You need professional photographs if what you sell is visible: food, finished jobs, interiors, products, or the people who turn up at the door. If your work cannot be photographed usefully, your money is better spent elsewhere.

A shoot for a service business usually takes an hour or two at your place. Your shop or yard, your van, your crew, and a few finished jobs. What you get back is a set of images sized for your website, your Google profile and social, not a hundred near identical frames you have to pick through.

The signal that you are ready is simple. If you have ever apologized for a photograph while sending it to a customer, you were ready a while ago.