Photography for Business

Subjects Worth Photographing

• Your work Finished jobs, plated dishes, completed haircuts, products in use. Before and after pairs work well for trades and beauty services.
• Your people The owner and team at work, in natural poses. Customers are reassured to see who will show up or who they will meet.
• Your place The storefront, the waiting room, the kitchen, the van. This helps people recognize you when they arrive.
• Details Materials, tools, ingredients and finishing touches that show care and quality.
• Customers Real customers enjoying the result, with their written permission.

Phone or Professional

A recent smartphone is enough for most day-to-day social posts. A professional shoot pays off for images used for a long time, such as the website hero, team portraits, the Google Business Profile cover and ad creative. Many businesses book one or two professional shoots a year and fill the gaps with phone photos.

Getting Better Phone Photos

1. Shoot in soft natural light, near a window or outside in shade. Avoid harsh overhead light and flash.
2. Clean the lens.
3. Keep backgrounds simple and tidy.
4. Hold the phone level and take several shots from different angles.
5. Shoot vertically for Stories and Reels and leave space around the subject for cropping into other shapes.
6. Edit lightly and consistently, using the same brightness and warmth across posts.

Shapes for Each Place

Preparing Photos for Your Website

Large image files slow pages down, and slow pages lose visitors. Resize images to the largest size they will display and compress them before uploading. Google's image guidance recommends descriptive file names and alt text that explains what the image shows, such as kitchen-remodel-quartz-island-austin.jpg with alt text "Remodeled kitchen with white quartz island." This helps people using screen readers and helps images appear in Google search.

Rights and Permissions

Get written permission from customers or staff before using their image in marketing, and keep a record. When you hire a photographer, agree in writing where and how long you may use the photos, including in ads.

In Practice

Consider a roofing company whose website uses stock photos of smiling families. After a half-day shoot covering the crew on a real job, drone shots of finished roofs and a team portrait, the same images appear on the website, the Google Business Profile and in Facebook ads, giving customers the same recognizable faces everywhere.

Key Terms

Stock photo

A licensed generic image not taken of your business.

Aspect ratio

The width-to-height shape of an image.

Alt text

A written description of an image used by screen readers and search engines.

Compression

Reducing an image's file size for faster loading.

Usage rights

The agreed terms for where and how long a photo may be used.

Sources

1. Photos as Web Content, Nielsen Norman Group www.nngroup.com
2. Google image SEO best practices, Google Search Central developers.google.com
3. Google Business Profile Help support.google.com

Last reviewed October 6, 2026. Platforms change often, so confirm details in the sources above before acting on them. This guide is general information and is not marketing advice for your business.