Photography Checklist
Many businesses prefer to supply their own photos rather than hiring a professional photographer. While we always recommend using a professional for the best results, following these guidelines will help ensure your images look sharp, consistent, and ready for web use — allowing our design team to create a clean, polished website that truly reflects your brand.
- Image Quality: Use at least 12 MP with low compression to avoid artifacts. 20 MP RAW is preferred when possible.
- Keep It Simple: Avoid creative angles, filters, or effects — we will handle all edits and color work.
- Staging: Remove obvious distractions like sticky notes, garbage bins, loose papers, and cluttered dashboards.
- No Photoshop: Do not edit or apply heavy filters to photos yourself; we will retouch to preserve image quality.
- Shoot Generously: Take lots of shots and small variations (different poses, expressions, angles). We can choose the best frames and composite if needed.
- Staff Presentation: Ask people to wear brand-appropriate colours, keep clothing neat, hair tidy, and avoid sunglasses.
- Backgrounds: Use simple, uncluttered backgrounds. Avoid busy trees, glass buildings, or reflective surfaces that distract when compressed.
- Cutouts & Reflections: If a vehicle will be cut out, capture the entire vehicle in-frame and avoid messy reflections. See example on Cascade Carriers. Notice the clean green pasture reflected in the tanker — now imagine if it were a parking lot instead. Not as nice.
- Composition & Orientation: Prefer landscape orientation for banners and hero images. Follow the rule of thirds and leave extra space around the subject so important details are not cropped on smaller screens. Portraits are fine for bios or print but limit web layout flexibility.
- Focus, Lighting & Settings: Ensure sharp focus and even lighting with soft shadows. Use reflectors or whiteboards to bounce light. For camera settings, use low ISO, a wide aperture, a tripod for stability, and enable HDR if available.
- File Naming: Use clear, descriptive file names such as company-location-truck-01.jpg to make assets easy to identify.
- Licensing & Permissions: Confirm everyone pictured has agreed to be featured and that you have the right to use location, vehicle, or branded assets publicly.
- File Delivery: Provide original, uncompressed images (JPG or RAW). Do not embed photos in Word or PowerPoint files, as that reduces quality.
