How to Take Photos That Will Sell Your Boat

10 tips for boat photos that sell, sell, sell!

1. Clean the boat thoroughly before taking your first photo. No piles of rags in the engine room, old food on the table, filled trash cans, dirty windows, stained wood, unmade beds, broken furniture, torn canvas or rusty metal. It might take 20 minutes or two days, but you need to make the boat look as good as possible. Duh!

Since boat shopping is only slightly less fun than actually being out on my boat, I occasionally find myself plopped down in front of my computer perusing yacht listings on the Internet. I am constantly amazed that not only do boats selling for $30,000 to $3 million have incomplete, conflicting and incorrect information on the vessel, but also that their photographs defy description as to the poor quality.

I mean, here’s a 70-foot, million-dollar yacht for sale and there are a dozen fuzzy photos showing pipe fittings, frayed corners of a rug, a stanchion mount, a crooked shot of the inside of a hanging locker, a virtually black photo of the engine room and a parting photo of a flag on the bow.

Now, I don’t know about you, but when I see this I’m thinking, a) These people don’t really want to sell their boat; b) If the photos are any indication of the shape of the boat, I won’t even bother to take a look at it; c) If they’ve skimped so much on taking the photos, what else have they skimped on — for example, ­maintenance; d) The listing broker should be fired immediately.

While taking good photos of your boat is not rocket science, it does take some preparation, thought and a basic knowledge of photography (including lighting and composition). Having a camera with a good wide-angle lens, such as an 18mm model, is pretty much imperative since there are so many tight spaces on a boat.

The choices are simple: Get a good camera and lens and learn how to use a basic photo-editing program, or hire someone knowledgeable to take the photos. Either way, you’re looking at a few hundred dollars — but if you’re seriously trying to interest potential buyers in a $200,000 boat, I would think that spending $500 on good photos would be more than worth the money and effort.