Real photos of your clinic do more for a new patient than any stock image. They show the room they will sit in and the person they will talk to. You can take them yourself, on a phone, in about an hour.
Print this page and tick things off as you go.
Before you start
Gear
- A phone from the last few years. That is all you need.
- Wipe the lens with a soft cloth. A pocket smudge is the most common reason photos look hazy.
- Free up storage. You will take more photos than you think.
- Turn on the camera grid, to keep lines straight.
- Use the main lens (1x). Do not pinch to zoom: step closer instead.
- Turn off portrait mode and filters. Shoot in the normal photo mode.
- Turn off the flash.
Light
- Use window light. Open every blind.
- Turn off overhead lights in rooms with good window light. Mixing the two makes skin and walls look green or orange.
- If a room has no window, turn on every light in it and keep them all the same kind.
- Shoot the inside mid-morning or mid-afternoon on a bright day, when light is soft.
- Shoot the outside when the sun is behind you or the sky is lightly overcast, not at noon.
- Tap the screen on the most important part of the shot to set focus and brightness.
Prep the space
- Clear counters, desks and chairs of everything that is not part of the room.
- Hide cords, trash cans, boxes and paper signs taped to walls.
- Straighten chairs, pillows and the exam table paper.
- Walk every room for anything with a name, a date of birth or a chart on it. See the privacy section below.
The shot list
For each shot, take three to five tries. Take each one both horizontal and vertical. Your site needs wide photos for computers and tall ones for phones.
| Shot | What it is for | How | |
|---|---|---|---|
| ☐ | Doctor portrait | The top of your homepage and your About page. The most important photo on the site. | Stand a few feet from a window, facing it. Shoot from chest height. Relaxed, looking at the camera. Plain background, or a softly lit part of the clinic. |
| ☐ | Each provider and staff member | The team page. Patients like to know who answers the phone. | Same spot, same light, same height as the doctor portrait so they look like a set. |
| ☐ | Doctor at work | Shows what a visit feels like. | Doctor at a desk with a laptop (screen off or facing away), or with a stethoscope in the exam room. Use a staff member as the "patient," with their written consent, framed from behind or cropped so their face is not the subject. |
| ☐ | Building exterior | So patients recognize it when they pull up. | The whole sign readable, nothing cut off. No cars parked in front. Stand across the lot or street. Early on a weekend morning is easiest. |
| ☐ | Entrance | Shows exactly which door to use. | The door, the suite number and any signage, straight on. Door closed and glass clean. |
| ☐ | Waiting area | Sets the tone before they walk in. | From a corner, at standing height, showing as much of the room as you can. No people. |
| ☐ | Exam room | Shows a clean, unhurried space. | From the doorway or a corner. Fresh table paper. Nothing on the counters but what lives there. |
| ☐ | Membership details | Small things that show what membership is like. Good for section breaks and the pricing page. | Close-ups: the in-house medication shelf with labels turned away, the lab draw station, a phone showing a generic text thread with no names, a coffee cup on the desk, the chair you sit in to talk. |
| ☐ | Anything that makes you different | Whatever patients mention in reviews: a garden, a kids' corner, a house-call bag. | Shoot it the same way: good light, clean frame. |
Framing rules
- Take every shot both horizontal and vertical.
- Leave room around the subject. The site will crop to fit different screens.
- Nothing important cut off at the edge: heads, signs, doorways.
- Keep the phone level. Vertical lines in the room should look vertical.
- Shoot rooms from chest or standing height, not from above or below.
- One subject per photo. If you cannot say what the photo is of, reshoot it.
- No clutter in the background.
- Check for reflections in mirrors, windows, glass doors and monitors before you shoot.
Privacy: nothing about a patient, ever
This is the one rule that cannot bend. Before every shot, look at the whole frame, including the background and anything reflective.
Nothing that could identify a patient can be visible. That includes:
- Charts, folders and paperwork
- Computer screens, laptops, tablets and phones (turn them off or face them away)
- Whiteboards and schedules
- Names on anything: labels, specimen tubes, medication bags, mail
- Sign-in sheets and prescription pads
- Reflections of any of the above in glass, mirrors or a dark monitor
People in photos
- No patients in photos without their written consent.
- Our recommendation: no patients at all. Use staff instead.
- Get written consent from every staff member who appears, kept on file.
- If someone leaves the practice, plan to swap out their photos.
When in doubt about anything in the frame, move it, cover it or leave it out. A slightly emptier photo is always fine. A visible name is not.
Sending the photos
How you send the files matters as much as how you take them. Texting a photo, or sending it through most chat apps, shrinks it and throws away detail you cannot get back.
- Do not text the photos or send them through chat apps.
- Upload the original files to a shared folder (Google Drive, Dropbox, iCloud or OneDrive).
- On iPhone, if sharing from Photos, choose the option to include all photos data, or upload from the Files app.
- Send everything, including the tries you do not love. Sometimes the best one is not the one you would pick.
- Name the folders by shot: "portrait," "exterior," "exam room."
- Include the signed consent forms for anyone pictured, in a separate private folder.
- Check one last time that no photo shows a name, chart or screen.
Quick recap
- Clean lens, main lens, no zoom, no flash, no portrait mode.
- Window light, overheads off.
- Clear every surface.
- Every shot, horizontal and vertical, three to five tries.
- Nothing about a patient in the frame, ever.
- Originals, through a shared folder.