5 photos every tradesperson should have on their website

1. A real photo of you

Not a logo, not a clipart icon of a hard hat — an actual photo of you or your team, on site or in uniform. People hire people. A trades business with a real face on the homepage reads as more trustworthy than one hiding behind a stock image, before a visitor has read a single word.

2. Before and after, side by side

If your work has a visible result — a fitted kitchen, a rewired consumer unit, a landscaped garden — a genuine before/after pair does more convincing than any paragraph of copy. Shoot both from the same angle if you can; it makes the comparison obvious at a glance.

3. You mid-job, not posed

A candid shot of you actually working beats a stiff, posed portrait. It shows competence and effort, and it's usually the easiest photo to get — have someone snap a few frames on a phone while you're on site and pick the clearest one.

A visitor decides whether to trust your business in the time it takes your hero image to load — before they've read a word.

4. Your van or your kit, clearly branded

If your van has your logo and number on it, a clean photo of it does double duty: it looks professional, and it subtly proves you're a real, established local business, not a one-man operation working out of a car boot — even if you are just starting out.

5. A wide shot of a finished space

One clean, well-lit photo of a completed job — a whole room, not a close-up — gives visitors something to picture their own project looking like. This is usually the single most-clicked image on a trades website, so it's worth getting right.

Getting these without hiring a full shoot

You don't need all five in one session. Grab the "you working" and "van" shots yourself on a decent phone, in daylight, without flash. Save the before/after and finished-space shots for your next couple of jobs, and take five minutes at the end of each to shoot them properly. If a project is a good showcase, that's exactly the kind of job worth booking a proper photo (or drone) session for — which is where the photography side of a package earns its keep.