Contractor Website Photos: A Shot List for Your Phone

Published September 25, 2026 · Curbside Websites

What photos should a contractor put on their website?

Five kinds, in this order of value:

1. Finished work. The job done, shot wide enough that someone can tell what it is.
2. Before and after pairs. Same angle, same framing. This is the single most persuasive thing you can put on a page.
3. You and your crew. Faces, branded shirts, standing in front of the truck. People hire people.
4. Your truck or van. Especially if it's wrapped or lettered. It proves you're a real outfit.
5. In-progress shots. Trenching, rough-in, prepped surfaces. These show care and competence to anyone who knows what they're looking at.

That's it. Everything else is optional.

Do stock photos hurt a contractor website?

Yes. Not because they look bad, but because they look like everyone else. The smiling model in a hard hat with perfect teeth is on four hundred other plumbing sites. Homeowners have seen it. It reads as "this company didn't have any photos of their own work."

Here's the part people miss: stock photos also cost you the local signal. A photo of a finished paver patio with a New England stone wall behind it tells a homeowner in Medford that you work on houses like theirs. A generic patio from a photo library tells them nothing.

If you only have three real photos, use three real photos. Three beats thirty fakes.

What's the minimum photo shot list for a job?

Run this on every job and you'll have more contractor website photos than you can use inside a month.

• One wide "before" from the doorway or the curb, before you touch anything.
• One or two in-progress shots when the work looks most impressive.
• One wide "after" from the exact same spot as the before.
• One detail "after" of the part you're proud of. The clean solder joint. The tight miter. The edge of the lawn.
• One truck or crew shot if it's a good-looking site.

Five photos. Two minutes total. The discipline is standing in the same spot for the before and after, because a matched pair is worth ten mismatched ones.

How do you take decent job photos with a phone?

You don't need a camera. You need light and a clean frame.

• Turn on every light in the room and open the blinds. Interior shots die in dim light.
• Back up. Most contractor photos are too close. Step back until the whole fixture, wall, or bed is in frame with some room around it.
• Hold the phone level. Crooked horizons make good work look sloppy.
• Clear the frame. Move the drop cloth, the coffee cup, the pile of scrap, the extension cord. Ten seconds of tidying doubles the quality of the shot.
• Shoot in the morning or late afternoon outside. Harsh noon sun blows out roofs and siding.
• Take three of each. Storage is free. You'll pick the best one later.

One more: shoot landscape (sideways) for most website use. Vertical photos are great for phones and terrible for the wide banner spots on a website.

What photos should you leave off?

This is where most sites go wrong.

• House numbers and street signs. Crop them out. You're publishing a customer's address otherwise.
• License plates. Yours or anyone's.
• Customers and their kids. Unless you asked and they said yes, out loud.
• Anything inside a personal space. Family photos on the wall, medication on the counter, mail on the table. Check the background before you post.
• Dark, blurry, or confusing close-ups. If a homeowner can't tell what they're looking at, it's not helping.
• Unfinished-looking "afters." Tools still on the floor, tape still on the trim. It reads as sloppy even if the work is perfect.
• Selfies in sunglasses. Nobody trusts a face they can't see.

How many photos does a contractor website need?

Fewer than you'd guess. A strong site runs on maybe 15 to 25 good photos total. A homepage might use five or six. Each service page needs two or three that match that specific service. A gallery page with 12 excellent shots beats one with 80 mediocre ones, because nobody scrolls 80 photos and the weak ones drag down your best work.

Cut ruthlessly. If a photo is your seventh-best water heater install, it doesn't belong.

Where should the photos actually go?

Match the photo to the page. That sounds obvious and almost nobody does it.

• Homepage: your best overall finished-work shot near the top, plus a crew or truck photo further down.
• Service pages: only photos of that service. Your drain cleaning page should not show a bathroom remodel.
• About page: the people. This is the one place a slightly imperfect, human photo works better than a polished one.
• Gallery or recent work: your before-and-after pairs, grouped by job.

If you can, add a one-line caption under each job: what it was, which town. "Sump pump replacement, Arlington." That caption does quiet work for local search and answers the homeowner's real question, which is whether you work near them.

Will big photos slow your site down?

They can, and it matters. A phone photo straight off the camera can be five or ten megabytes. Twenty of those on one page and your site crawls on a cell connection, which is where most of your customers are.

Any decent site setup compresses and resizes images automatically. If yours doesn't, run photos through a free compressor before uploading, or ask whoever manages your site whether image optimization is turned on. It's a one-time fix.

How do you actually get your crew to take photos?

Make it part of closing out the job, not a favor. Same as cleaning up the site.

Create one shared album or group chat. Every tech drops their five shots in at the end of the day. Once a month, someone spends twenty minutes picking the best ones and swapping out the weakest photos on the site. That's the whole system.

The landscaper booked through July isn't booked because of great photography. But when two quotes land in the same inbox, the one with real pictures of real yards in the same zip code is the one that gets the call back.

Common Questions

Should I hire a photographer for my contractor website?

Usually no. Phone photos of real jobs work fine and look more honest. The one case worth paying for is a single crew and truck photo, which is hard to take yourself and gets used everywhere from your website to your Google Business Profile.

Do I need permission to post photos of a customer's house?

Legally it varies, but practically you should ask, and always crop out house numbers, street signs, and anything identifying. A quick "mind if I take a few photos for our website?" at the end of the job almost always gets a yes.

Can I use the same photos on my website and Google Business Profile?

Yes, and you should. Google Business Profile photos help you show up and get chosen in local results, so post your best job shots in both places. Add new ones to your profile regularly since fresh photos signal an active business.

What if my work is inside walls and nobody can see it?

Shoot the in-progress work anyway, then pair it with the finished result. A clean rough-in photo next to a finished wall tells a homeowner what they're paying for, and it separates you from whoever did the job badly last time.

How often should I update the photos on my website?

A quick swap every few months is plenty. Replace your weakest photos with better ones as you shoot them rather than piling on more, and refresh seasonal images so a landscaping page isn't showing snow in June.