Site Photography Record Planning Checklist

Write down the questions you would want photographs to answer later, such as what a surface looked like beforehand or where a pipe ran behind a wall.

Working backwards from the question produces a much smaller and much more useful set than photographing everything indiscriminately.

Note which parts of the property are most likely to be argued about, including shared surfaces, boundary structures and the route material travels.

Disputes cluster in a few predictable places, and those places deserve far denser coverage than the rest of the property.

Decide whether the record is mainly for your own reference, for a question with an insurer, or to share with the people carrying out the work.

The purpose changes what has to be captured and how carefully the images are dated and stored.

Record who else may need copies later, such as a managing party, a neighbour, or a professional you appoint after the work has finished.

Knowing the audience in advance avoids a record that only makes sense to the person who took it.

Accept that a photograph shows appearance only, and keep a separate written note of anything you cannot interpret from looking at it.

Anything that looks like movement, damp or damage should be put to a qualified professional. A photograph records it but explains nothing.

Photograph each room from every corner before anything is moved out, so the whole space appears across overlapping views with nothing missed.

Corner views overlap enough that any point in the room appears in at least two images, which is what makes the set reliable.

Take close views of every existing mark, chip, crack, stain or worn patch you can see, and note which room and wall each one belongs to.

A close image with no location attached is almost useless later, because nobody can say which wall it came from.

Photograph ceilings, skirtings, architraves and window reveals, which are the parts nobody thinks to capture until something has happened to them.

These are the surfaces most often damaged when material is carried through, and the least often present in an opening set.

Include the floor in every room, with any covering lifted at an edge where you can do that safely and without damaging it.

Floor condition under a covering is frequently disputed, and a single edge lifted at the start answers it.

Photograph the contents that will remain in the property during the work, including anything stored in a loft, garage, cellar or shed.

Stored contents are moved, stacked and occasionally damaged during works, and are almost never recorded beforehand.

Ask to be told before any wall, floor or ceiling is closed up, so that services and structure can be photographed while they are still visible.

This is one of the requests owners most often wish they had made, because the window closes without warning.

Ask whoever is carrying out the work to confirm when each area will be closed. Nothing here states what must be recorded for any other purpose.

Photograph pipe and cable routes with a familiar object in shot for scale, and note the room and the wall each image belongs to as you go.

Knowing roughly where a service runs is what stops a screw going into it in the future, which is the practical value of this set.

Capture the position of anything you may later want to fix into, such as a noggin, a batten or a strengthened area behind a board.

Fixing positions are impossible to find once a wall is closed, and they matter as soon as anything heavy needs hanging.

Photograph what is under a floor before boards go back, including joist direction, service runs and any access point that will be covered.

Under-floor images answer questions for years afterwards, and take only a few images to capture properly.

Record the state of anything old that is being covered rather than removed, such as an original surface behind a new lining.

Covered original fabric often matters to a later owner or a later project, and this is the only chance to record it.

Photograph every external surface that a vehicle, container, scaffold or barrow will stand on or cross, before any of it arrives.

Cracked slabs and sunken paving tend to be attributed to the works unless their earlier state is on record.

Capture the boundary structures on each side, including fences, walls, gates, posts and any planting growing close to the working area.

Boundary structures lean, wobble and shed panels of their own accord, and the record is what separates that from work damage.

Be careful about photographing beyond your own boundary, and speak to the neighbour first if their property needs to appear in the record.

Agree with the neighbour first, and take advice from a qualified adviser where a shared structure is involved, before recording anything beyond your boundary.

Photograph shared surfaces such as an alley, path, drive or communal entrance, and make sure those images are clearly dated.

Shared surfaces have several interested parties, which makes a dated record more valuable there than anywhere else.

Include the street frontage, the position of any drain or inspection cover, and the pavement or verge a delivery would have to cross.

Ask the relevant authority what applies to any work affecting a pavement, verge or public surface before anything stands on it.

Take images in the strongest daylight available, and repeat anything captured in poor light rather than keeping a picture nobody can actually read.

A dark image of a crack proves nothing at all, and reshooting takes moments while you are still standing in the room.

Put a familiar object in shot wherever scale matters, since a photograph on its own gives no sense of size to anyone looking later.

Scale is one of the things most often missing from an owner record, and it is frequently the first thing a professional asks about.

Shoot a wide view and a close view of the same thing, one straight after the other, so a detail can always be located in its room.

Pairing the two removes the usual argument about where a close-up was actually taken.

Keep the camera level and note where you stood, so the same viewpoint can be repeated at later stages of the work.

Comparison only works from matching viewpoints, and matching them later is far easier if you noted them at the time.

Avoid relying on a walkthrough video alone, and take still images of anything that matters, since finding one moment in a recording later is difficult.

Video is a good supplement and a poor record, because nobody can search it and stills from it are usually unusable.

Check that your camera or phone is recording the date correctly, and confirm that setting before you start rather than discovering it afterwards.

An undated or wrongly dated set loses most of its value, and the setting takes moments to check at the outset.

Name folders by room and by stage of the work, because a single folder holding everything becomes unusable surprisingly quickly.

The naming decision made at the start is what determines whether anybody can find an image later.

Keep a short written index alongside the images saying what each set covers, when it was taken and who took it.

The index is what makes the record usable by somebody other than you, including you in a few projects from now.

Store a copy somewhere other than the phone that took the images, and open that copy to confirm it actually works.

Records lost along with a phone are a routine way for the whole effort to disappear, and an unchecked backup is not a backup.

Decide who else holds a copy, and keep the record somewhere it can still be found long after the work has finished.

Questions about a property tend to arise long after everyone involved has moved on from the project.

Agree who takes progress images, roughly how often, and how they reach you if you are not at the property while work happens.

An arrangement with a named person and a route for sending images is what makes progress records actually appear.

Ask for images at the specific moments when something is covered, rather than accepting a general promise to take photographs.

Specific requests tied to events get honoured, and general requests quietly do not.

Note the days when nobody was at the property and nothing was photographed, so gaps in the record are explained rather than suspicious.

An explained gap is far easier to deal with later than an unexplained one.

Note that people carrying out the work take images for their own purposes, and ask whether copies of those can be sent to you.

Trade records often capture exactly the moment you missed, and they are usually shared willingly if asked for early.

Keep your own set going independently, since relying entirely on somebody else's record leaves you with nothing if it is never shared.

Your own set is the only one you control, and it takes very little effort to maintain alongside everything else.

Repeat your original room views at the end of the work, from the same positions you noted, so the property is recorded again in full.

Matching viewpoints are what make the two sets comparable, and they are easy to lose if the positions were never written down.

Photograph anything left unfinished or disputed at the point work stops, and make sure those images are clearly dated.

Anything you consider incomplete should be raised with whoever carried out the work and, where needed, with a qualified professional.

Capture the shared areas, the boundary structures and the surfaces vehicles used, so their condition at the end is on record too.

External and shared areas are where late claims arise, often after everyone has left the property.

Photograph appliance labels, meter positions and any instruction plate left in the property, before paperwork is put away and misplaced.

Details on a label become very hard to retrieve once an appliance is boxed in or a cupboard is fitted around it.

Keep the completion set with the earlier sets and the written index, and store all of it with the rest of the project papers.

A record split across devices and folders is the same as no record when somebody actually needs it.