What your photos say about your establishment without you knowing it

When you look at a photo of your establishment, you see your work. The hours spent choosing the decoration, the product you are proud of, the corner your regulars prefer.

A stranger knows nothing about all that. They see an image, and they draw conclusions from it. Quickly, without thinking about it, and sometimes wrongly. You will never hear these conclusions: they will not write to tell you why they did not come.

Here is what your photos often say on your behalf.

“There is nobody here”

A restaurant dining room photographed at 10 in the morning, chairs neatly lined up, not a single table occupied. For you, it is a clean photo, taken in the quiet before service. For the person discovering it, it is a place where nobody goes.

People rarely choose an empty place. A few customers seen from behind, a table laid with dishes served, a hand holding out a coffee: a single sign of life is enough for the image to say “this place is busy”.

“It is not very clean”

Nobody writes it, but everybody notices. A bucket in a corner, cardboard boxes stacked behind the counter, a dangling cable, a window covered in marks that the sunlight brings out.

Day to day, you no longer see these details: they are part of the scenery. In a photo, they become the scenery. Before taking a photo, go around the frame like an inspector. And for the images you already have, know that a distracting object can often be removed in retouching, without having to redo everything.

“Maybe it has closed”

Your photos date from before the renovation, before the new sign, before the new menu. The customer who arrives on site recognises nothing, and feels a little misled. Or worse, they see old, slightly faded photos, and wonder whether the establishment still exists.

Recent photos are proof of life. They say that you are there, active, and that what you see on the screen is what you will find when you push the door open.

“It is cold” or “it is warm”

Light decides the atmosphere well before the decoration. A bluish neon light makes a place clinical. A photo that is too dark makes it sad. A warm, soft light, on the contrary, makes you want to sit down.

You may have a very welcoming establishment, let down by poorly set camera lighting. It is one of the most common flaws, and one of the easiest to fix: an adjustment of the colours and light is often enough to give the photo back the real atmosphere of the place.

“It is not really their place”

Stock photo images, those perfect coffees and flawless smiles found on hundreds of websites, can be spotted from a mile away. They do not reassure, they create doubt. The customer wonders what you are hiding.

A real photo of your team, even an imperfect one, is better than a generic image. People want to see the people who will welcome them.

“They do not look the same from one place to another”

A square, saturated photo on Instagram, a pale photo on the Google Business Profile, yet another atmosphere on the website. Taken separately, nothing serious. Put end to end, the customer feels like they are seeing three different establishments.

The same colour treatment, the same framing style, and your business becomes recognisable at first glance, wherever people come across it.

The right reflex

Ask someone who does not know your establishment to look at your photos for one minute, then to describe it to you in three words. If those three words do not match what your customers experience on site, it is not the customers you need to change, it is the photos.

Your photos can tell the truth

You know your establishment better than anyone, and you know what it is worth. Our job, at Agence PowerCom, is to make your images show it too. We often start from the photos you already have: we crop them, we give them back their light, we remove what is distracting, and we assemble them into montages or short videos for your social media and your website.

Send us your current photos, we will tell you honestly what they say, and what we can make them say.