Visitors read your photos before they read your words. A page with sharp, consistent, real imagery feels credible; a page of mismatched stock photos feels generic no matter how good the copy is. Photography is worth planning, not improvising.
Decide what the photos need to do
Before booking anything, list the specific shots the site needs: the team, the space, the product in use, the process, details that show quality. Each one should have a job — proving something, setting a tone, replacing a paragraph of description.
Consistency is what makes it feel professional
A set of photos taken in one style — same lighting approach, same treatment, same crop logic — reads as a considered brand. Ten good photos in ten different styles reads as a collage. If you shoot over time, keep a reference so new photos match.
Practical planning
- Shoot list with priorities, so the important shots happen even if time runs short.
- Both orientations and some loose framing, so images work in different layouts later.
- Real people and real spaces where possible — audiences recognise staged corporate photography instantly.
- Enough resolution for retina screens, but plan to export optimised versions for the web.
When stock photography is fine
For conceptual or background imagery where authenticity is not the point, good stock is a reasonable choice. It stops working when it is doing a job only a real photo can do — showing your actual team, product or results. A stock photo of "a happy team" on an About page usually undermines trust rather than building it.
After the shoot
Cull hard, edit consistently, and export web versions properly sized and compressed. A 4 MB hero image is a performance problem regardless of how good it looks. Descriptive filenames and alt text help image search.
In short
Plan the shots around what they must prove, keep the style consistent, and optimise for the web. We art-direct and produce this as part of content work — see how it looks across projects, or tell us what your site needs to show.