A site photo portfolio for a fabricator: what to photograph and how to caption it

A project engineer opening your website wants to see the thing they need, standing finished on someone's site. So photograph finished work in place. Caption every picture with what it is, the material and section, the size, the finish, the kind of site and the kind of customer. Five honest captions on real jobs tell a buyer more than a forty-page catalogue. And take the photographs before you hand over the site, because once the customer's own people move in, you will not be let back with a camera.

The machine photograph is not the job

Shops in your industrial area have a laser, a press brake and a welding bay. Many sheet metal and fabrication websites show those same three photographs. A machine shop making parts has its own version of this problem, covered in a photo and video routine for a machine shop. A buyer of structures cannot tell from these three whether you have built a mezzanine like theirs, or a pipe rack at the height needed. A photograph of one tells them.

The other thing a job photograph shows is scope. A platform standing in a warehouse, with its handrail fixed and its stair landing level, says you measured the site, fabricated it and erected it. A photograph of stacked sections on your shop floor says only that you cut steel.

The shot list, for every job you want more of

Give this list to your site supervisor. The photographs are taken on the last day of erection, before the handover signature.

1. The finished piece, whole, from the spot where a visitor first sees it.
2. The same view with a person beside it, for scale.
3. One connection close up in daylight: a cleaned weld, a bolted joint or a neat fold.
4. The finish, close enough to read the colour.
5. The piece on your own shop floor before dispatch, with your bay visible behind it.
6. The hard part, if there was one: a lift into place, work around a running line, a narrow door.
7. The empty site before you started, from the same spot as the first photograph.

Hold the phone sideways for all of them. Number seven is easy to forget, and the before-and-after pair is what a buyer remembers.

The caption template

Write the caption the day the photographs come in, while the supervisor still remembers the job. Use the same order every time, so a buyer comparing jobs reads them the same way.

What it is:     (the object, and what it is used for)
Material:       (grade and sections or sheet thickness)
Size:           (length, width and height, or weight, as the buyer would describe it)
Finish:         (blasting, primer, top coat, powder coat or galvanising, and who did it)
Where:          (kind of site and the district, not the customer's address)
Customer type:  (warehouse operator, food plant, school; the name only with written permission)
Our scope:      (measured, designed, fabricated, erected; say which)

A filled caption for a staircase reads like this:

What it is:     Straight staircase with a mid landing, to a warehouse mezzanine
Material:       MS channel stringers, chequered plate treads
Size:           Rises one storey, single flight each side of the landing
Finish:         Shot blasted, epoxy primer, yellow PU handrail
Where:          Warehouse on Waghodia Road, Vadodara district
Customer type:  Logistics company
Our scope:      Site measurement, fabrication and erection

"Customer type" is the line buyers read most. A food plant engineer looks for food plants. A warehouse developer looks for warehouses.

For example: a gallery in Makarpura that said nothing

Imagine a fabricator in Makarpura GIDC, Vadodara, making platforms, staircases, pipe racks and canopies for plants and warehouses around the city. Its website gallery had thirty-odd photographs titled "Project 1" to "Project 34". Some were machines, some were dusty phone shots taken months after handover, and one was a stock image of a steel bridge it had never built. Two old roofing shed jobs sat at the top of the gallery, so buyers kept asking for sheds, work the owner no longer wanted.

The owner fixed it in three steps. The stock image came down first. The gallery was split by type of work, and the old sheds were left out entirely. And every job from then on followed the shot list and the caption template, filled in by the supervisor and checked by the owner before it went up. Over the next few months the calls shifted from shed enquiries to mezzanine and staircase enquiries, one of them from a logistics firm that mentioned the warehouse photograph by name. The shed calls did not vanish entirely, and the owner still had to turn a few away politely.

Where the photographs go after the website

Put the captioned photographs in one gallery per type of work on the website, and reuse the same captions on your Google Business Profile and in the folder you carry to plant visits. Our note on local SEO for fabrication businesses covers the profile side.

Two or three of these jobs deserve more than a caption: a short write-up of the problem, the site constraint and how it was solved becomes a case page.

When you should not photograph the job

Some sites forbid it. Defence units, pharma clean areas and many chemical plants have gate rules on cameras, and the safety officer's answer is final. Photograph the piece on your shop floor before dispatch instead, with no drawing, customer mark or tag visible.

Do not show a customer's logo, name board or product without written permission, even on a site that allowed photographs. Do not present a partner's work as your own; "galvanised by our partner in Halol" is honest and buyers respect it. And if your shop only does job-work cutting, a photograph of a tray of cut parts with a material line is enough. The full shot list is for work you erect.

Pin the shot list where the tools are kept

Print the shot list and pin it where your site supervisor collects tools. Then choose the type of work you most want more of, and caption your three best jobs of that type with the template before the next job closes. If you want help with the pages around them as website content, tell us what you need and name the job you want more of.