What to Photograph Before You Call Anyone

Nearly everyone photographs damage wrong, and the mistake is the same one: too close.

A close up of a cracked panel proves there is a cracked panel. It proves nothing about extent, context, cause or anything else that determines a claim outcome.

The shots that matter, in order

1. The whole vehicle, all four sides. Before anything is moved. This establishes the condition of the vehicle generally, which matters later when someone asks whether other damage is related.

2. The whole damaged panel, square on, from about fifteen feet. This is the single most valuable photograph and almost nobody takes it. Fifteen feet, straight on, in even light. It shows extent, it shows how the panel is deformed relative to its neighbours, and it shows reflections, which reveal shape distortion that close ups hide entirely.

3. The same panel at a low angle along its length. Raking light down a panel makes waviness and deformation visible in a way nothing else does. Crouch at one end and shoot along the surface.

4. The damage area with a scale reference. A tape measure, a ruler, or failing that a familiar object. Extent claims are much stronger with a dimension in frame.

5. The surroundings and whatever caused it. The post, the vehicle, the tree, the dock, the hail on the ground. Cause matters enormously for coverage: sudden and accidental is covered, gradual is not, and a photograph of the object involved is the cleanest possible evidence of an event.

6. The interior at the same location as the exterior damage. Both sides of a wall. If there is any staining, sagging or displacement inside, that is a finding, and it is much more persuasive photographed at the same time as the exterior than discovered three weeks later.

7. Any pre existing damage elsewhere, deliberately. This feels counterproductive and it is not. Documenting what was already wrong protects you, because it stops a carrier attributing unrelated old damage to the new loss and using it to argue about the whole claim.

Conditions

Even light. Overcast is ideal. Direct sun creates hard shadows that hide deformation and blow out highlights on white gelcoat.

Do not use a flash on fiberglass. It produces a hotspot that obscures exactly what you are trying to show.

Shoot more than you need. Storage is free and access to the undisturbed scene is not repeatable.

Do not crop or edit anything. Original files, with their metadata intact. An unedited photograph with a timestamp is evidence. An edited one invites questions.

Timing, which is the part people get wrong

Immediately. Before the vehicle is moved, before it is cleaned, before a tarp goes on it, and before you have talked to anybody.

There is a natural instinct to tidy up before documenting, and it destroys evidence. A tarp over a damaged roof is sensible and it should go on after the photographs, not before.

If the vehicle has to be moved for safety, photograph it where it is first, even badly. A poor photograph of the undisturbed scene beats a perfect one of the relocated vehicle.

What not to bother with

Dozens of close ups of the same crack. Two is enough. The fifteen foot shot is worth ten of them.

Video walkarounds instead of photographs. Video is fine as a supplement and poor as primary evidence, because individual frames are low resolution and adjusters work from stills.

Photographs after any repair has started. Not useless, but they are no longer documentation of the loss. Anything photographed post disassembly is teardown documentation, which is a separate and also valuable thing.

What happens to them

On our jobs, photographs you supply go into the file alongside ours. We photograph on intake before anything is touched, and again at every stage of teardown and repair, and you receive that package.

That combination, your evidence of the event plus our evidence of the findings, is what supports a supplement. Covered separately, but the short version is that a carrier approving additional scope wants to see the finding at the moment it was exposed, and a photograph with a tape measure in frame ends most of those conversations.

The one sentence version

Stand fifteen feet back, shoot the whole panel square on and again at a rake, put a tape measure in one frame, get the interior at the same spot, and do it before you touch anything.