Before a developer, general contractor or property owner calls you for a bid, they look you up. They check your website, your Google profile, maybe your Facebook page. In a few seconds they decide whether you look like a company that can handle their job.
Your photos do a lot of that work. And for most contractors, the photos on the website are the weakest part of it.
What your photos tell a developer
A good set of jobsite photos answers questions before anyone asks them:
- Do they have the equipment? Dozers, loaders, haul trucks and excavators on your own jobs show your fleet and your capacity.
- Is the crew safe? Hard hats, hi-vis vests and clean, organized sites show a safety culture. That matters to GCs who have to answer for every sub on site.
- Are they local? Photos on real sites in Reno, Sparks and Northern Nevada tell people you know the ground and the local conditions.
- Are they professional? Sharp, well-lit photos say you take your business seriously. Blurry phone pictures say the opposite, even when the work is excellent.
Stock photos don't win bids
Every construction website has the same stock photo of a yellow excavator and a guy in a clean hard hat. Developers have seen it a hundred times. It doesn't show your iron, your crew or your work.
Real photos of your own equipment and your own people are proof. A stock photo is decoration.
Your crew is part of the pitch
People hire people. Showing your operators, foremen and laborers on the job puts faces on the company. It also helps with something every contractor in Northern Nevada deals with right now: hiring. Good operators want to work for a company that looks solid and takes pride in its crew.
What we photograph on a construction site
- Equipment: dozers, loaders, excavators, haul trucks and graders, on the job, not parked in the yard.
- Crews: operators, foremen and field teams, in their PPE, doing the work.
- Earthwork and site development: mass grading, trenching, pads and utilities, from start to finish.
- Drone aerials: the whole site from above, great for progress updates and showing scale. I'm a licensed drone pilot.
- Branded versions: clean photos for your website, plus versions with your logo and short text for social media and proposals.
On site, we follow your safety rules. We wear PPE, check in with the foreman, stay out of the swing radius and shoot around the work instead of stopping it.
Where you'll use the photos
- Your website: home page, services and project pages
- Bid packages, proposals and statements of qualifications
- LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram
- Recruiting ads and job postings
- Trade show displays, brochures and truck graphics
One good shoot gives you a library you can use for a couple of years.
A recent shoot: CRUZ Construction
We recently spent a day with CRUZ Construction, an earthwork and site development contractor here in Reno. We photographed their operators and their fleet in action: a Komatsu D155AXi and D71PXi, a Hitachi ZW310 wheel loader and a Komatsu HM400 haul truck. The photos in this post are from that shoot.
Let's get your company on camera
If your website still runs on stock photos or old phone pictures, let's fix that. We photograph and film contractors across Reno, Lake Tahoe and Northern Nevada, from a single shoot day to ongoing progress coverage.
Call (775) 233-6174 or email ciprian@luminamediaproductions.com to set up a shoot.