Stock photography can make your site look professional, but it can also create a generic look that's not custom tailored to your business, team or office. To set your business apart from your competition, you can create custom content for your website and social media feeds.

Before booking a photographer for commercial images, it's a good idea to have a rough estimate of how many photos you'll need for your site and social media. That will help plan how many locations/areas of your office to use. All of this information will help us estimate how long the project will take. If you don't have an office location, you can rent space for a shoot. Peerspace.com is a great resource for finding photo locations.

1. Hire a pro. Hire a photographer who is proficient with lighting. Professional photographers will not rely completely on available light. Maybe your office normally gets great daylight, but on the day of your shoot, the weather is overcast and the light in your space is not flattering or too dim. Experienced professionals will bring a light kit to help enhance the existing light, or sometimes create great light from scratch if the room has no windows.

2. Prep your team. Even though we want these photos to look like candid pictures, they will be posed and staged. If we photograph a real meeting there will likely be visually distracting objects (like soda cans or water bottles) on desks or conference room tables. People may be sitting too far apart from each other to look like they are collaborating on a project. It could also disrupt a meeting to have a photographer in the room.

If no one on your team has modeling experience, that's OK! An experienced photographer can help them with posing and give them prompts for the photos. Let them know in advance that they will be asked pose for some photos so that they can be dressed professionally and camera ready. If you'd like to have images of your team interacting with a client, consider who you could ask to model for the photos. Have model releases ready for everyone who will appear in your marketing photos.

3. Make a shot list and schedule. Reserve conference rooms or other spaces that will be used for photos and create a rough timeline of each location within your office. If you plan to take photos outside of your office suite, you may need to ask for authorization from your building manager.

Ask an administrative assistant or a member of your marketing team to send calendar invites to help everyone arrive on time to the correct areas of your office or warehouse for photos.

With a little preparation and planning, you can help your photographer create beautiful custom-made images for your website and social feeds that will help you connect to your clients.