Project photos that sell the next job

Getting found 6 min read

How to photograph a job while you are doing it so the set is worth something afterwards, including the shots nobody takes and the captions that do the work.

The job finishes on a Friday. It came out well, the customer is happy, and at some point over the weekend it occurs to you that nobody photographed any of it. What there is on the phone is four pictures of the finished kitchen taken with the lights off and one of a van.

The next homeowner deciding between you and two other quotes will never see the work you just did. They will see whatever you happened to photograph, which is why the photographing has to happen while the job is in front of you, in a routine you do not have to think about.

Before is the half you cannot go back for

The finished photograph is the easy one. Everyone takes it, everyone has it, and on its own it proves nothing, because a homeowner has no idea what was there before.

So the rule is: nothing gets touched until there are photographs of the room as you found it. Five minutes on day one, from three or four positions, lights on, including the bits you find embarrassing. Skip them and you end up standing in a finished room where the change you made is invisible.

Photograph what is about to be covered up

The most valuable picture on a construction job is of something that will be inside a wall by Thursday.

The joist you sistered. The membrane you laid properly. The pipework run neatly instead of the way it would have gone if nobody was going to see it. The old wiring you found and dealt with. All of that is the difference between your quote and the cheap one, and all of it becomes unprovable the moment the drywall goes on.

Take those photographs for two reasons. One is that they are the argument for your price. The other is that six months later, when somebody asks what is behind that wall, you can answer.

Photograph the protection, not just the product

Ask a homeowner what they are worried about and it is almost never the finish. It is dust in the rest of the house, a scratched floor, a driveway full of offcuts, and strangers coming in and out of the front door for three weeks.

So photograph the floor protection going down. The plastic wall at the end of the hallway. The tools stacked at the end of the day. The drive swept before you leave on Friday. These are dull photographs and they answer the question that actually decides the job, which is what living with you is like. This is the part a written quote cannot show, and it is the part almost nobody photographs.

Show scale, or nobody knows what they are looking at

A close-up of good work is unreadable to someone who does not do your trade. A deck, photographed tight, could be four feet across or forty.

Get something familiar in the frame. A door, a chair, a person standing in it. For detail shots, a tape measure or your own hand. It feels like it spoils the picture and it is the difference between a photograph somebody understands and one they scroll past.

The line underneath does the selling

A photograph on its own asks the viewer to work out why it is there. One sentence underneath tells them.

Not "kitchen remodel, Castle Rock". Something like: the floor under this sink had been wet for years, so the units came out and the subfloor was replaced before anything new went in. That is a caption a person reads and thinks about their own house. Write it the same week, while you still remember, because in a year you will not.

Name them the same day or lose them

Most contractors who cannot find their good photographs did take them. They are somewhere in eleven thousand pictures between a screenshot of a parts list and a photo of a parking space.

Make an album per job on the phone, named for the street, on day one. Move the day's photographs into it while you are sitting in the van. That is the whole system and it takes a minute. Every more sophisticated version of this fails because it requires a laptop and an evening, and you do not have an evening.

Ask once, in writing, at the quote stage

Put a line in the quote saying you photograph your work and may use the photographs, that no address or family details appear, and that they can say no. Almost nobody says no when they are asked at the start.

Asking at the end is harder, because by then you are asking a favor instead of stating how you work. The wider question of what to publish and what to leave alone is covered in the piece on photographs for a local business.

Six photographs of one job beat sixty of nine

A gallery is a pile. People scroll it for four seconds and leave with nothing they could describe.

A job page is one project told in order: what it was, what was found, what was done, what it looks like now. Six or eight photographs with a line under each. Two or three of those pages will do more than a hundred loose images, because a homeowner reading one of them is being shown a whole job going well from start to finish, which is exactly the thing they are trying to buy and cannot get from a quote.

A short checklist

• Before photographs on day one, from three or four positions, before anything moves
• The work that is about to be hidden, photographed before it is covered
• Floor protection, dust barriers and the swept drive at the end of the week
• Something in the frame for scale on every wide shot
• One sentence written under each photograph the same week
• An album per job on the phone, named on the first day
• A permission line in the quote, not a favor asked at the end
• Two or three job pages, in order, instead of one long gallery

Questions people ask

Is a phone camera good enough

Yes, for all of this. Daylight, lights on inside, wipe the lens, hold still. The only equipment problem worth solving is that nobody can see anything in a dark room, and turning the lights on solves it.

How many photographs should I take on a job

More than you will use, then throw most away. A dozen a day costs you nothing and the useful ones are usually the ones you almost did not take.

Should I show a job that went wrong

You can show a problem you found and fixed, which is one of the strongest things you can put on a page. Showing somebody else's failed work is a different thing, and it reads as picking a fight even when you are right.

What about the customer's privacy

Keep the street number, the letters on the post, the family photographs and the cars out of the frame. Ask at the quote stage and honor a no without asking again.

Where should the photographs live

Somewhere you control. If they only exist on a site or an account somebody else set up in your name, you can lose the lot without warning, which is why knowing who owns your website matters.

Do I need someone to keep adding these for me

Not if you can add them yourself, and any site built for a contractor should let you. If you would rather hand it over, Website Care is $149 a month, and it is entirely reasonable to do it yourself instead.