How to Take Great Photos of Your RV With Your Smartphone

The best way to make your RV listing stand out is with crisp, high-quality pictures. Whether you’re snapping photos for the first time or updating your listing with high-resolution shots, capturing great images with your smartphone is entirely possible. Keep reading to find out how.

Prepare Your RV

Before you take out your smartphone and open your camera app, make sure the interior and exterior of your travel trailer or other RV are in pristine condition. Buyers gravitate towards well-curated photos that showcase a spotless unit. Knowing this, it’s imperative to spend some time cleaning, decluttering, and detailing your RV so that it’s in tip-top shape. Make the beds, wipe down the counters, and put away any odds and ends that make your space feel crowded.

In addition to cleaning your RV, you might want to consider lightly staging the interior. Props like linen napkins, fresh flowers, candy or baked goods, cozy blankets, books, and indoor greenery are great options.

Configure Your Camera Settings

If you’re a photography novice, there are some easy things you can do to elevate the quality of your smartphone photos.

Turn on grids in your camera settings. This feature can help you determine if a photo is straight and framed correctly.
Turn off the flash. Natural light is much more flattering, so make sure to open your blinds and pull up your shades before you start taking photos.
Make sure you’re saving high-resolution photos. Sometimes, smartphones automatically save lower-resolution photos because they take up less space.
When you’re taking photos, hold a steady hand. Smartphones tend to be very sensitive, so even a slight tremor can result in blurry photos. If this is challenging for you, invest in a small tripod.
Take photos in burst mode. This will give you the best chance of capturing clear, crisp listing photos.

Take Some Test Shots

While you’re experimenting with your settings, take some test shots to make sure your photos are high-resolution and have optimal lighting. If your pictures don’t look how you want them to look, continue to tweak the settings until you have the desired results. If your settings seem correct but your photos still look subpar, you might need to adjust some furniture or items inside or outside of your fifth wheel or other RV. Sometimes, it takes a little repositioning to make each room/area shine.

Use the Rule of Thirds

The Rule of Thirds is a photography composition guideline that divides an image into thirds and places the subject at one of the four intersections in order to create a strong, balanced photo. The grids feature on your smartphone can help with this. In order to use the Rule of Thirds, place your subject slightly off center, where two of the grid lines intersect. Your subject might be your bed, your kitchen table, or the couch in your living space.

Shoot During the Best Time of Day

The time of day that you choose to photograph your truck camper or other RV is important. Natural light can make or break your photos. Try to avoid midday shooting, because that’s when the sun will be bright and harsh. Mornings and evenings are ideal for capturing warmer, less exposed pictures. Cloudy days are typically great, too, as long as it’s not raining hard or dark and gloomy outside.

While taking pictures of the interior, open all of your window shades or blinds to let as much natural light in as possible. If your photos are still too dark, turn on the lights inside your RV. Whatever you do, don’t use your phone’s flash. Sometimes, professional flash equipment can be helpful with listing photography. However, your phone’s flash will likely create a harsh effect, brightly illuminating a single focus and casting a dark shadow over everything else.

Highlight Upgrades & Features

Potential buyers want to know what makes your camper van or other RV special, so make sure to photograph any noteworthy or unique features. This doesn’t mean you have to take a zoomed-in photo of every single upgrade in your space. It can be just as effective to photograph a wide view of your kitchen that clearly shows your brand new farmhouse sink and island countertop in the bottom left corner. Allow your highlighted features to blend in with the rest of your space, showcasing your RV in all of its glory.

Here are some examples of upgrades that you might want to photograph.

Secret storage inside your RV
Window shades or blinds
New flooring
Kitchen upgrades and features
Bathroom upgrades and features
Bike rack

Take a Variety of Photos

Remember, you can never take too many photos. Shoppers want to see every angle and corner of your RV, so take a variety of shots that you can include in your listing. The more detail you include, the more clearly potential buyers will be able to imagine themselves in your RV, embarking on their next adventure.

Record a Listing Video

Video can be extremely beneficial, if you’re willing to include one in your listing. Here are some tips for recording a listing video with your smartphone:

Make sure you have several gigabytes of space available on your smartphone so you can capture as much footage as you need.
As previously mentioned for photography, if holding your camera steady is challenging for you, use a tripod to make your video appear more professional. Some smartphones have in-camera stabilization, so that should also help.
Use the camera on the back of your phone, not the front. The back camera takes higher resolution photos and videos.
If your smartphone is capable, toggle your settings to film in 60fps (frames per second) instead of 30fps. This will make your video smoother and clearer. However, keep in mind that this will make your file size even larger. If you have limited storage space, this step is not necessary.
Make sure you stick to one orientation while filming. If you start out in landscape mode (horizontal), complete your entire video in landscape mode. If you start out in portrait mode (vertical), complete your entire video in portrait mode. Don’t switch orientations in the middle of your video.

Using these tips, you’ll be fully prepared to take amazing listing photos and videos that appeal to RV shoppers nationwide. No special photography skills required – just your smartphone, ample storage space, good lighting, and plenty of time to get all of the shots you need.

If you’ve already collected a variety of images with your smartphone, list your RV for sale on our marketplace today!