What cannot be fixed afterwards
| On the day | After the day |
|---|---|
| A room shot with the lights off | Brightened only so far, and it still reads as a dim room |
| A dead bulb | Retouchable as a quoted extra — in every panorama of that room, not one |
| A bin, a trolley or a crate in shot | Removable by retouching, quoted per panorama |
| A locked room | Not in the tour. A second visit is the only way in |
| A door shut on the day | A wall, permanently |
| The crew reflected in a mirrored wall | Reduced, rarely eliminated |
| The weather and the hour outside the window | Not changeable. Day-to-dusk is a different picture, not the same one later |
| A room made up badly | Re-shot on a second visit, or lived with |
Standard colour and exposure correction is in every price. Anything past that is retouching, quoted per panorama — and always dearer than moving the bin was.
The shape of the day
A week before: fix the room list
The room list and the station count are agreed before anything is booked, and that list is what gets shot. Taking a wing out is easy; adding one on the morning changes the day and the quote. The count is also the price — the rate card shows how it works.
The day before: tell the staff, unlock the rooms
Whoever is on shift should know it is happening. Anything needing a key, a code or a manager is dealt with the day before rather than discovered at the door with the crew in the corridor.
The morning: lights, floors, doors, screens
Lights on, floors clear, doors unlocked, rooms made up, screens showing what you want them to show. In a small building it is a short round of the rooms, and it is the part of the day that decides how the tour looks.
While we are there: carry on trading
We move room by room and need each position to ourselves only while the camera is standing in it. If somebody can point us at the next room while we finish the last one, a small building goes very quickly.
Before we leave: walk the list
Walk the agreed list with the crew and confirm nothing was missed. Five minutes here is far cheaper than finding out at handover, when the only answer is another visit.
What comes back is a folder of files that is yours — how to put it on your own domain is here — and every tour in our published work was shot under these conditions, in buildings that stayed open. If you are not sure what your own building needs, describe it to us and you get a station count before anything is booked.
Questions people ask
- Do we have to close while you shoot?
- No. Most spaces stay open while we work and we shoot around you. We need each position to ourselves only while the camera is standing in it, so people step out of one room at a time rather than out of the building. One of our published tours is a seafront shop captured at night while it was trading.
- How long do you need in each room?
- Long enough to set the tripod, clear the room and take the exposures, then move on. A room is usually one position; a long or L-shaped room is two or three so there are no blind corners. We do not publish an average time per station, because we have not recorded it consistently enough to stand behind a figure — but the station count is agreed before the booking, and it is the best guide there is to the length of the day.
- Will my staff or my guests appear in the tour?
- Only if they are in the room while that position is being shot, and that is your call. A 360° photograph has no out-of-shot, so anyone present appears in it. Telling your team the day before means anyone who would rather not appear can step out of that one room while the camera is in it.
- Can you remove things from the photographs afterwards?
- Some things, on some panoramas, as a quoted extra. Standard colour and exposure correction is included in every price. Removing objects, decluttering and virtual furnishing are retouching, priced per panorama once we have seen the room. Moving the object on the day costs nothing and looks better.
- What happens if a room is not ready on the day?
- We shoot what is ready and record what was not. A room that was locked, occupied or unmade is not in the tour, and adding it afterwards means another visit to the building, which is a new booking. That is the main reason the room list is agreed in advance rather than on the morning.
