Photography on a Small Budget

Nothing lifts a small business site like honest photography, and nothing drags one down like obvious stock images. The good news is that a modern phone and a few habits get you most of the way there.

Light is the whole game

Shoot near a window, in the morning or late afternoon, and turn the overhead lights off. Soft, side-on daylight flatters food, products and people alike. Avoid the on-camera flash entirely.

A short shot list

• The front of your premises, from across the street
• You and your team at work, not posed in a row
• Close-ups of the thing you make or do
• One or two photos that show your customers using it, with permission

Before you upload

Crop to a consistent shape, keep the long edge under 2000 pixels, and run each file through a compression tool. We handle resizing and modern formats automatically on our builds, but a tidy original makes everything downstream better.

People do not need perfect photos. They need real ones.