From Hollywood Films to Real Estate Photography: Ed Gutentag’s Journey

Ed (00:00)
a lot of people don’t believe me and then I have to show my credit sometimes. But they’re like, yeah, they go, well, what movies might have I seen that you worked on? I go, did you ever see Titanic? Like everybody, and they go, you worked on Titanic? And then I get the, did you meet Leo? And did you meet Kate? And I worked on another movie with.

Skyler (00:13)
There you go.

Ed (00:23)
James Cameron, that was the director, was called True Lies, which was amazing. I did a Spielberg movie called War of the Worlds. But my best job in the film business was actually, I got to go to India to the Dalai Lama’s home and I interviewed him. That was like the coolest.

Skyler (00:26)
Yeah.

Yup.

Hi everybody, welcome to the Investor Fuel podcast. I am your host today, Skyler Byrd, and I am joined by Ed Gutentag. I am very excited to talk with Ed here. He is a part of the real estate business that I know very little about, so I’m really excited to talk to him, get to learn more about this. He’s in the real estate photography side of the business. So with that being said, Ed, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for coming on.

Ed (02:37)
Thank you for having me and you guys, don’t usually do these things because there’s a lot of scams out there but you guys are very organized about it and yeah, I’m glad to be here.

Skyler (02:47)
Yeah, well again, really, you know, thank you for being here. You absolutely have got a very interesting backstory. And like I said, you’re a part of the industry that I’m unfamiliar with. So yeah, let’s dive right into everything. ⁓

Ed (03:01)
Good,

I don’t have to worry about you being a competitor.

Skyler (03:04)
It’s a good way to look at it. And yeah, before we really dive into the real estate side of everything, can you give our listeners just a little bit of your background?

Ed (03:12)
So I’ve always been into photography. I got my first camera, I think I was five or six.

It was a 120 film. It wasn’t 35 millimeter. It was actually bigger. Got it at six. My dad shot movies. This was like in the mid 60s on film. Obviously it was even before Super 8. I messed around with his movie camera. Then he’d send it off to the drug store, drop it off at the drug store, come back in a little.

you know, and I ended up projecting it. I ended up doing my first professional paid photography job, I think at 15. I ended up going to school for photography. went to school to the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale. So school wasn’t only on my mind, it was the beach where I continued to live. And

Skyler (04:00)
That’s understandable.

Ed (04:01)
I was a two-year program and about a year into it, of my teachers came up to me and gave me the old not not wink wink, come here I need to talk to you. And he was like, hey, come here. And he said, hey, you live close to New York, don’t you? Yeah. And he goes, if I was you, I’d leave this school right now. Go get a job because you’re going eventually get a job. Give yourself.

a head start so I quit school not that day but I ended up getting a job in New York City with a very successful still life advertising photographer we shot 8 by 10 negative actually Ektachrome film 8 by 8 inches by 10 inches and worked for him for a couple years and then I just he did a commercial he ended up wanting to be a film director for commercials

and I saw what they were doing and it fascinated me. I saw what the assistant camera was doing. So I ended up not being a photographer necessarily professionally. I got into the film industry. I started at the bottom. That’s how you did it then. You loaded film. Then you became a second assistant, first assistant camera operator. I retired from the Hollywood film industry. I was in the union. Retired and…

2020 and now I

Skyler (06:03)
And you worked on some

pretty big movies, right? Yeah.

Ed (06:06)
Yeah,

a lot of people don’t believe me and then I have to show my credit sometimes. But they’re like, yeah, they go, well, what movies might have I seen that you worked on? I go, did you ever see Titanic? Like everybody, and they go, you worked on Titanic? And then I get the, did you meet Leo? And did you meet Kate? And I worked on another movie with.

Skyler (06:21)
There you go.

Ed (06:31)
James Cameron, that was the director, was called True Lies, which was amazing. I did a Spielberg movie called War of the Worlds. But my best job in the film business was actually, I got to go to India to the Dalai Lama’s home and I interviewed him. That was like the coolest.

Skyler (06:35)
Yeah.

Yup.

Ed (06:52)
Yeah.

Skyler (06:51)
Wow. So,

and so where was that?

Ed (06:54)
The Dalai Lama was exiled from Tibet a long, long time ago, and India gave him exile. So he calls himself the longest hotel guest in India.

Skyler (07:05)
Wow. Okay. So yeah, you have got an incredibly interesting background. mean, clearly you’ve got the credits to back it up. And when did real estate photography kind of come into the picture for you?

Ed (07:06)
Yeah.

Five years ago, so I moved from LA to Atlanta. I was in Atlanta for five years or so. And then I missed the beach because I lived in the Topanga, Malibu, Pacific Palisades area, the area that burned this past January. I wasn’t there then, but it was still very heart wrenching to see, you know, my community just decimated.

Skyler (07:33)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Ed (07:41)
where I used to live. So anyway, I moved to Atlanta for the film business and then I came to visit the beach down here. I call it the Gulf of Mexico still. It’s also called the Redneck Riviera because it’s a lot of people from the South. And I came down here and I was like missing doing my photography just creatively and it was a way for me to make a living too because I’m pretty good at it. And then

Skyler (07:42)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Ed (08:07)
I saw people, there’s a lot of real estate agents down here. I actually, I met the owner of a brokerage and his wife in a parking lot. We were just talking about a car. It’s like, I don’t meet strangers and I believe in divine intervention too. And the woman looks at me and she says, are you Ed Gutentag? And I said, yeah. And I didn’t know her.

And she said, I follow you on Instagram and Facebook. I really love your pictures. Have you ever thought of being a real estate agent? And I was like, no. I’m laughing because.

I used to have a judgment about real estate agents because it was like, the kids are all gone, I need something to do, so I’ll become a real estate agent. So anyway, it wasn’t anything I aspired to do. I know they can make a lot of money, but a lot of money doesn’t come easy for anybody in any field. So anyway…

Skyler (09:39)
Exactly.

Ed (09:40)
She asks me, she goes, you’re a photographer, aren’t you? I go, yeah, you told me you liked my pictures. Can you do real estate photography? I go, yeah, of course I can. How hard can it be?

Well…

My pictures were fine.

She got kind of lost on something else and was really nasty. And I looked at it like, because she said she didn’t like the pictures. And you can’t not take that personally.

Skyler (09:56)
Okay.

Exactly.

Ed (10:04)
if you

love what you do. So I was like, you know, I’m not going to listen to her berating me and being unprofessional, but

Let me see, how can I be better? And that’s when I learned how to do the HDR merges. HDR merges, HDR sense for high dynamic range and merges. So I take anywhere from three to five pictures like we were talking about before. You know, if you’re at a $30 million house on the beach.

you’re in the beautiful appointed kitchen, you’re looking out the window, you don’t want the window to be blown out and overexposed. It’s got to be balanced to the inside exposure. So you shoot an exposure for the outside, an exposure for the inside, and then two or three in between, and then you merge all those photos, which is pretty easy to do these days.

Skyler (10:41)
Mm-hmm.

Ed (11:03)
So that, and then I do, and then I, go ahead, I’m sorry. ⁓

Skyler (11:06)
no, so I was just

going to ask, like, so when you’re doing the photography part, do you have to wait until there’s a certain type of lighting outside that’s best, or does it just not matter anymore?

Ed (11:17)
No, there’s no waiting. You go at the right time.

because time is money.

The only way you can really see, if somebody, if I said to you, wow, you’re really rich. Well, what’s your, you know, if I come to your house and I see your car, I would never say that. But there’s people that will go, wow, you must be really rich. Well, what is rich to you? You know what I mean? Everybody’s got their own interpretation of that. My point is, that,

Skyler (11:41)
Yeah.

Ed (11:45)
You’re either going to make money as a real estate photographer by not charging a lot and doing a lot of volume. I don’t want to do that. Or working with a broker or an agent that does pretty expensive homes. Or working with an agent that understands that they got to have quality and they got to pay for it.

commission do you need to make?

Skyler (12:08)
So on your

side, do you find yourself basically working with maybe like one or two brokerages? Do you work with individual real estate agents? How does that look for you?

Ed (12:17)
Mostly individual agents

and what I try to do is…

You know, because I did this with a friend who was a real estate agent in Atlanta. And she said, I’m going to get my pictures taken today for my business card. So I said, well, bring Cooper, the dog. She says, bring Cooper. Yeah. How many real estate, why would I hire you when I got 10,000 other choices? Start with being unique and different like,

Who how many real estate agents do you think in Atlanta have a picture of themselves with their dog? I? Mean it’s a good starting point. You know what I mean it might not get you with them. You know so my point is like

Skyler (12:53)
Yeah, stand out.

Ed (13:42)
I Want how do I differentiate myself? You know so a real estate agent hires me so I started doing Matterport so

I have the Matterport Pro 3. I started doing Matterport five years ago with this phone that I’m talking to you on.

Skyler (13:59)
And for

everybody that doesn’t know what Matterport is, can you explain a little bit more about that side of the business?

Ed (14:04)
So

Matterport is a company that basically, now they’re into the hardware, but they created an engine that takes the images and stitches them all together and creates a moving visual tour that’s 360 degrees. So where Matterport is at now,

So there’s other cameras you could shoot virtual tours with, but I like the Matterport Pro 3. You can go inside and outside with the camera. Before that, it was hard to do. Using this camera, it was hard to do. And they’ve kind of figured out the secret sauce. The camera’s fast. I could scan a house. So you set the camera up.

You connect it to your phone. You fire it. It spins 360 degrees. You have to get out of the way. And then it tells you you could move to the next spot. And then when you’re done, you upload it to Matterport.

Skyler (15:06)
Okay.

Got it. right. and when you’re moving, just out of curiosity, when you’re moving to the next spot, is that something that you’re choosing? Do you have like a layout that you have to follow?

Ed (15:15)
Yes.

So some people think Matterport’s easy. It’s not hard, but there’s definitely a learning curve. As I’ve gone along, I’ve gotten better and better because there are things that come up. It’s not a perfect science. So the answer to your question is when I do it,

first I turn all the light, I do a walkthrough of the house without the camera. And then when I do it, so this particular camera, you depending upon where you are, if you’re inside or outside, you, you, I walk the house or the business as if I was walking and looking for things in the store or the house. So I’m kind of like,

Oh, let me check this house out. I’m just going to bring this camera along. And I could do like every six to 10 feet. And if it gets too far away, because one image has to attach to the other when they’re stitching it, the technology is so good it’ll tell you you’re too far away. You need to get closer to your last scan point.

Skyler (16:16)
you got it. Okay. All right. Now I’ve always kind of wondered how that how that works is obviously, you know, just taking a look at different homes that are that are for sale, you can get a virtual tour. And they all seem to be, you know, a little bit different. Some are done, you know, what I think really well give you a much better view of the house. Some seem to be very just room specific, where you don’t get like a full tour of the house. So it’s nice to know that the technology is there now. And yeah, absolutely. And

Ed (16:40)
Totally.

Skyler (16:42)
I know we talked about a little bit, you do a little bit of drone work as well, correct?

Ed (16:47)
I do a lot of…

I probably fly my drone every day because it’s the greatest and cheapest antidepressant out there. Yeah.

Skyler (16:57)
Got it. I know that seems

that’s awesome. So have you ever have you ever, you know, taken the drone do like a like a fly through of a house or anything like that? Or are you kind of mostly on the real-size side just doing like the outside of a home possibly?

Ed (17:10)
Well, here’s the thing about my background. My background tells me why do I need to do it? I could do it another way, so much faster and easier. In other words, if I’m going to fly a drone through a house,

I’m not gonna sit here and tell you I’m the greatest pilot with the drone in the world. But I’m not bad. My friend let me fly his helicopter once. Mind you, I was not flying it, really. He was flying it. He said, do you wanna take control? And I said, are you sure you wanna let me do that? And he goes, yeah, don’t worry. I’m really flying it, you’re not. So the point is…

I’ll say to the client, because I had this come up, hey, hey, I was dealing with the wife who was much more practical. He was more like me. Hey, hey, can we do the shot where we fly in the door, we fly upstairs, we fly up to the third floor, we fly down. I let him do this thing, and I go, you want it to look like, yeah, yeah, want it to look like we’re flying a drone through the house. I go, yeah, I could do that.

I’m just not gonna do it with the drone. Because I don’t wanna mark up your walls, I don’t wanna crash it, because I’m not gonna sit here and tell you or anybody listening, and if anybody does that flies a drone, says they can do that, there are people that can do it, but I wouldn’t do it because you don’t need to.

Skyler (18:21)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, so that’s where that kind of professionalism comes in. it’s like, hey, I understand what you’re looking for with the shots that you want. We can do it a better way and still make you happy. Absolutely. Awesome.

Ed (18:36)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. it did

be at that point. It becomes a toy and not the right tool. You know. Yeah, you know, it’d be like if, know, your headset, your mic, do you need to spend the most most money? For a headset and a mic when half as much.

Skyler (18:45)
Now that’s a really good way to look at it. No, I like that. Absolutely.

Ed (19:00)
You can’t really tell the difference. Yeah.

Skyler (19:02)
Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. Yeah, I’m not I’m not running a, you know, a professional studio having everybody come in and, you know, use all of my stuff. So yeah, absolutely not. 100%. All right. Well, well, Ed, you know, I think if your time here, we’re kind of coming up on our time. And just before we go, let me ask you, I mean, are you working primarily in that the panhandle of Florida? Do you do you have clients outside of that? Tell me about that.

Ed (19:12)
Yeah.

Yes, I had a client that wanted me to go to Kentucky and then they have a place in Montana. But they ended up finding local people because you have to look at the cost of how you’re running your business too. But mostly here. Yeah.

Skyler (19:46)
Sure, absolutely.

All right, awesome.

All right. And if somebody’s listening here and is interested in your services, how can they find you?

Ed (19:57)
The best way is to just call me and I’m happy to give you my social media links. But you know, I actually just did a kind of a promo for myself and I was like, hey, I just want to put a name with the face, a face with the name. I don’t know how you’re going to receive this when it’s done. Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pony Express, Smoke Signal. I just like people to call me. So I could give you my number if you want.

and they could do that, then, do you want to list my social media after this?

Skyler (20:28)
Yeah,

absolutely. We’ll make sure as long as you get that to us, we’ll when the episode comes up, we’ll make definitely make sure that’s on there for everybody. 100%.

Ed (20:35)
Okay, so,

you want me to just, my number is 850, I got a local, that was one of the business things I was told to do. Because I’ve always had the same number for the last 25 years, it’s a 310, which is Los Angeles. So a friend of mine down here said, people down here don’t like you if you’re from California. So I went, okay. So my number is 850.

Skyler (20:38)
Yeah, you can go ahead just…

Yeah.

Ed (21:01)
7 7 4 0 6 6 1 and I’m happy to talk to anybody if I have the time and ⁓ then I’ll give you my social media link.

Skyler (21:09)
Alright.

Yeah, absolutely. And like I said, we’ll make sure to get those on there for you. So awesome. Ed, again, thank you very much for your time. That kind of does it for us today. And everybody, our listeners out there, if you got value from this, please make sure you’re subscribing. We have got more interviews like this coming down the pipe every day here. So again, Ed, thank you very much. And we’ll see you next time.

Ed (21:16)
Yeah.

Thank you.

I think you guys are doing a great job because I usually don’t go for this kind of stuff. You’re very professional about it. I like the follow-up. Very organized. Good job.

Skyler (21:45)
Thank you. All right.