The photos your site needs
The photographs are what people actually look at. They will skim your words and study your pictures, and they can tell in a second whether a photo is your work or somebody else’s bought from a library.
A slightly wonky picture of a real kitchen you fitted beats a perfect stock photo of a kitchen nobody fitted. Take your own.
What to shoot
- Before and after, from the same spot. The single most persuasive thing you can put on a website, and it costs you thirty seconds before you start.
- The finished job, wide enough to see the room and close enough to see the detail.
- Something in progress. Proves it was you, and people like seeing how it is done.
- You. One photograph of the actual person. Nothing else on the site does as much for trust as a face.
- The van, if it is signwritten. It says you exist.
Two mistakes that spoil most trade photos
Shooting into the window. The camera exposes for the bright window and everything in the room goes dark. Stand so the window is behind you, or shoot with the light coming across the room.
Standing too close, with the phone tilted up. It bends the walls and makes the room look small. Back into a corner, hold the phone level at chest height, and let the vertical lines stay vertical.
Two minutes of tidying
Move the tools out. Coil the lead. Take the dust sheet off. Close the toilet lid.
It sounds trivial and it is the whole difference between a photo that looks like a finished job and one that looks like a building site. Nobody notices tidiness; everybody notices mess.
Practical bits
- Shoot landscape, not portrait — websites are wider than they are tall.
- Wipe the lens. Phone cameras live in pockets and it makes more difference than anything.
- Take five of each. Storage is free and you will only pick one.
- Grid on, in the camera settings, so things end up level.
- Do not use the filters. What you want is the job to look like it looked.
When stock is acceptable
For a background, a texture, something abstract behind a heading — fine, nobody is being misled.
For 'our work' — never. It is the fastest way to lose someone who was nearly convinced, and in a trade people recognise the same stock photo on four websites in the same town.
Common questions
My phone is five years old. Is that a problem?
No. Any phone from the last several years takes a photograph good enough for a website. Light and tidiness matter enormously; the camera hardly matters at all.
I never remember to take a 'before'.
Put it in the routine: photo before the tools come out of the van. After a fortnight you stop having to remember. Before-and-afters are worth more than everything else you will photograph.
Do I need a professional photographer?
For most trades, no. Where it does pay is one good portrait of you, which is an hour’s work and lasts years, and a set of a genuinely impressive job if you are chasing bigger work.
What about customers' houses — do I need permission?
Ask, and ask on the day. Most people say yes. Do not photograph anything that identifies the house or the family, and if in doubt keep the shot on the work itself rather than the room.
Want to see what yours would look like?
Send me a few lines about your firm and within a few days you will have a mock-up of your site, with a price on it. Free.
Get a free mock-up