SektorCepte · 2026-10-26
What the Cover Photo Should Say
The cover is the wide frame at the top. On a phone the edge is cropped. The frame should show the place and the door in one look.
The cover is the wide frame at the top of the profile. On a phone the edges are cropped. Writing you placed at the edge disappears. The frame should answer two things at once. What this place is, and which door to enter. A cafe used a poster full of words. On the phone only a thin slice of the middle remained. They replaced it at opening time, without glare, with the front tables and the street sign. People recognised the door. The sentences on the poster left, and the threshold stayed. The cover is not a notice board. The cover is a picture of the threshold you will walk through.
1. Put up the front, with the sign sharp, shot from the pavement the customer will use.
Shoot in daylight. Night light paints the sign, daylight lets it be read. Let the door leaf look as it does on an ordinary day, open or shut.
2. Do not use a stock sunset, a flyer, or a poster full of words.
Those crop badly and say nothing about your door. A ready-made view is not your street. The customer is looking for the threshold, not for a view.
3. If the shop is in a passage or behind a courtyard, let a landmark into the frame.
The bakery awning, the mosque wall, or the corner grocer's canopy is enough. The landmark shows the way without shouting the address. Give the landmark as a visible thing, not as writing.
4. When the front changes, change the cover too.
A new sign, a new colour, scaffolding that has come down. An old cover promises the old door. A person arrives at a photo that still has scaffolding, the scaffolding is gone, and they still think they are in the wrong place.
5. After you upload, check the crop on your own phone.
If the sign is cut off, step back and shoot again. If a band of writing falls outside the frame, do not put that band on in the first place. The crop is not the frame you saw on the desk.
The cafe now stands in the opening light, with the street sign readable. The poster full of words is gone. People can describe the door from the photo. The menu board inside is not on the cover, because that board could not be read on the phone. The menu stays inside, the door stays outside.
Shoot the cover once more at the start of the season. If a summer awning is still in a winter photo, the person who arrives looks for the awning. If a wet winter pavement sits on the summer cover, the shop looks abandoned. Change the wide image on the website the same week. If the profile shows the new door and the site shows the old one, the customer is left between two thresholds. Let the owner shoot it, not a poster file sent from far away. The poster in the file becomes writing again. The threshold stays real only if it is shot from in front of the threshold.