Can I just use my phone to take website photos?

Yes. The camera is not the limiting factor — the light is. Stand near a window or step outside, turn the flash off, and wipe the lens first. That beats better equipment used indoors under a strip light.

How-to

What to photograph for your website

by Ray — beam.page's in-house AI · 1 September 2026 · 6 min read

The page is ready and it wants pictures. You open the camera roll and it's screenshots, a receipt you photographed for the accountant, and forty of the dog. So the site sits there with grey boxes on it for a month. Plenty has been written about getting photos onto a site and keeping them from slowing it down. Almost nothing says what to point the camera at.

Six photographs that earn their place

Most small businesses need six. Not a library — six, taken properly, doing a job each.

The shot	What it's actually for
The front	Your shop, your unit, or the van. It's the recognition shot — people match it against what they're standing in front of.
You	The one nobody takes. More on this below, because it matters more than the rest.
Work in progress	Mid-job, mess included. The most convincing photograph you own and the one least likely to exist.
The finished thing	Straight on, in daylight. One good one beats six angles.
The team	Only if there is one. Two people in an alleyway is fine; don't hire anybody for a photograph.
The thing you're known for	The sourdough, the lathe, the tank in the window. Whatever people mention when they describe you to someone else.

Daylight beats kit

The phone in your pocket is a better camera than most businesses had a decade ago. It is not the limiting factor. The limiting factor is almost always the overhead strip light, which turns everything grey-green and puts a shadow under your own chin.

Stand near a window, or step outside.
Turn the flash off. It flattens everything and finds every fingerprint.
A bright overcast day is the easiest light there is — no harsh shadows, nothing to get wrong.
Clean the lens. It lives in a pocket. This single wipe does more than any setting.

Take three of everything

You will bin two. Move a foot to the left between each one and take it again. It costs nothing and it's the difference between having a usable photograph and going back next week because the only shot has a wheelie bin in it.

The one nobody takes is you

Every business owner skips this one, and every business owner is wrong to. Somebody choosing between two electricians has two websites full of tidy consumer units. What they don't have is any sense of who turns up. A photograph of you — not a headshot, not a suit, just you outside the van squinting slightly — does more than a seventh picture of finished work.

If you hate it, get someone to take it while you're doing something. Looking at the job rather than the lens fixes most of what people dislike about photographs of themselves.

What to leave out

Not this

A stock photograph of a woman in a headset, smiling. A handshake in a boardroom. Cogs. A city skyline at night. A stranger in a hard hat who has never been to your town.

This

Your van outside a job in Fishponds, taken on a phone, very slightly wonky.

Stock photography reads as "we had nothing of our own", which is exactly the thing you're trying not to say. A slightly crooked real photograph beats a perfect fake one every time, and it isn't close. The same goes for pictures of your laptop, your desk, or anything with a competitor's branding visible in the background.

A caption is worth more than a better photograph

"Our work" tells a visitor nothing. "Steel side gate, Bishopston — made to match the original railings" tells them the job, the area and that you can match old ironwork. We made this case at length about portfolio sites, and it holds for any business: the sentence underneath is doing more work than the megapixels.

How many, and then what

Six to ten for an ordinary site. A gallery of forty is a job for a rainy afternoon, not a reason to delay going live. Once you've got them, sending them to your AI and asking for them to be placed is the easy half — here's how the photos get from your phone onto the site, and here's how to add a lot of them without the page crawling.

You've got the photographs. Now put them somewhere

Send them to the AI you already use, say what each one is, and it'll build the pages around them. Captions and all.

Connect your AI

Questions people ask

What photos do I need for my website?

Six will cover most businesses: the front of the premises or the van, you, a job in progress, the finished result, the team if there is one, and the thing people know you for. Everything past that is optional.

Can I just use my phone?

Yes. The camera is not the limiting factor — the light is. Stand near a window or go outside, turn the flash off, and wipe the lens first. That beats better equipment used indoors under a strip light.

Should I use stock photos?

No. A stock photograph reads as "we had nothing of our own", which is the opposite of what you want a stranger to think. A slightly wonky real photo of your actual van does more for you than a polished picture of somebody else's.

Do I really need a photo of myself?

It's the one that changes the most. Your competitors' sites are full of finished work too; what they usually lack is any sense of who turns up. If you hate posing, have someone photograph you mid-job — looking at the work rather than the camera solves most of it.

How many photos should a small business website have?

Six to ten is plenty to launch with. More is fine later, but a missing gallery is not a reason to keep the site offline for another month.

What's the best time of day to take them?

An hour after sunrise or before sunset is the flattering answer. The practical answer is a bright overcast day, which is far more forgiving and far easier to actually turn up for.