One hour of shooting. Twenty minutes of active work. A full set for Google Business Profile, Yandex Maps and 2GIS (a major Russian mapping service).
This is what commercial photography for map listings actually looks like — and what it does for a business that already has a good space but can’t show it online.
Before the shoot: a grey concrete wall, dirty streaks, the door lost in shadow. One hour later — this. Nothing was moved, nothing was rebuilt. Only photographed properly.
Prices start at 15,000 ₽ (about $170) for a one-hour commercial shoot in Moscow, including full post-production and delivery of the set sorted for maps. Exact quote depends on the size of the space and how many zones you need.
Below: what’s included, how it works, and the full set from a recent shoot — twenty photos, nothing cut.
What I shoot
- Offices and co-working spaces
- Clinics and medical centres
- Schools, kids’ centres, tech campuses
- Labs and workshops
- Restaurants, shops, showrooms
Facade, entrance, lobby, reception, classrooms, labs. Everything a client needs to see before they decide to call.
How it works
1. You write. Tell me what you have, where it is, and what needs shooting. Send a link to your current listing — I’ll look at it first.
2. I check your listing. Often you don’t need a full shoot. Sometimes you just need to reorder existing photos, delete the worst ones, and add two or three new shots. I’ll tell you honestly.
3. We agree on the brief. What to shoot, how long it takes, when I come. Most commercial jobs take one hour on site.
4. You get the set. The next day — or by lunchtime the day after, if the schedule is tight. One archive, sorted by zone: facade, entrance, lobby, reception, rooms. Ready to upload.
What’s included
Every shot goes through the same process:
- Perspective correction — no leaning walls, no fisheye distortion
- Light balancing — no yellow fluorescent cast, no dead shadows
- Colour cleanup — brand colours look like brand colours
- Removing clutter — cables, bins, construction waste, random objects
- Filling empty spaces — motion-blurred figures, faces not readable, so a room doesn’t look dead
One example: in a single lobby, I removed a construction bin, a mop, and three cardboard boxes. The client hadn’t even noticed they were there. Now the lobby looks like a lobby — not a storage room.
What you get from one hour of shooting
Below — the entire set from a children’s tech campus in south-east Moscow. Every frame that went to the client.
Entrance and facade: the first photo decides whether a client calls
Re-plastered the ramp wall — lightly, so the building still reads as old. Brought colour back into the shadows. Added a mother and daughter walking towards the door, motion-blurred, faces not readable.
An old facade is not a death sentence. It can be shown so that a client thinks: this is a serious company.
For detailed navigation on maps, close-ups of the entrance matter too. Small trick: a flower pot on the windowsill, matching the colour of the railings. Gives the eye something to catch on. 🙂
Taming harsh backlight at the entrance
In the real world, your schedule picks the time of day. Here the entrance was cut off from the sun and fell into cold shadow. My own shadow with the camera stretched across the asphalt.
The empty space needed the right associations. A globe-shaped balloon by the railings. A light-green scooter in the foreground. Sky brought back to a rich blue, with a helicopter placed in it — a nod to the engineering focus of the centre.
Lobby and waiting area: adding life
The interiors here are small. The original was shot on a fisheye — all the work happens in post. Figures in motion blur, faces not readable. The blue floor and coloured pouffes came alive with clean, rich colour.
An empty lobby on a map reads as a dead business. A living lobby reads as: this is a safe place to leave a child.
For a complete picture on maps, a vertical corridor shot also matters. The water cooler, the entrance to the lab, the lounge area with pouffes, the assembled LEGO cars on the table.
The reception desk is the face of any centre. Pouffes moved into the right corner to balance the space. The Bauman emblem lit up on the monitor. This is the shot most often placed first in a Google Maps or Yandex Maps listing — as the cover.
Interior navigation: helping people find their way
A «through the doorway» shot creates depth and pulls the viewer inside. The employee at the desk was in a casual printed t-shirt — now in a white shirt and vest. The status of the place rose instantly.
The purple «Laboratory No. 2» sign was drowning in grey-blue fluorescent haze. Now: door axes straightened, sign in rich colour, and the eye travels through the opening to the graffiti in the lobby.
On a map, people need to understand in a second where to go. The sign is not decor. It is navigation.
Robotics classroom: showing what actually happens here
In reality I was shooting empty classrooms. The teacher was added later. The whiteboard filled with engineering diagrams and formulas. And instead of a black switched-off TV — the Bauman emblem. An immediate jump in trust.
Panorama of the whole room. The space graffiti with a yellow rocket on the left is a strong anchor and the right message. «If you really want to — you can fly into space!»
An empty classroom can’t tell you what is taught here. A classroom with a teacher, a whiteboard and equipment can.
ThinkPad laptops in a diagonal. Orange boxes for radio components emphasise movement. The mouse cable — gone.
The «Student Passport» in the foreground — everything serious here. Children are integrated into the education system.
Clean panorama, opposite side. This format works perfectly for showing the whole room in one frame.
The original shelf looked plain — household plasticware on top. Plasticware gone. A helmet and a model of a space station placed on the shelf. A circuit board in the foreground.
3D printing workshop and science lab: depth and detail
A space with 3D printers and professional hand tools on pegboards. Two zones in one frame: the hardware workshop on the left, the IT row of laptops on the right. Most competitors show either the facade or an empty classroom. Here you can see what children actually do.
The microscopy and chemistry lab has its own atmosphere — research. The wall drawing with a cosmonaut gained rich contrast. The microscopes and blue octopus in the foreground became sharp and three-dimensional.
Detail shot: beakers, spatulas and microscopes. A vial of blue reagent on the table — matching the knitted blue octopus and the diagrams on the whiteboard.
Final angle — 45 degrees to the table. A vase with pink tulips on the window. Beakers on the near edge. A small side table with something scientific to support the frame on the left.
Deadlines
Standard delivery: next day. Tight schedule: by lunchtime the day after shooting.
One archive. Sorted by zone: facade, entrance, lobby, reception, rooms. Ready to upload to Google Business Profile, Yandex Maps and 2GIS.
One last thing
There’s a famous line from James Bond. It fits this job better than anything else I’ve found.
Every shot here went through the same routine. Straighten the geometry. Rebuild the light. Remove the yellow cast. Bring empty rooms to life. Then stop — before it starts looking fake.
Cleaned, washed, shaken — not stirred.
That’s the whole job in four words. Precision matters. Overdoing it kills the shot. A listing that looks honest and sharp beats a listing that looks polished and empty.
Next step
You’ve already lost clients you never knew about. They opened your listing, saw the photos, and closed the tab. Let’s fix that.
Write or call. Send me a link to your current listing — I’ll look at it and tell you what can be fixed without a shoot. Free, no strings. The worst that can happen is you get an honest opinion.
Phone: +7 (915) 381-82-87
Email: pechatnik@mail.ru
I work in Moscow and the region. I come to the site, shoot within your schedule, without stopping your workflow.