The people
Proper portraits of the team, taken somewhere that looks like where you work. Not a grey backdrop, not a phone snap in the car park.
Photography
Your business, photographed properly.
The fastest way to make a good website look cheap is stock photography. Real pictures of your actual business, your actual team and your actual work will do more for how you are perceived than another round of design.
Why it matters
Everyone can spot a stock photo.
The handshake in the boardroom. The headset. The team of models laughing at a laptop. Visitors have seen them a thousand times, and what they read into them is that the business either had nothing real worth showing or could not be bothered.
Honestly, the single biggest visible difference between a £3k website and a £10k one is usually not the design. It is that one of them has proper photography and the other has a stock library subscription.
Trust
Real faces do the workPeople buy from people. A picture of the person who will actually turn up beats any amount of copy about your values.
Proof
Your work is the argumentFor trades, makers and venues, a photograph of the finished job is the most persuasive thing you own.
Reuse
One shoot, used everywhereWebsite, social, print, ads, tenders. A good set of photographs keeps paying out for years.
The photographer
We don’t hand this to a stock library.
Our photography is shot by Andy Gallacher, an award-winning advertising photographer who spends most of his year on national campaigns. He is also, full disclosure, Al’s dad, which is the honest answer to why a web studio has a photographer this good on hand.
These are Andy’s own photographs, from his personal portfolio. They are not work commissioned by Web Butler, and the people in them are not our clients. They are here to show you the standard of the photography you would be getting.
What we shoot
The five that earn their keep.
Most businesses need a shorter list than they expect. These are the ones that actually get used.
The place
Your premises, workshop, showroom or yard, shot so it looks like somewhere a customer would happily walk into.
The work
The finished job, and the making of it. For trades and makers this is the single most persuasive set of pictures you can own.
The product
Clean, consistent product shots that hold up next to a national retailer’s, because that is who you are being compared against.
The day
Events, launches and open days, covered properly so you have a year of content instead of a blurry phone album.
The extras
Drone, video stills, headshots for LinkedIn. Usually cheaper to add on the day than to book as a second visit.
How it works
Usually a single day, planned properly.
The difference between a good shoot and an expensive one is almost entirely in what happens before the camera comes out.
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01
We work out the shot list first
Driven by what the website actually needs: this many people, this many spaces, this many jobs. It stops you paying for a day of pictures you never use.
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02
You get a prep list
What to tidy, who needs to be there, what to wear, what the light will be doing. Unglamorous, and it is most of the difference in the results.
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03
The shoot
Normally half a day to a day on site. We are there too, because we know which pictures the site has holes for.
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04
Edited and delivered ready to use
Cropped for the places they are going, sized for the web so they do not wreck your load time, and yours to use anywhere.
What it costs
Priced by the day, not by the picture.
It depends on how much ground there is to cover and how far we are travelling. Booked alongside a website build it is usually cheaper, because the shot list is already written. You get a fixed figure before anything is booked.
Questions
Before you book a photographer.
Are the pictures on this page your work for clients?
No, and we want to be completely clear about that. Every photograph on this page is from Andy Gallacher’s own portfolio. They are not jobs Web Butler commissioned and the people in them are not our clients. They are here so you can judge the standard of photography you would be getting. As Web Butler shoots come in, these get replaced with those.
Can we just use our own photos?
Sometimes, yes, and we will tell you when they are good enough. Plenty of businesses have a few genuinely usable pictures already. What rarely works is a mix: three professional shots next to eleven phone snaps looks worse than eleven phone snaps on their own, because the gap is visible.
Do we need to be in the photos ourselves?
It helps enormously and almost nobody wants to. If being photographed fills you with dread, say so at the start. There are ways to shoot a business that put the work and the place front and centre and keep you mostly out of it.
Who owns the photographs?
You get full licence to use them across your website, social media, print and advertising, for as long as you like. The photographer retains copyright, which is standard, and it does not restrict how you use them for your own business.
How far do you travel?
Across the UK. Travel and any overnight cost is quoted up front rather than appearing later, and if you are a long way out it is usually worth planning a fuller day to make the trip earn its keep.
Still using stock photos?
Tell us about the business and what needs photographing. We’ll tell you what a sensible shoot looks like and what it costs.