Strong visuals are one of the most powerful ways to tell the story of your work and company culture. High-quality imagery is essential for any brand—but you don’t necessarily need a professional photographer on-site every day to build a strong visual library.
Hiring a pro can deliver a batch of polished content captured with professional cameras and drones, but it’s important to keep your content library fresh with ongoing updates. Since most folks have pretty decent cameras on their phones, it’s more accessible than ever to document your work.
With a few simple tips and consistent habits, your team can capture sharp, effective photos that showcase your work, reinforce your brand, and generate content for your website, marketing materials, and social media.
Photography & Videography Tips for Phone Cameras
Use Landscape (Horizontal) Mode
Always take photos in landscape orientation (horizontal), not vertical. This gives much more flexibility for web use, marketing layouts, and social media posts. Websites are often built around wide-format images, so a horizontal shot gives your design team more room to work with.
Shooting in landscape mode will also give you the flexibility to crop the image for vertical dimensions later, giving you better control over the composition when uploading at 9:16 or 4:5 ratios.
Set the Camera to the Highest Quality Possible
If your phone supports RAW image capture, turn it on. RAW files retain more image detail, allowing for better editing by supporting deeper color, exposure, and contrast edits.
If shooting in RAW isn’t an option, make sure your camera is set to the highest resolution available—not a lower or compressed setting. (You can usually adjust resolution settings in your camera or photo app settings.)
Avoid screenshots or saved images from social apps, since images that get uploaded to social media typically get run through compression software.
Turn Off “Live Photos” (iPhone Users)
On iPhones, make sure Live Photos are turned off before taking pictures. Live Photos can be fun for personal use, but they are much more cumbersome to edit and result in less sharp stills for web and marketing purposes.
Go to your Camera app, tap the circular Live icon, and make sure it’s not highlighted.
Record Videos in 4K
If you’re capturing video—whether for internal updates or for social media—record in 4K resolution if your phone supports it. It offers much better detail, and allows for greater editing flexibility, especially for larger screens or edited reels.
Check your camera settings and select 4K at 30fps, at minimum. If storage allows, shooting at 60fps is even better—you can slow down the video clip in your editing software and ensure that the video remains smooth, not choppy.
Keep Your Lens Clean
This may seem basic, but it’s one of the most overlooked tips: clean your camera lens before you shoot.
A smudged lens can make your photo look cloudy or blurry when reviewing it on your computer, even if it looks okay on your phone. A quick wipe with a microfiber cloth or lens wipe can make a huge difference in sharpness and clarity.
Take Multiple Shots of Each Scene
Don’t settle for just one shot and move on. If you’re able to, capture multiple angles of the same subject or location. A few small variations in lighting, composition, or framing can make the difference between an unusable photo and a great one.
Having a variety of images to choose from also gives you additional content to work with in the future—if you can capture several perspectives of a job, you’re creating the opportunity for multiple posts without being too repetitive.
Avoid Digital Zoom
When you need to get closer to a subject, try to physically walk closer rather than using the zoom feature. Zooming in digitally drastically reduces image quality and adds graininess. If you’re shooting in RAW, it’s much better to crop the image later than degrade the image quality from the start.
We hope these tips help!
A bit of knowledge, the right habits, and a commitment to consistency are the keys to capturing solid, ongoing content for your website and social media profiles. By empowering your team with these simple tips, you’ll build a growing library of useful, authentic content that reflects the quality of your work. Whether for client updates, marketing, or project documentation, strong visuals help tell your story more effectively.
All that being said, there’s still a time and place for hiring a professional! When you need polished, high-impact imagery for your website, print materials, social media profiles, or long-term marketing use, bringing in a skilled photographer or videographer—especially with construction experience—is a worthwhile investment.
Let us know if these tips helped, or if you’re interested in an on-site visit with our photographer & FAA-certified drone pilot, by reaching out to us at hello@zykindesign.com.
About the Author
Mary-Ann Zykin is the Founder and Principal Designer at Zykin Design, leading with a vision to modernize and refresh brands by helping businesses align their visual identity through cohesive design systems and digital personas.
