Photography

What photography coordination is

Photography coordination is deciding what your pictures need to show, writing the shot list, booking and art-directing a photographer, and handling the releases and the licence. You end up with photographs of your actual premises, staff and work, made for named pages.

I do not take the photographs. This is not a portrait sitting either, nor a brand shoot for its own sake. The shot list comes out of pages that exist or are being written, and every frame has a job. If nobody has decided what the pages say, a shoot is premature.

When you need one

The clearest sign is a website where every picture was bought. Stock photography is cheap and instantly recognisable, and for a business selling on trust it does active harm: a reader who cannot tell whether the smiling people in the hard hats work for you has learned something, and it is not flattering. Trades, manufacturers, clinics and restaurants whose premises is part of the offer need them most.

The other two cases are an about or team page that has been text-only for years, and case studies where the work itself is the evidence. You do not need a coordinated shoot for three headshots; book a local photographer for a morning. And a shoot cannot rescue a page whose words are wrong — when that is the problem, rewriting the page comes first.

What goes in the shot list

The shot list is the deliverable that makes or breaks the day. A photographer with a good one shoots steadily and often finishes early. One without takes attractive pictures of whatever is in front of them, and three weeks later you are short the picture the most important page needed.

• One line per shot, tied to a page. “Wide shot of the finishing bay, two staff working, for the top of the services page.” A shot that cannot be attached to a page comes off the list.
• Shape and crop. A page header wants a wide landscape frame with space for a heading over it. A staff card wants a square. Shooting the whole day in one shape is how half of it becomes unusable.
• People, and what they are doing. Named where possible, in their real work clothes, doing the job rather than standing beside it smiling. Who is on shift that day is a creative question, not only a scheduling one.
• Light and timing. Which rooms have windows, when the sun is on the front of the building, and which shots must happen before the bay fills at eight.
• What must not be in the frame. Another company's branding, a customer's paperwork, the corner nobody has tidied since 2019, anyone without a signed release.

What you get

The edited photographs, named by page. Web-sized files and full-resolution originals, named for where each goes rather than by a camera's numbering.

Signed releases. A release from every identifiable person, staff and customers alike, signed on the day and filed with the pictures. Staff leave; the photograph stays on the site for years. The release is what makes that comfortable rather than awkward, and collecting them afterwards is nearly impossible.

A written licence. Agreed before the shoot, not after. Where the pictures may be used, for how long, whether print and paid advertising are included, whether you may crop and retouch, and whether a later use costs more. The common and avoidable disaster is paying for a day, using the pictures everywhere for three years, then discovering the licence covered the website only, for one year.

The shot list, marked up. Every line ticked, missed or substituted, so you know what you hold and what a second shoot would cover.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A machine shop in New Brunswick with nineteen staff is rebuilding twelve pages and owns no photographs of itself. It runs two shifts and cannot stop for a day.

The shot list is written from the drafted pages and comes to thirty-one frames: four exteriors, six process shots across the three machining cells, eight portraits of staff at their own stations, five details of finished parts, four in the inspection room, and four wide frames of the floor with space for a heading over them. The day is booked for a Tuesday, starting at six-thirty with the exteriors in low light and the floor empty, then moving to process work once the first shift is running properly at eight. Releases are signed at the start of the shift by the eleven people who will appear, and a grey Thursday is held in reserve against rain. The photographer delivers fifty-four edited frames within a fortnight; forty are placed, the rest going into the library for the newsletter and the trade advertising, which the licence already covers.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. What the pages are, what the premises are like, and whether anything must not be photographed. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. My fee and the photographer's day rate, stated separately, with the licence terms written into the quote.
3. The pages first. The shot list is drawn from drafted copy, or from the page plan and rechecked the week before the shoot.
4. The shot list and the running order. Sent to you and the photographer a week ahead, hour by hour, built around how the business actually operates rather than the photographer's convenience.
5. The day. A half day or a full one. I am there working the list and keeping people moving, so your manager can go back to work.
6. Selects and delivery. Edited frames within one to two weeks, named by page, releases and licence filed alongside.

What it costs

Quoted in CAD after the half-hour call, with the photographer's day rate and my coordination fee stated separately. What moves the number is how many locations there are, whether it is a half day or a full one, and how much of the list depends on particular people being available. Travel, a second day and any usage beyond the agreed licence are priced before they are incurred, and nothing is booked until the figure is fixed in writing. The pricing page shows the four ways of working.

What happens next

The pictures then have to be placed at the right sizes on the right pages, which is CMS content entry, and each needs a written description for anyone using a screen reader, which is alt text. Businesses often realise afterwards that the same morning could have produced two short films, in which case the day is planned around both and the scripts are written first. And where a project needs a designer and a developer as well, one person managing the lot keeps it to a single invoice. The shoot is complete when the files, releases and licence are handed over; nothing ongoing is assumed.