Why your own photos matter
People choosing a local business are trying to picture what it will be like to deal with you. Stock photos of smiling models in a generic office cannot help with that, and many visitors recognize them for what they are. Real photographs of your people, your place and your work show that there is a real business behind the site.
They do not need to be professional. Clear, well-lit, honest pictures taken on a modern phone are enough for most small business websites. What matters is that they are yours.
What to shoot
Before you start, make a short shot list so you come back with what the site actually needs:
- You, or each person customers will meet, looking at the camera in good light
- The team at work, doing the thing customers pay for
- Your premises from the outside, so people recognize it when they arrive
- The inside of where you work, tidied, from where a customer would stand
- Finished jobs or products, and before-and-after pairs where they make sense
- Details that say something about your care - tools laid out, a well-packed order, a clean van
Take more than you think you need. Several versions of each shot give you room to choose the best later.
Light is most of it
The biggest difference between a phone photo that looks amateur and one that looks good is light. Daylight from a window or an overcast sky is kind to people and products. Harsh midday sun creates hard shadows and squinting faces; if you are outside on a bright day, find open shade.
Indoors, turn off overhead lights that give everything a yellow or green tint and use a window instead. Stand the person or object so the window light falls across them from the side or front, not from behind. Avoid the built-in flash unless there is no other choice.
Framing and the basics
A few habits make every picture better:
- Wipe the lens first - phone lenses are almost always smudged
- Hold the phone level, and keep upright lines like door frames straight
- Take wide, horizontal shots for the top of pages, where a banner image usually sits
- Leave some space around the subject so the photo can be cropped to different shapes
- Tap the subject on the screen to focus, and drag the brightness down if the sky is too bright
- Use the normal lens rather than the ultra-wide one for people, which can stretch faces near the edges
Clear the background before you shoot. A stack of boxes or a bin in the corner draws the eye more than you expect.
Photographing people
Natural, relaxed photos of people come from giving them something to do. Ask a team member to carry on with their work and take several shots while they do, then ask them to look up for one or two. For portraits, have the person stand a little way in front of a plain background, near a window, and shoot from about eye level.
Always ask before you photograph someone, and ask again before putting the photo on your website. That applies to staff as well as customers. For a customer's home or face, get their agreement in writing - a text message is enough - and remove anything personal such as house numbers, license plates or mail on a table.
Before and after
For trades and services that transform something, before-and-after photos are among the most convincing things you can show. The trick is consistency: stand in the same spot, at the same height, facing the same way, with similar light. A quick photo of where you stood for the "before" makes it easy to match the "after".
Choosing and using your photos
Be strict when you choose. A few strong photos make a business look better than many average ones. Delete anything blurry, dark or awkward, and anything that shows the business in a way you would not want a customer to see.
Many phones record the location where a photo was taken inside the file. That is worth knowing before you share photos taken at home or at a customer's address.
On Buildly, uploading your own photos never uses sparks, and the hidden location details are removed from each photo when it is uploaded - see Why uploading your own photos costs nothing.