Hiring a photographer isn’t just about booking a date and getting a few headshots. The right photographer should help you create images that actually support your brand, strengthen your messaging, and give you content you can use across your website, social, and marketing campaigns.

D1 Dentistry recently took ownership of an existing dental office in Lansdale. As part of the transition to new ownership, the team wanted their website and marketing materials to reflect the updated leadership, environment, and patient experience, while maintaining the practice’s status as a family business, its long history, and ties to the community.

When your imagery stays frozen in a place in time, it eventually creates a disconnect between what your organization looks like today and what visitors see online.

So the question isn’t whether your website photos should be updated, it’s how often. In a perfect photography utopia we’d all have staff photographers who are on site to constantly tell the story of our work, but we all know the world is far from perfect. So what’s a reasonable minimum?

I recently had the opportunity to photograph the grand opening of CHOPT, documenting the launch of their newest location and the energy that comes with welcoming a community into a space for the first time.

Research continuously shows that visuals have a big influence on decision-making online. Up to 75% of users judge a company’s credibility based on website design and photos before even reading your content.

Here’s the part that matters even more: People remember only 10% of information three days after reading it. Add a photo? Recollection improves by 65%.

I got to work with Princeton's School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA) for the first time this year. I'm always blown away by the intelligent and thoughtful people I get to meet in this line of work – SPIA is a perfect example of a community where curiosity, rigor, and genuine commitment to public service come together in a way that’s both inspiring and energizing.

Check out more photos from our session.

There’s nothing wrong with stock photos (she says, side-eyeing the multicultural handshake). They’re bright. They’re polished. They’re easy. And they’re usually ridiculous. They’re also completely forgettable. If you’ve ever scrolled a website and felt a serious sense of déjà vu, congrats — you’ve discovered the “copy + paste but make it branding” era of the internet.

If there’s one word that sums up my time with Ballinger, it’s collaboration. The Ballinger team operates with an impressive sync—designers, architects, and strategists working seamlessly across the many (many) layers of each project. Each turn down a new hallway revealed a different group deep in conversation: brainstorming, sketching, problem-solving, and building ideas together in real time.

Sometimes, photoshoots get treated like a box to check: schedule a shoot, get the images back, update the website, post a few times on social media, and move on. 

Brand photography isn’t meant to be one-and-done, well planned and executed photography is meant to last.

Photos have the ability to shape how people perceive your brand, build a level of trust between your brand and consumers, and in the end, play a part in whether or not someone engages with your content over time.