Most dealerships have a photo count target and no photo list. The result is predictable. Two people shoot the same model on the same day and produce two completely different sets, because nobody ever wrote down what the set is supposed to contain.
This is the list. Twenty four shots, in order, with the reason each one exists. Use it as it stands or cut it to suit your inventory, but write it down and make everyone shoot the same one.
Why order matters as much as content
A buyer does not look at your photos as a gallery. They scroll them as a sequence, and they make decisions early.
The first image decides whether they open the listing at all. The next few decide whether the car stays on their shortlist. Everything after that is reassurance, which matters a great deal, but only once the first decisions have gone your way.
Shoot in a fixed order and you get two things. Buyers get a walkthrough that answers questions in the order they occur to them. Your team gets a routine that is faster than deciding what to shoot next, every car, every time.
Exterior: shots 1 to 10
1. Front three quarter, driver's side. This is the hero. Same angle on every car, car filling the frame, wheels turned slightly towards the camera. If you fix only one shot in your entire process, fix this one.
2. Side profile, driver's side. Shows the shape and the length. Shoot square on, not at an angle, with the car centred.
3. Rear three quarter, driver's side. Completes the first half of the walkaround.
4. Straight rear. Badges, exhaust, tailgate. Buyers use this to confirm the trim and engine.
5. Rear three quarter, passenger side.
6. Side profile, passenger side. Yes, both sides. Leaving one out reads as hiding something, even when it is not.
7. Front three quarter, passenger side.
8. Straight front. Grille, lights, bumper. Pairs with shot 4 for trim confirmation.
9. Wheels. One clear shot of a front wheel showing the design and the tyre. Alloy condition is one of the first things a buyer checks in person, so answer it early.
10. Roof or overhead detail if relevant. Panoramic roof, rails, aerial. Skip it if the car has nothing to show.
That is a complete circuit. A buyer who sees these ten knows what the car looks like and does not need to ask for more exterior images.
Interior: shots 11 to 19
11. Driver's seat from the open door. The single most important interior shot. It shows the seat, the door card, the dash and the general condition in one frame.
12. Dashboard and centre console, from the rear seat. The wide interior view.
13. Instrument cluster with the mileage visible. Lit up, engine on, mileage readable. Buyers specifically look for this and get suspicious when it is missing.
14. Infotainment screen, powered on. Showing the home screen, not a blank panel.
15. Centre console and gear selector.
16. Front seats from the passenger door.
17. Rear seats. From the open rear door, showing legroom.
18. Boot, empty, with the parcel shelf in place.
19. Boot with the floor lifted, showing the spare or the repair kit. Small detail, disproportionately reassuring.
Detail and feature shots: 20 to 22
Three shots that depend on the car. Pick whatever this specific vehicle has that the one next to it does not.
Heated seat controls. A towbar. Badge denoting trim or engine. Upgraded wheels. A panoramic roof open. Service book. Two keys laid out together.
This is where a listing stops being generic. Two identical Golfs are separated by the fact that one listing showed the extras and the other did not.
Condition shots: 23 to 24
23 and 24. Any damage, clearly photographed. A scratch, a kerbed wheel, a worn bolster, a stone chip, a mark on the boot sill.
This is the section dealerships skip, and skipping it is a mistake that costs more than the damage does.
A buyer who finds a scratch you did not show does not just lose interest in that car. They stop trusting the store, and they tell people. A buyer who sees the scratch in the listing and comes anyway has already accepted it. You have pre-qualified them, and nobody is renegotiating on the forecourt.
Put condition shots at the end, deliberately. They are not a confession, they are the part of the listing that makes everything above it credible.
What to leave out
Duplicates at slightly different angles. If two photos answer the same question, keep the better one.
Anything taken in bad light because you were in a hurry. One badly exposed frame in the middle of a good set undoes the set.
Filler. Close-ups of the badge on three different panels. The same wheel four times. Photos added to reach a number are the photos buyers scroll past, and they push your good shots further down the sequence.
Anything showing another customer's car, your staff, or a registration you have not masked. Check the background before you shoot, not after.
Making it stick
A shot list only works if everyone uses the same one.
Print it. Put it where cars get photographed. Number the shots so the person shooting can count rather than remember. If you run more than one rooftop, the list has to be identical across all of them, otherwise your group looks like several different businesses to anyone browsing more than one store.
The goal is not that every photo is beautiful. It is that every car gets the same twenty four, in the same order, so a buyer comparing two of your listings is comparing the cars rather than the photography.
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