How to photograph your own work with a phone

Take the before shot before you start

This is the one everybody forgets, and without it the after shot means nothing. It takes ten seconds and it doubles the value of every job you photograph.

Stand where you will stand for the after shot and take it from there. Matching angles is what makes the pair persuasive.

The four rules

Same position, same height, same framing, similar light. A before-and-after taken from different angles reads as two unrelated pictures and convinces nobody.

Beyond that: keep the sun behind you, avoid the middle of a bright day if you can, and take more than you need. Five shots of the same thing gives you one good one.

• —Before shot from the exact spot you will use afterwards
• —Hold the phone level, not tilted down
• —Sun behind you, not behind the subject
• —Tidy the frame — move the van, the tools, the wheelie bin
• —Take five, keep one
• —Landscape for a website, upright for social

Tidy the frame first

A finished bathroom photographed with a toolbox in shot looks like an unfinished bathroom. Thirty seconds of moving things out of frame is the highest-return half minute in this whole process.

The same applies outdoors: move the van, coil the hose, close the gate.

What to photograph besides the finished job

Work in progress, which proves the job is real. The team on site, which makes the business human. Details and joins, which is where quality is actually visible to somebody who knows.

And the street or the house from a distance, because recognition is what makes local advertising work.

Build the habit, not the archive

The goal is not one photoshoot. It is two minutes on every job, forever, which after six months gives you more usable material than any agency could produce.

Put the phone somewhere you will see it before you pack up. That is genuinely the whole system.