Photos that get a room booked

Guests scroll photos before they read a word, and most decide there. A listing needs at least three, one of them a general shot that becomes the cover, and can carry up to fifteen in each section. Here is how to use them.

Shoot the room the way a guest will walk into it

Turn everything on: the monitors, the desk lamps, the meters, the booth light. Then stand in the doorway and take the first photo from there. That wide shot is the one that answers the question every guest has, which is how big the room really is. Make it the cover.

Work inward from there. The desk and monitors from the chair the guest will sit in. The live room or booth from where the mic stands. Then the details: the console, the outboard, the instruments you list, the amps. If a guest can book something, they want to see it.

Every room gets its own photos

If your studio has more than one room, each one carries its own set, and guests browsing a room see that room. Keep the sets separate so nobody books the big live room from a picture of the small one.

Daylight, or your session lighting, never both

Rooms with windows photograph best in daylight with the blinds up. Rooms without them photograph best in the light you actually work in. Mixing the two gives you orange walls and blue corners. A phone camera is fine. Hold it level, at chest height, and let it focus before you press.

Landscape, sharp, and yours

• Landscape orientation. Portrait shots get cropped on the listing card and lose the room.
• JPG, PNG, WebP or AVIF, up to 5 MB each. Anything a phone produces is fine.
• Your own photos of your own room. Stock images, renders and gear catalogue shots are the fastest way to lose a guest's trust, and guests review what they found against what they saw.
• No heavy filters, no text or watermarks over the image, and nobody's face without their say so.

Show the things that are not gear

The entrance, the parking, the lounge, the kettle. A guest arriving for a five hour session wants to know where they will sit while the drummer tunes. One photo of the way in saves you the same question in every message.

Update them when the room changes

New desk, new treatment, new paint: reshoot the cover. The listing shows what you upload from the moment you save it, and a room that looks different on arrival is the most common reason a review says the listing was misleading. The photos and the description work together, and Writing a studio description that answers the real questions covers the other half.