Imagery for a business with nothing to photograph, solved

Aug 29
3 min read

Updated: 6 days ago

Introduction

An accountancy practice, a consultancy, a software company. The work happens in spreadsheets, conversations and code, and there is nothing visually interesting to point a camera at.

So the site fills with stock photographs of handshakes, glass buildings and people laughing at laptops. These say nothing, appear on hundreds of competitors' sites, and quietly signal that the business had nothing of its own to show. The alternatives are both more effective and, in most cases, cheaper than the stock library subscription being paid for now.

1. Imagery for a business with nothing to photograph starts with the people

The most available subject.

Your team is photographable, and photographs of actual people outperform any stock image. Even modest portraits, taken on a decent phone in consistent light, do more for credibility than a professionally shot photograph of somebody who does not work there.

2. Photograph the work even when it looks ordinary

There is more than people assume.

A meeting, a whiteboard, a screen being explained, notes, a site visit. Ordinary images of your actual work are interesting precisely because they are yours, not because the subject matter is exciting. Authenticity is doing the work, not composition.

3. Use diagrams instead of decoration

Frequently the best answer.

A simple diagram of your process, a comparison, or the structure of a problem communicates and occupies the same space. Readers spend real time on these and frequently return to them, which is more than any decorative photograph has ever achieved.

4. Show the output

The thing you actually produce.

A page of a report, an anonymised dashboard, a screenshot of the software, a sample deliverable with the client details removed. This answers the question every prospective customer has about what they will actually receive, which no photograph of a handshake has ever come close to doing. This answers the question people have about what they will receive, which no photograph of a handshake does.

5. Use numbers and results as visual elements

Typography counts as imagery.

A figure set large, a short quotation, a before-and-after comparison. These break up a page visually and carry information at the same time, which is what the image slot was supposed to be doing in the first place.

6. Commission illustration if the budget allows

Distinctive and reusable.

A consistent illustration style gives a professional services business a visual identity nothing else provides, and the assets are reusable across the site, proposals and presentations.

7. If you must use stock, choose carefully

Rules for the unavoidable cases.

Avoid the obvious ones, prefer images that could plausibly be your own environment, edit them to a consistent treatment, and never use anything with visible artificial enthusiasm. Consistency of treatment across the site does considerably more than the individual quality of any one image.

8. Leave space rather than filling it

An option people forget.

A clean page with generous space and good typography reads as more considered than one padded with irrelevant photographs. No image at all is better than a meaningless one, and it loads faster into the bargain.

9. Sort out the licensing

An administrative detail with real consequences.

Keep records of where every image came from and what the licence permits. Claims over improperly licensed images are common and expensive, and they invariably arrive years later, at a point where nobody can remember who added the file or where it came from.

Build a small library as you go rather than commissioning everything at once. A few photographs after each project, a diagram whenever you explain something twice, and within a year the site has imagery that belongs to it.

Conclusion

Recognise that generic stock photography is the weakest available option, not the default one.

Photograph your own people, capture ordinary working moments because they are yours, use diagrams that communicate rather than decorate, show the output the customer actually receives, treat figures and quotations as visual elements, consider commissioned illustration for a distinctive identity, apply strict rules if stock is unavoidable, leave space rather than filling it with something meaningless, keep licence records, and build the library gradually.