Why Websites Get Better When Web Agencies and Photographers Work Together

When building a website, design and photography are sometimes treated separately: the design goes to an agency, and the client provides the photos. A website can certainly be built that way.

But looking at many websites, it’s surprisingly common to see a beautiful design with photos that don’t quite fit. When a web design team and photographers or creatives think together from the start, the quality of the whole site changes dramatically. As makers of photography and film, we feel how well the two work together.

Photos shape a website’s impression

When you open a website, is text the first thing you read? In most cases, what catches your eye first are photos and video — the homepage hero, portraits, products, architecture and shops, images explaining a service. These largely decide the impression of the entire site.

So web design and photography aren’t separate things. It’s better to think of them as one visual from the very beginning.

The photos designers need aren’t always the photos photographers want to take

If the shoot goes ahead on its own, the photographer will try to capture images that are strong as standalone photographs. That matters, of course — but websites need a slightly different way of thinking.

If text sits on the homepage image, it needs space. A landscape image on desktop may be cropped vertically on mobile. Placing a person to the left or right rather than centre can make the design easier.

Talking to the web designer beforehand means we can shoot knowing “the copy goes here,” “this part gets cut off on mobile,” or “this page also needs portrait images.” Not just good as a photo, but good within the web design — that’s the big difference.

Create together from the start, rather than fitting photos to the design

A common scenario: the design is almost finished, and then comes “please shoot photos to fill these spaces.” We can do that, of course. But when photographers and creatives join earlier, the options open up.

We can suggest that location photography would suit this brand better than white backgrounds; that it’s worth capturing short video, not just stills; that you need people at work, not only staff profiles; or that product shots and advertising images can be done on the same day.

Rather than slotting photos in at the end, think about photography, film and design at the same time. The brand’s world comes together far more easily that way.

One shoot, assets beyond the website

Companies need photos for far more than their website: Instagram, Google Ads, recruitment sites, company brochures, press releases, sales decks, YouTube, e-commerce. If uses are considered beforehand, one shoot can produce a great many assets — shooting portrait as well as landscape, leaving negative space, capturing short videos at the same time, covering people, architecture, products and work scenes together.

When the agency and the photography team are connected, planning assets this way becomes much easier.

Thinking together about how the brand is seen

We don’t believe a photographer’s job is simply pressing the shutter. A shoot begins with questions: How should this company be seen? How do we want people to feel about this product? What about this person do we want to convey?

Web designers do the same, shaping a company’s impression through type, colour, space, layout and motion. The tools differ, but both are fundamentally about deciding how something should be seen. That’s why web designers, photographers, filmmakers and art directors work so well together.

Less work for the client, too

When the agency and photography team work separately, the client often ends up coordinating between them — hearing from the agency what photos are needed, explaining that to the photographer, then passing photos back only to hear “this composition is hard to use; are there others?” When production and photography communicate directly from the start, much of that burden disappears.

Great photos alone aren’t enough — nor is great design alone

A good website has many elements: design, photography, video, copy, UI, SEO — and all of them pointing in the same direction. If one element stands out while the whole feels off, the brand won’t come through.

That’s why web designers and photographers, agencies and creatives, should think together from the start rather than working separately. We believe that relationship will matter more and more.

Based in Kyoto, LS STUDIO photographs corporate and brand websites, hotels, architecture, products and profiles, and creates visuals with film and AI. We often collaborate with web agencies and design studios — and rather than simply dropping photos into a finished design, we value working out together what the website really needs, and starting the shoot from there.