Guide · Content
Photographs are
the whole pitch.
For a trade, the website is a portfolio with some text around it. A customer deciding between three contractors is looking for evidence that you have done this before and that it turned out well. A stock photograph of someone else's kitchen is evidence of the opposite.
Published 2026-09-24 · Formory Group
Why stock photography costs you work.
Customers recognise stock images faster than people in the industry assume — the same smiling electrician appears on a hundred sites. The moment a visitor spots it, everything else on the page becomes less believable, including the parts that are true.
A slightly crooked photograph of your own finished job outperforms a professional photograph of someone else's, because it is the only kind that answers the question being asked.
What to shoot on every job.
Before, during and after, from the same position. The same angle is what makes a before-and-after readable; two different angles just look like two rooms. Take the before shot as you arrive, even when the job seems too small to bother with.
Add a detail shot of the part of the work a customer would not notice but a tradesperson would — the clean cut, the tidy run of cable, the sealed joint. That photograph is what separates you from whoever quoted lower.
How to take them with a phone.
Daylight, always. Shoot with the light behind you rather than in front. Tidy the frame before pressing the button: a tool bag and a coffee cup in shot undo the impression the photograph was meant to make.
Hold the phone level and step back rather than zooming. Take five of each shot and keep one. It costs two minutes on site and it is the only marketing asset that cannot be bought.
Getting permission, once.
Ask at the point of quoting, not at the end — a line in the quote saying you may photograph the finished work for your portfolio, and that no address or identifying detail will be published. Almost nobody refuses when asked in advance.
Respect the exceptions without argument. Some clients, particularly commercial ones, cannot have their premises identified, and pushing damages a relationship worth more than a photograph.
What to do with them on the site.
Put the best two on the service page they belong to, not all thirty on a gallery nobody opens. Give each a real description in the alt text — what the job was and where — because that is both an accessibility requirement and how image search finds them.
Resize before uploading. A photograph straight from a phone is several megabytes, which on a phone connection is paid for in seconds of waiting. Anything over about 300 KB on the page is several times larger than it needs to be.
Questions
Straight answers.
How many photographs do I need?
Two or three good ones per service beat a gallery of fifty. The gallery is for people already convinced; the two on the service page are for people deciding.
Should I hire a photographer?
Occasionally, for a set of hero images. For ongoing portfolio work, a phone and two minutes on site produces better results than a photographer who visits once a year, because the work is current.
What about video?
Useful when it shows something a photograph cannot — a process, a scale, a machine running. An autoplaying background video that delays the page is a cost with no return.
Check yours
The same test,
on your address.
We do not guess and we do not send a report by email. Type the address, wait ten seconds, read what comes back. If your site is fine it will say so.
Think yours needs
rebuilding?
Send us the address and what you do. We will look at what is there and tell you whether a rebuild is worth the money, or whether the problem is somewhere else entirely.