Stock photography is read by patients as a signal that a practice had nothing of its own to show. Real photographs, even imperfect ones, are consistently more persuasive.

Getting them is a half-day of work, and the pitfalls are mostly about what is accidentally in the frame.

The shots that earn their place

  • The building from the road, as a patient approaches it. This is the most useful and most neglected photograph a clinic can have, because someone trying to find you is matching what they see to what they saw online.
  • The entrance and reception. Sets expectations and reassures.
  • The waiting area, empty and tidy.
  • Consulting rooms, empty.
  • Equipment patients ask about, particularly anything they may be anxious about. A photograph of the scanner reduces the fear of the scanner.
  • Individual clinician portraits, consistent in style.
  • The team together, which humanises the practice more than any copy.

What must not be in the frame

This is where practices get into difficulty:

  • Patients, in any form, unless separately and specifically consented.
  • Computer screens showing any record, even blurred.
  • Whiteboards, appointment books, admission lists, or any paper with names on it.
  • Files with visible labels.
  • Prescription pads, referral letters, or samples with labels.
  • Reflections in glass, screens and mirrors, which catch what you did not intend far more often than people expect.

Shoot when the clinic is closed or genuinely empty. It is far simpler than obtaining consent from everyone who might walk through a shot, and it removes the risk of publishing a face you did not notice.

Practical quality

A modern phone is sufficient. What matters more is light. Shoot during the day with blinds open, turn on all the room lighting, and avoid shooting into a window. Clean and tidy the space first, including cables, which are the thing that most reliably makes a clinical photograph look unprofessional.

Hold the camera at chest height and keep verticals straight. Take far more than you need.

Staff consent too

Staff appearing in photographs should agree to it, in writing, and you should know what happens when they leave. A former employee appearing on your homepage two years later is both awkward and misleading.

Keep them current

Photographs of a reception you have since refurbished, or of clinicians who have left, actively mislead. Reshoot when the space or the team changes materially, and check the set annually.

Compress before uploading

Photographs straight from a phone are large enough to make a page slow on mobile data. Resize and convert before they go on the site, or the improvement in trust is paid for in load time.