What Photos Does Your Business Actually Need?
A Practical Photography Checklist
When a business books a photography shoot, it is easy to focus on the obvious things: a few headshots, a team photograph and perhaps some pictures of the office.
But a useful business image library needs to do more than that.
Your photographs may end up on your website, LinkedIn, social media, brochures, presentations and marketing material.
So, what photographs does your business actually need?
1. Professional headshots
Headshots are an essential part of most business photography.
They can be used for your website, LinkedIn, staff profiles, proposals and company communications. Consistent headshots also make a team look more professional and give clients a chance to put faces to names.
There is one practical point worth considering when photographing your team: people change.
Staff leave and new people join. Setting up your headshots in a way that can be repeated means a new employee can be photographed later and still look consistent with the rest of the team.
That might mean keeping the same background, lighting and overall style rather than reinventing the look every time.
A good headshot setup should work for your business now — and six months or two years from now.
2. People at work
Photographs of your team doing what they actually do can tell potential clients far more about your business than a row of posed portraits.
Show meetings, conversations, making, designing, advising, building or whatever your business does best.
And not every photograph needs to show someone’s face.
Hands working, equipment being used, a customer interaction, a desk covered in plans or a close-up of part of a process can all tell the story of a business.
This is also worth considering from a practical point of view. Staff come and go, but photographs that focus on the work itself can remain useful for much longer.
3. Your premises
Your workplace is part of your business story.
A few strong photographs of the exterior, reception, workspace, showroom, studio or workshop can help visitors understand your business before they ever meet you.
You do not need photographs of every room. Concentrate on the spaces that are visually interesting, useful or relevant to what you do.
These images can work particularly well on your About page, website banners and company profiles.
4. Your products
If you sell physical products, product photography is likely to form an important part of your image library.
You may need clean, consistent product photographs for your website or online store, as well as more contextual images showing products in use.
The important thing is to decide how the photographs will be used before the shoot. Ecommerce images, advertising images and lifestyle photographs all serve slightly different purposes.
5. Branding details
Some of your most useful images may be the smallest ones.
Think about signage, packaging, branded stationery, equipment, materials, interiors or other details that are recognisably yours.
These photographs make excellent supporting images for websites, social media and marketing material. They also help your content feel like it belongs to your business rather than looking like it came from a stock-photo library.
6. Events
If your business hosts or attends events, it is worth building a collection of event photographs that goes beyond the obvious stage shot.
Speakers, guests, conversations, branding, venue details and those small moments that show the atmosphere can all be useful afterwards.
Event photographs can continue working for you long after the event has finished, appearing on social media, your website, newsletters and future event promotions.
7. A few versatile images
Finally, think about the photographs you might need later.
A small collection of flexible images can be surprisingly useful: people walking through the office, a meeting in progress, hands working, a wide view of your workspace or a detail of your product or equipment.
These are the photographs you can use when you need an image for a LinkedIn post, a blog article or a presentation — without having to use the same headshot for the fifteenth time.
We have all been there.
Building a useful business image library
You do not need hundreds of photographs.
For many businesses, a practical photography library might include:
- People: Headshots, team photographs and people at work
- Place: Exterior, interior and key areas of the business
- Products: Clean product images and selected lifestyle photographs
- Brand: Signage, packaging and useful details
- Events: People, atmosphere and important moments
- Supporting images: A handful of versatile photographs for ongoing marketing
Your needs will depend on your business. A professional services company will need a different mix from a manufacturer, retailer or hospitality business.
The aim is simply to have photographs that show who you are, what you do and how your business works.
Before your next shoot, look at the images you already have and ask:
- Do our photographs show our people?
- Do they show what we actually do?
- Do we have images of our workplace, products and brand?
- Can we use them across our website and marketing?
- And can the setup be repeated when our team changes?
If the answer is no to several of these, it may be time to update your business photography.
A well-planned shoot can give you a useful library of images that keeps working across your website, social media and marketing — rather than simply giving you a folder full of photographs that looked good on the day.
At Emil Bosch Photography, we work with Cape Town businesses to create practical, professional photography that can be used across the different ways your business communicates.