Photographs to Take in the New Year

Why the photographs never happen

Not because a session is expensive, though it can be.

The usual reason is that nobody has written down what is needed, so at the moment somebody is standing in front of the thing worth photographing, it does not occur to them.

Then the site keeps using images from the build, or stock images, or the four photographs somebody happened to take in 2019.

A list changes that, because it converts photography from a project into something that happens during work you were doing anyway.

What the site actually needs

• The people, faces, not from behind.
• Work in progress, not only finished.
• The problem you were called to fix.
• Before and after, from the same position.
• The premises or the van.
• Detail shots of what you do well.

The third is the one nobody takes and the one that does most work on a page. A photograph of what was actually wrong is evidence in a way a finished result is not, and it is available on almost every job.

Before and after needs planning

Since the after is easy and the before is gone.

By the time somebody thinks a pair would be useful, the work has started and the original state cannot be recovered.

Which means the before has to be taken as a habit at the start of every job, whether or not that job turns out to be interesting.

Take it from a position you can return to, and note roughly where you stood, since a pair from different angles is not a pair.

Most will never be used, and the small number that are will be the strongest images on the site.

Thirty seconds per job is the whole cost.

A worked example

A business had eleven photographs on its site, all from the build in 2018, and had twice budgeted for a photographer without booking one.

They wrote a list of eight shots, printed it, and put it in the van.

Over three months they collected roughly sixty photographs during ordinary work, on a phone.

About fifteen were good enough to use, including two before-and-after pairs and one photograph of a failure that ended up on their most-read page.

They still had no photographer and their site looked completely different.

The list in the van was the entire intervention.

The rules that make phone photographs usable

Since most of these will be taken quickly and in poor conditions.

Light from behind you rather than behind the subject, which is the single largest improvement available.

Get closer than feels natural, since detail reads and context does not.

Hold it steady and take three rather than one, because one of the three will be sharp.

Clean the lens, which sounds trivial and accounts for a surprising share of poor photographs from a working environment.

And take it landscape as well as upright, since the site will usually want the wider shape.

Get the people in

Which is the category most resisted and most valuable.

A photograph of a real person who does the work answers a question no description does, particularly for work in somebody's home.

It does not need to be a portrait session: somebody working, looking at the job rather than the camera, is better than a posed photograph and considerably easier to obtain.

Ask permission, explain where it will be used, and get it in writing where you can, since somebody may leave and the photograph will remain.

And where you appear on the site yourself, one decent photograph of you is worth more than any number of images of finished work.

File them so they can be found

Otherwise the collection becomes a phone nobody can search.

Move them off the phone monthly into folders named by job or by month.

Rename anything you might use with a description rather than a number, since a folder of camera filenames is unusable in a year.

Note where permission was given and where it was not, alongside the images themselves.

And keep the originals, since a compressed copy sized for the site cannot be reused for anything else.

Ten minutes a month prevents the situation where three good photographs exist and nobody can find them.

Take the ones you cannot take later

A seasonal point worth acting on in the new year.

Anything dependent on weather, season, or a particular kind of job has a window, and missing it costs a year.

Winter work, summer work, and anything that only happens at a certain time all need to be photographed when they occur.

Note which of your list is seasonal and roughly when, so the window is noticed rather than missed.

The same applies to any job that is unusually good, since a routine job can be photographed next month and a remarkable one cannot.

Ask permission properly

Since a photograph you cannot use is worse than one you never took.

Work in somebody's home or on their property needs their agreement before it appears anywhere, and a verbal yes on site is easy to give and easy to forget.

Ask at the time, say specifically where it might be used, and follow up with a short message they can reply to, which gives you a record.

Avoid anything identifying the address: house numbers, street signs, vehicles, and post visible on a table.

Note against each image whether permission exists, because a good photograph with an uncertain status will sit unused for years.

The counter-case

Photographs are not always the constraint.

A site with nothing useful to say is not improved by better images, and photography can become the visible task that substitutes for the harder writing.

Some work is also genuinely unphotogenic or confidential, and forcing images produces something worse than none.

And for some businesses a single professional session is a better use of money than a year of phone photographs.

Write the list, put it where the work happens, take the before shot as a habit, and file them monthly.

The list

1. Write eight shots your site needs.
2. Print it and keep it where you work.
3. Take a before shot on every job.
4. Photograph the problem, not only the result.
5. Get the people in, with permission.
6. Three shots, landscape, lens cleaned.
7. File them monthly with real names.

Step three is the habit that produces the strongest images, since the before cannot be taken once the work has started and nobody knows in advance which job will matter.

The seasonal version of this is covered in photographs worth taking before winter.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.