I am Charlie Taylor, the founder of Snap2Close Real Estate Photography. At the recommendation of some of our key staff members, I created this webpage as a vehicle to share my thoughts about our industry and its current path, and its projected trends. My views do not necessarily represent the opinions of all of our staff, so if you have questions or comments then please direct them to me.
Before I begin submitting my articles or “chatter”, I thought it would be beneficial to provide you with some background information. Hopefully, it will help you to understand why each article is written.
A Little History
I started Snap2Close in the fall of 2016, and have watched the company consistently grow.
I can proudly say that we were the first company in Arizona to provide Zillow 3D tours and have generated more than 1,500 of their tours in the Phoenix market. While Zillow does not provide viewer statistics, we know that our Matterport 3D Tours have been viewed by more than 115,000 times. We were also the first company in Arizona to begin offering comprehensive CubiCasa Floor Plans and have provided more than 2,200 floor plans to our Arizona customers.
Snap2Close has also been an innovator in real estate videos. Today, we provide our customers creative Emotive Videos and top of the line social media videos. It is widely known that we are the industry leader for real estate videos in Arizona.
As of today, we have completed more than 9,000 photoshoots in the Phoenix market. On an average month, we deliver more than 10,000 photos and 150 videos to real estate agents, property management companies, and commercial clients. As you might expect, all of these clients depend on quality and reliability.
If you have the time, then I invite you to view the Our Team webpage so that you can learn more about our staff.
February 2026
Artificial Intelligence and Real Estate Images
A.I. has certainly made an impression with visual media. Simple instructions into ChatGPT and other systems can generate images, videos, etc. For example, the four images below were created from verbal instructions to an AI system from Google Docs.
AI image generation features in Google Docs are powered by Gemini. This tool uses Google’s Imagen 3 model
Imagen 3 creates high-quality, photorealistic images and custom visuals.
These types of A.I. systems can be referred to as “Generative A.I.” Basically, Generative AI uses artificial neural networks to process complex patterns, and the results are very impressive.
However, you need to be very careful when using large AI systems for virtual staging. These systems may move walls or other structural material during the staging process. The bottom line is that large Generative AI systems are somewhat unpredictable! So pay close attention to the details when using these systems.
Dedicated AI For Virtual Staging
Luckily for us, there are some Generative AI systems that have narrowed the scope of data input for their training. These Generative AI systems are trained specifically for virtual staging and will not manipulate the walls or windows. Their focus is to calculate the approximate size of the room, and then to scale and place 3D furniture from their established 3D library. The process actually works quite well.
However, the current limitation of these AI Virtual Staging systems is that they do not have the capability of using the exact same furniture and its placement in other images of the same room.
The Growth of Agentic A.I.
There is a growing trend to use AI to manage computer processes. An easy example to visualize or understand would be for traveling and managing airline tickets. Assuming that your travel plans required you to change planes then the Agentic A.I. system could be used to search and process all of the airline tickets to find you the least expensive ticket that would also minimize your flight layover times. While you could certainly accomplish this task, it would probably take a considerable amount of time. Agentic A.I. could automatically do this task in a matter of seconds.
Agentic A.I. is trained to accomplish certain tasks or processes by monitoring others who perform these tasks on a regular basis. If the computer is trained with millions of examples then it learns how to repeat those tasks.
In real estate photography, there is a growing trend to use Agentic A.I. for editing HDR images. As a test, we experimented with several A.I. image editing services. While they all did a decent job, the quality simply did not measure up to our expectations or the accuracy of the Agentic A.I. our Danish partner provides. Notice the different colors of the drapes, carpet and walls.
 A.I. Edited by AutoHDR |
 A.I. Edited by Snap2Close |
Currently, our Bronze Package photos are being utilized to further the educational process of the Agentic A.I. system. However, this requires our human touch by Quality Assurance Department to manually review each image and to make necessary changes.
I predict that Agentic A.I. will continue to play a role in the real estate editing of HDR images. Eventually, this process will come close to the accuracy achieved by a trained professional human editor. When it does, I believe that prices for real estate photography will come down a bit.
