The photography your website needs

A business website needs three kinds of photography at minimum: a strong hero image, team or leadership portraits, and a handful of workplace or environmental shots that prove the business is real. Most sites are still running on stock photography years after launch, and it shows the moment a visitor compares your team page to a competitor who bothered to book a shoot.

Stock photography isn't the problem people assume it is. It's competent, it's cheap, and it fills a gap. The problem is that everyone's stock library overlaps with everyone else's, so the same handshake photo and the same open-plan office turn up on a dozen unrelated sites in the same industry. A visitor might not consciously clock it, but they've seen that image before, on a business that has nothing to do with yours, and it quietly costs you credibility you never see the loss of.

The hero image

The hero image is the first thing a visitor sees, and it sets the tone for everything after it. It should show your actual business: your team, your site, your product, your workspace, not a generic image of hands on a laptop that could belong to any company on earth. A hero shot doesn't need to be elaborate. A well-lit environmental portrait of a founder or a clean shot of the work itself usually outperforms an attempt at something cinematic that doesn't fit the rest of the site.

Team and leadership portraits

Every page that names a person needs a face to go with it: an about page, a leadership bio, a contact page, a case study author. A set of consistent portraits, same lighting, same background, same crop, tells a visitor you're organised before they've read a word of copy. Mismatched headshots, some professional, some cropped from a phone photo at a conference, do the opposite. We cover how to run that consistently across a team in our guide to team headshots that match.

Workplace and environmental shots

A handful of images showing the actual place you work, the office, the workshop, the site, does more to build trust than any amount of copy claiming you're established and professional. These don't need to be a full architectural shoot. Three or four well-composed frames of real spaces, ideally with real people in them doing real work rather than posed and looking at the camera, cover most of what a website needs.

Product or service images

If what you sell is physical, tangible, or has a visible output, photograph it properly. A construction business benefits from finished-site photography as much as a product company benefits from clean shots of what it makes. If the work itself is the proof, don't make a visitor imagine it from a description.

How many images is enough

For a typical business website, a half-day session covers most of it: a small set of headshots for the team, three to five environmental or workplace shots, and a hero image or two. A personal-branding session, aimed at a founder or an executive building a visible profile rather than a whole team, usually runs from $2,000 ex GST and delivers a wider library that covers more than a website alone. Our guide on personal branding photography goes into what that library includes and how it's used.

Retouched individual images run $110 ex GST each on top of a $350 ex GST creative fee that covers the session and setup, so most clients choose a package with a set number of images rather than paying per photo. Files come back web-optimised for the site alongside high-resolution versions for anything printed later, usually within five to seven business days.

What to prioritise if budget is tight

If you can only book one session, put it into leadership and team portraits first, because those pages get the most scrutiny from prospects, candidates and journalists. Environmental and workplace shots come second. Hero imagery can often be built from strong frames captured during either of those two sessions rather than needing a separate shoot of its own.

The site is never finished

Photography ages faster than copy does. A team page with three departed staff and two new hires missing looks worse than no team page at all, and a workplace shot of an office you moved out of two years ago undercuts everything else on the site. Treat photography as part of the site's ongoing upkeep, not a one-off task ticked off at launch. Our guide on how often to refresh your business photography covers the signals that tell you it's time.

Ready to plan a session around what your website needs? Our photography page covers the options and pricing, or get in touch and we'll scope it to your site.