7 tips on how to take pictures of your boat to sell it online

Taking a little bit of time and effort with taking snapshots of your boat can provide a huge lift to your boatsales.com.au listing when it comes time to sell.

The idea is that you want potential buyers to fall in love with your boat from the first moment they see it appear on the screen and follow that up with a series of images that sell the visual sizzle with the sausage.

With just a few changes to the way you point the smartphone and grab a few snaps, your boat transforms from just another one among the multitude of others listed on boatsales.com.au to the boat that someone is looking for.

Here is the boatsales.com.au guide to taking the best set of snaps of your boat that will make it look so good you’ll probably be reluctant to sell it.

One of the most off-putting places you can think of taking photos of a boat is at home in the driveway.

Have a scratch around the boatsales.com.au website and you’ll see examples where a bit of effort to present the boat would have gone a long way.

Buyers can be pretty judgy, so you don’t want to take an image of a boat squeezed in beside the house with the household mops, unkempt backyard grass and maybe the dog house distracting the eyes.

The same goes for taking an image in the garage, where the visual clutter around the boat can be very distracting as buyers spend their time trying to identify what brand of compressor is in the corner rather than looking at the boat.

Nothing screams uncared-for boat like seeing a discarded boat cover in one corner of the image.

Again, it’s all about perception. You want people to know that your boat is well cared for, so any signs of haste to post a listing can count against maximising the number of dollars you will potentially get.

Again, in a buyer’s mind, a well-cared-for boat will be clean and dry when the photos are taken.

Leaving beads of water on the boat, or a hose lying on the ground with wet patches on the concrete hint that the owner is looking for a quick turnaround on an unloved asset, and is making a minimal effort to present the boat in its best form.

Grab some window cleaner, polish up the windscreen and clears, and give all the brightwork such as the chrome dial surrounds and any stainless steel fittings a shine.

Clean the inside as well as the outside; owners still occasionally cop flack from buyers after advertising a boat as always stored undercover, yet the images show a cockpit full of twigs and gum leaves.

One of the best things you can do is hook the boat up to your car and drag it somewhere for photos.

First, it shows the buyer that the boat is used and hasn’t been sitting unattended for months or even years.

Look for places where the background is uncluttered. Think the car park of the local soccer field or even the local boat ramp.

The idea is that you want the images to focus on the boat without having any visual clutter to distract the buyer.

Photos taken with water in the background, or even just at the boat ramp hint that this is a boat owned by someone who enjoyed using it.

Shooting inside a trailer boat is one of the most difficult tricks to pull off well.

If a boat is sitting on a trailer, it’s going to be a tough job getting high enough to shoot inside it to give buyers an impression of the interior.

This is where a step ladder comes in handy. Climbing onto the top step will give you enough perspective to shoot the whole interior in a single shot, both from the front and the back.

The images will look much better than awkwardly angled shots from inside the boat.

A clean boat is a good thing, but lighting can make or break a buyer’s first impression, boatsales.com.au multimedia producer John Wilson says.

“If you can, pick a sunny day to photograph your pride and joy – nothing is more off-putting than dull photos taken on an overcast day," Wilson says.

"For exterior photos, face your boat into the sun so that it's lit well. Doing this should help it pop off the background behind it.

“Viewers automatically go to the lightest part of the image, and you want that to be your boat," he says.

“If you want to step it up, shoot your boat towards the end of the day where you'll get some beautiful warm lighting off the setting sun – another visual trick to help your boat look more attractive.”

Cracking bait board set-up? The latest in chartplotter and sounder technology? Low engine hours? Prove it with a photo.

Before photographing the boat, make a list of all the things you’ve enjoyed about it, and try and capture each one of them on the camera. This will help when it comes to writing your sale listing because you can back up the words with an image.

The thinking here is that if it has brought you joy, then someone else will see it doing the same for them.

If you’re selling other gear with the boat such as life jackets, fenders and boat poles, make sure they’re all included in a picture. If you’re not going to sell it with the boat, remove it.

Boats look spectacular on the water, and the best way to capture it is with a drone. If you have one, fine, but if you don't, find someone who does and get them to capture 30 seconds to a minute of footage of you driving the boat, and another 30 seconds or so flying around the boat while it sits static on the water.

Use free video editing software on your phone or laptop to stitch the vision together, drop a beat behind it, and with next to no effort you have a great-looking sizzle reel that makes your boat stand out from the crowd.

Launch the drone from land, because if it goes into limp-home mode and you launched it from the boat while out on the water ...

Honesty is a good policy when it comes to selling a secondhand product.

If you mention something about the boat that could be a turn-off in buyers’ eyes – split seat upholstery, faulty mechanics or the odd bump and scrape – back it up with a photo.

More often than not, a buyer will be more willing to put up with a few cosmetic flaws if they’re aware of them before turning up for an inspection and discovering them as a complete surprise.

Giving potential buyers a run-down of the costs they’re likely to face if the boat needs any upgrades or fixes will also help come the time to negotiate the price they’re willing to pay to take it off your hands.

It’s tougher to do when you’re on your own, but by and large people are much more attracted to an image of a moving boat than they are of one sitting on a trailer.

If you can, get a mate with a boat to help you capture running images of the boat.

Get a friend to drive your boat and shoot it from the front and back as it is up on the plane. Keep the sun behind you to ensure the image isn’t back-lit.

Shoot it from the front and back at rest as well, with your mate ducking down so they don’t distract from the boat.

Make it look well-loved by add fishing rods to rocket holders and ropes to ski poles to give potential buyers an idea of what it will look like with their gear on it.

Do it right, and one of these on-water shots will be the perfect hero image that will help your ad stand out from the crowd.

Did the hero image of this story reel you in? Well, if you're reading these words, it seems to have worked.