Design, typography and structure are what we control. Photography is a major part of the material the design works with.
Why stock photography reads as cheap
Because the reader has seen it. A recognisable stock scene says little about the actual practice. Real people and premises give the reader information a generic image cannot.
There is one more problem specific to professional practices. A photograph of people who are not your people is a small dishonesty at the exact moment you are asking for trust.
What to photograph
Your actual people
Start with the people a client will deal with. Individual portraits, consistent lighting and background, shot the same day so they look like a set. Approachable rather than corporate, and not against a white wall from the front like a passport photo.
Your actual premises
Reception, the waiting area, the outside of the building including enough context that someone can recognise it when they arrive. This does practical work as well as visual work.
Your actual work, where it is the product
Essential for architects and construction. For a dental or aesthetic practice, be careful, because patient imagery brings both consent and professional advertising considerations into play.
Getting it done without a large budget
A competent local photographer for a half day will usually cover portraits and premises, and that set will serve you for years. A defined shot list makes the session easier to scope.
If that is genuinely not possible, a recent phone camera can do a decent job in good light. Shoot near a large window with the light coming from the side, not from behind the subject. Shoot in landscape for wide areas and portrait for people. Take many more frames than you need. Do not use the beauty filter.
What to avoid regardless of budget: direct flash, mixed lighting from a window and fluorescent tubes together, cluttered backgrounds, and anything shot on a phone from below.
The technical part is ours
Once you hand over images, sizing, cropping, format conversion and delivery are our problem. A 6MB photograph should never reach a visitor's phone at 6MB, and on a properly built site it does not.
Send us the largest original files you have and let us handle the rest. Send original image files where possible. Messaging apps can compress photographs, reducing the options for cropping and large displays.
If you only do one thing
Get proper portraits of your people. On a professional practice website, faces do more work than anything else on the page.
Next step: request a free Website Check, or see Baken’s website scope and pricing.