New Blog! An Introduction to Stylish Detroit
You found it! The very first blog post. Here’s the part where we dutifully tell you what we’re all about.
First of all – thank you! No, really! If you took the time to get to get here, you must be pretty damn serious about researching real estate photographers. Nice. We like people like you.
We are a full-service real estate marketing media company that services all of Southeastern Michigan. Our main jam is shooting magazine-quality images and attention-getting videos for the top Realtors in Michigan. But we’re more than just a pretty listing, so keep reading.
Stylish Detroit was created by Andy Schwartz and me, Lynn Bernardi. We met in 2007 because of a Vespa, and 13 years, 2 businesses, and several dogs later, we ended up here - leading a team of talented photographers and filmmakers to create compelling, cutting-edge real estate media.
We didn’t start with houses though. Our first photography business was West Park Photography. We named it after our neighborhood in Grosse Pointe Park, officially starting the trend of choosing hyper local names for our businesses that we would immediately outgrow. As WPP, we focused almost exclusively on weddings, with the occasional headshot, family portrait, or baby session thrown in. Our old work is still online here, if you’re interested.
While we were doing that, we’d occasionally get asked to photograph a random listing here or there. My day job was in the real estate industry, and everyone knew I was a photographer. Out of some weird self-imposed duty to avoid any conflict of interest at my day job, I referred agents to Andy. He started becoming “the guy you call for listing photos”.
He slowly but steadily gained new clients. (Back then a lot of agents were reluctant to share the name of the secret weapon that was helping them get more listings and sell homes faster. And most agents weren’t really using social media either which didn’t help.) But within two years, demand was so high that Andy took Stylish Detroit full time. We added additional photographers and continued to grow, and I also transitioned to working full time for Stylish Detroit. And then, things basically exploded. Real estate photography went from something hardly any agents utilized – and only for special listings – to a must have part of the marketing process that all sellers have grown to expect.
Fast forward to today, and Stylish Detroit is the #1 full service real estate media company in Michigan. We have a crew of talented photographers we personally trained, a dedicated editing team, a video team, and we’ve expanded our services to include aerial photography, twilight photography, branding & headshots, two different high-quality virtual tour options, floor plans, room measurements, virtual staging, and more. Having a large team means we can offer availability unheard of in the photo/video world, and our products are delivered quickly, with a 24-hour turnaround on photography services and a 48-hour turnaround on video. Our clients benefit from easy online booking, and a team of photographers who truly understand real estate and their marketing needs. Our team isn’t made up of button-pushers, it’s made up of artists. That’s something we’re proud of.
We now shoot thousands of homes for residential real estate sales, and complete hundreds of video projects annually. Andy and I also work directly with interior designers, builders, and real estate developers. Our work has been featured in many local publications and we’re also contributors to both the Wayne & Oakland editions of Real Producers Magazine, which celebrates the highest achieving local real estate professionals. We’re passionate about helping agents learn how to better use professional photography and videography to build their brand and grow their business.