Updated
Pull up your own home page and look at the first photo the way a stranger would. Can they tell what year it was taken? Is there a hose coiled by the spigot and an orange cone in the frame? Could someone towing a forty-foot fifth wheel tell whether it fits? Ask those questions of every photo and you have the whole method: tidy the frame, wait for decent light, shoot from the angle that answers the question, and include the honest shot of the bathhouse door that needs paint, because the guest will see it on arrival anyway and finding it themselves is worse.
Want this handled instead of DIY'd? See pricing and get a fixed-price quote.
Nothing about a campground makes it harder than that.
The equipment conversation, settled
A phone from the last five or six years is fine. It shoots more resolution than a website will ever use, and it handles ordinary daylight better than the cameras I was carrying a decade ago.
What actually improves your photos, in order of how much difference it makes:
- Tidying the frame before you shoot
- Shooting at the right time of day
- Holding the horizon level
- Getting the camera to the right height
- Taking many more shots than you need
The camera is not on that list, and neither is the drone. One aerial shot is a nice thing to have on a home page and it teaches a guest very little. They cannot tell from four hundred feet whether their rig fits. Spend the money on the shot list instead, and if you want an overhead, a good park map does that job better anyway.
Tidy first, shoot second
Photos are ruthless about clutter in a way your eye is not. You stopped seeing that pile of pallets three seasons ago. Every stranger who looks at the picture will see it first.
Light: two windows a day
Shoot in the hour after sunrise or the two hours before sunset. Low sun gives you warm color, long shadows, and depth, and those three things are the difference between a photo of a field and a photo of a place.
Avoid noon. Overhead sun flattens everything, blows out the sky, and puts hard black shadows under every tree, so a shaded loop comes out looking like a hole in the ground.
Overcast is genuinely good for close-in work: bathhouses, cabin interiors, picnic areas, anything under trees. It's soft and even. Just keep the white sky out of the top of the frame, because a blank white sky reads as a dull day even when the ground looks great.
Rain and gray days are worth one deliberate session too. If your season includes weather, an honest wet-morning photo of a covered pavilion sells the pavilion.
| Light | Shoot this | Leave this for another day |
|---|---|---|
| Hour after sunrise | Empty sites, the arrival, water and views facing west | Interiors (too dark without lights on) |
| Two hours before sunset | Occupied sites, amenities in use, the office with people in it | Anything facing straight into the sun |
| Overcast, any time | Bathhouse, cabin interiors, picnic areas, anything under trees | Wide shots with a lot of sky in them |
| Noon, clear sky | Nothing | Everything, including the pool |
| Rain | One covered pavilion, one cabin porch | The rest of the list |
The shot list
Work through this list top to bottom, per loop or per unit type. Take five or six of each and delete later.
- The arrival. Shoot facing the way a guest drives in, so the photo matches what they'll actually see. Include the entrance sign.
- An empty site, at eye level. Stand where the picnic table would be and shoot toward where the rig would sit. This is the photo that answers the question an RV guest brings to your site before any other, which is whether the rig fits.
- An occupied site. With the owner's permission, a site with a rig on it shows scale better than an empty one ever will. Ask first, always.
- The site from the road. How it looks pulling up, so people can judge the approach and the turn.
- The bathhouse. Inside and out, clean, lights on. It is the building guests worry about before they book and will not ask you about on the phone. If yours is good, showing it settles the worry.
- The amenities, in use. Playground, pool, hall, store, laundry, dog run. In use beats empty.
- Cabins and units. Exterior, then the bed, then the bathroom, then the view from the door. That order, every time.
- The water, the trail, the view. Whatever your reason for existing is.
- The office and whoever's in it. People trust a park with a face on it.
Four small technical things
Height. Hold the phone at chest height for sites and amenities, not over your head. For cabin interiors, drop to about waist height and back into a corner. Interiors shoot wider and better from a corner.
Level. Keep the horizon straight. Turn on your phone's grid setting and leave it on. A tilted horizon makes an otherwise good photo look amateur, and it is the easiest thing on this page to fix.
Space. Frame slightly wider than you want. A website crops photos to different shapes on a phone and on a laptop, and a little room around the subject means nothing important gets cut off.
Filters. Leave them alone. Correct the brightness if a shot is dark, and stop there. A heavily filtered photo of a green field looks like a lie, and when the guest arrives to the real color, they feel it.
Naming and captions
Rename the files before you send them. `cedar-loop-site-24.jpg` is worth the rename. `IMG_4471.jpg` becomes a guessing game for whoever builds the site, and a wrong guess puts your photos in the wrong gallery.
Then write one line per photo saying where it was taken and what a guest should notice. "Cedar Loop, site 24, full shade after two in the afternoon" does real work. "Beautiful campsite" does none.
Do it twice a year
Shoot once in early season when everything is clean and the leaves are new, and once at peak when the place is full and looks alive. Two sessions a year, ninety minutes each, and you will never again be building a website out of photos from a decade ago.
The early-season shoot fits neatly at the end of the checklist before the season opens, which already has you walking the property with a critical eye. And once the photos exist, the split between your website and your booking platform tells you where each one belongs: the site photos on the website, where a stranger can see them without picking dates first.
Where this ends up
Photos are most of the argument on a glamping or unique-stay site, where the guest has never seen anything like your unit and the picture is the product. They matter almost as much for an independent campground, where the question is simply whether the rig fits and the loop looks like somewhere worth three nights.
Send me the folder when you have it. I go through every shot before anything is built, name what is still missing, and correct the color balance and exposure on each photo that makes the site, so a shot taken on an overcast Tuesday holds up next to one taken in perfect light.
Email hello@campgroundwebdesigner.com.
Common questions
I already have a drone photo. Should I use it?
Yes, once, on the home page, with the park map beside it so the overhead and the map explain each other. Don't lead a site page or a cabin page with it, because a guest choosing a site needs the eye-level photo there, not the aerial.
Can I use photos that guests have posted?
Only with their written permission, and only if the photo still matches the property. Ask by message, keep the reply, and credit them in the caption if they want it. A guest's photo of a full loop at sunset is worth asking for.
What about people in the photos?
Ask anyone who is recognizable before you shoot, and again before it goes on the site. Kids at the playground need a parent's yes. If you can't get a yes, shoot the amenity from an angle that shows it in use without showing a face.
How should I send the photos?
As the original files, through a shared folder, not pasted into an email or sent by text. Keep the folder organized by loop or unit type, with the renamed files and the one-line captions in a plain text file beside them.
What if I only get through half the shot list?
Send what you have, with the list marked up to show which shots you got. Half a list shot in good light is more useful than the whole list shot at noon, and the missing half is what the second session of the year is for.
Canadian? The same three sizes in Canadian dollars are on the CAD pricing page.