Why real photos win
Visitors have developed sharp stock-photo radar — the same smiling models appear on a thousand websites, and everyone knows it. A slightly imperfect photo of your actual work says something no stock image can: this business is real, and this is what they actually do.
The five photos every business needs
Your best finished work, taken properly. Your team or yourself, looking approachable. Your van, shop or workspace. Work in progress — people love process. And one photo that shows scale: a wide shot of a finished job. That's a full website's worth of imagery from one afternoon.
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Phone photography rules that matter
Clean the lens (genuinely — it's the biggest single improvement). Shoot in daylight, never with flash indoors. Keep the phone level and step back rather than zooming. Take three versions of everything and pick later. Landscape orientation suits websites better than portrait for hero images.
What to avoid
Blurry shots, cluttered backgrounds, and photos where the subject is a distant speck. Also avoid heavy filters — they date fast and look like hiding something. If a photo isn't good enough to show a customer in person, it isn't good enough for the homepage.
Keep files website-friendly
A photo straight off a modern phone can be 5MB or more — far too heavy for a fast website. Images need resizing and compressing before upload; a slow homepage quietly costs you enquiries (more on that in why slow pages lose customers). Any competent web design studio handles this as standard.
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