Two websites, same trade, same town. One has a stock photo of a smiling person in a hard hat holding a clipboard. The other has a slightly imperfect photo of an actual crew on an actual roof, in the light there was that day.
The second one gets the call. Not because it is a better photograph. Because it is evidence.
What stock photos cost you
They are not free, they are just cheap. The cost shows up elsewhere:
Your competitors have the same ones. The popular images in any trade appear on hundreds of sites. Customers comparing three companies see the same face twice.
They say nothing specific. A stock photo of a kitchen shows a kitchen. A photo of a kitchen you built shows what your work looks like, which is the actual question.
They date badly. Every era of stock photography looks like its era within about four years.
They undermine everything near them. A page claiming local expertise, illustrated by a photo shot in another country, tells the reader something you did not intend.
Stock has legitimate uses. Abstract concepts, backgrounds, blog article headers. Use it for those. Do not use it where a customer is asking “are these people any good.”
The shot list
The photos that do the most work for a local business, in rough order:
The building, or the vehicle. Proof you exist somewhere. Shoot on an overcast day, from across the street, straight on.
Work in progress. Hands doing the thing. This is the most valuable category and the one nobody takes, because you are working. Assign it to someone.
Finished work. Wide enough to see the context, close enough to see the quality. Before and after if you have the before.
Your team. Individually, against a plain wall, in daylight. Even phone portraits beat a stock photo of nobody.
What a customer sees on arrival. Counter, waiting area, entrance. Sets expectations before they walk in.
Your equipment or materials, if they signal quality in your trade.
Twenty good photos across those categories will carry a website for three years.
Taking usable photos with a phone
Modern phones are fine. The failures are almost never the camera.
Shoot on an overcast day, or in shade. Bright direct sun creates hard shadows and blown highlights, and it is the single biggest reason amateur photos look amateur. Overcast is free soft light.
Light in front of the subject, not behind. If a window or the sun is behind your subject, you get a silhouette. Turn around.
Get closer, then closer. Almost every amateur photo is too far away. Fill the frame.
Hold still and tap to focus. Tap the thing that matters. The phone will focus and expose for it.
Shoot both orientations. Websites need wide. Social needs tall. Take both, it costs nothing.
Clean up first. Move the coffee cup, the extension cord, the pile of packaging. Thirty seconds of tidying is worth more than any editing.
Take ten of everything. Storage is free. You will keep one.
Do not use filters. They date instantly and they fight whatever design the site uses.
When to hire someone
Worth paying for a half day when:
- You need people photographed. Portraits are genuinely hard.
- Your work is the product and small differences show quality. Cabinetry, food, finishes.
- Your space matters. Interiors need equipment and skill.
- You want a consistent set. A photographer shoots forty images that look related, which is difficult to do yourself across six months.
A half day of local commercial photography costs less than most people assume and produces material that outlasts two website redesigns. If budget is tight, hire for people and interiors, and shoot the rest yourself.
Permission and privacy
Boring and worth getting right.
- Ask before photographing a customer’s property, and ask again before publishing. Most people say yes. The ones who say no would have been upset.
- Get written permission for anything identifiable, particularly interiors of homes.
- Do not photograph other people’s children, ever, without explicit permission from a parent.
- Check no vehicle plates, house numbers, or documents are legible.
- If you photograph your team, agree what happens to the photos when someone leaves.
Prepare them for the web
The most common mistake is uploading straight from the phone. A photo off a modern phone is enormous, and putting six of them on a page is how a site takes eight seconds to load on cellular.
Resize to roughly the dimensions they will display at, save at a sensible quality, and let the site generate the smaller versions. A well-prepared photo is usually well under a hundred kilobytes and looks identical on screen.
Where they go
Everywhere a stock photo currently is. Then:
- Your Google Business Profile, which wants new photos regularly and rewards businesses that add them.
- Service pages, showing that specific service.
- Location pages, showing work in that area. This is the most convincing thing you can put on one.
- Your about page, showing actual people.
A site with twenty real photographs of the business looks like a business. A site with six stock photos looks like a template, and everyone can tell.
