How can a designer work with low-quality photo content from a client?

Question

Design

Probably, many people have come across a situation where a client, when ordering a site, provides terrible photos (taken on the phone, poor quality, old school, etc.)

Often the customer dumps refs with really cool sites, where cool photos are clearly visible, literate text. Accordingly, such a client expects a high level of design.

How to work in such situations? Share your experience)

Answer 1

1) Pick up beautiful stock photos (don't remove the watermark and don't buy - just pick)
2) Get as much sleep as possible, but don't kill yourself
3) Make a design from his photo
4.1 Submit your stock photos
4.2 Offer to do photo shoot
5) Maybe you don't understand his situation. Perhaps his photos make sense (shared other people's photos will not go in his topic). And the angles of some of his details are not particularly fashionable, but they show the necessary technical features.
And maybe he's not ready for a photo session yet.
Then it makes sense to make a minimal educational program on shooting.
Let him read
https://prophotos.ru/lessons/17861-s-yomka-glyants...
https://www.makety.top/foto_dlya_reklamy/
As far as I understand, now you need to try to take a photo of poor quality - 0.3 Mp try nadis - mostly 2-12 Mp, on average 5-8 Mp - this should be enough.
The main problem is not even the angle and not the glare - but the lack of light.
It must be remembered that it is IMPOSSIBLE to take a high-quality photo without sufficient light!
- either a good studio light
- or a sunny day
A significant part of even pro photographers get into this - they think that since they have a "reflex camera" then they can do anything. Even a professional digital camera without sufficient light will produce weak photos.
And a flash or even a lightbox may not help. Moreover - it can become worse (white balance is disturbed).
The customer most likely does not have studio light. But a sunny day is quite accessible to most.

Answer 2

How ? Explain to the client that high-quality photos are needed for a normal result

Answer 3

The simplest thing is to put together a good design, but insert the customer's content there.
It will turn out badly, but you can take 1 photo and process it well in Photoshop to look decent.
Show to the customer with the phrase:

This is how it looks with your content, but this is how it might look if your photos are processed or better photographed. I can photoshop it, but it will still cost X money. initially we agreed only on the design of the site, and not retouching the content

As a rule, if the customer is adequate, they will either pay you for photo processing, or order photography, or buy stock photos.
It is possible that the customer will be satisfied with the dirty option, but perhaps he makes the site for show and is not ready to give a lot of money.