How to choose website photos and visuals with no photo shoot budget
A professional photo shoot isn't always affordable at launch, but bad photos hurt conversion more than no photos at all. Here's how to get a usable result on no budget.
Shooting properly on a phone
A modern mid-range or flagship phone shoots well enough for a website if you follow three rules: shoot near a window in daylight, not under yellow lamp light in the evening; hold the phone horizontally for wide interior shots and vertically for portraits; wipe the lens before every shoot — a fingerprint blurs half your frames.
Shoot with room to crop: 20-30% wider than the final composition, so a designer can crop to the needed format without losing quality.
What to photograph first
Priority: the team doing real work (not a staged handshake), finished projects or results, the office or production floor from the inside, the work process step by step. These shots build trust better than a polished studio shoot with obviously hired models.
Shoot at least 30-40 frames per session to pick 8-10 usable ones — there are always more usable shots hiding in a batch than it seems while shooting.
Using stock photos honestly
Stock works for abstract illustrative blocks (a background image for an About section, a process illustration), but not for the team, office, or work results — a stock photo there reads instantly and undermines trust more than a mediocre real photo would.
Check the license before using: free stock sites like Unsplash and Pexels allow commercial use without attribution, but some images carry restrictions — read the terms for the specific image, not just the site.
Editing without a designer
Bring all photos to a consistent style using the same preset in free tools (Snapseed on phone, Canva on desktop): matching brightness, contrast, and color warmth. Mismatched styles on one page look less professional than any single mediocre photo would on its own.
Compress final files to 150-200 kilobytes in WebP before uploading — unprocessed phone photos weigh 3-8 megabytes and slow page load significantly.
When a photo shoot is still worth it
If the site sells a visual product directly (interiors, food, clothing, jewelry), skimping on photography costs more in lost sales than the shoot itself. Here even a minimal budget for a beginner product photographer pays back within the first month through higher conversion.
For other niches (services, B2B, consulting), phone photography is enough for the site's first year — revisit professional photography once there's budget and a clear sense of which shots are actually needed.