After a leak, a break-in, a car accident or storm damage, the photos you take in the first hour are often the most important evidence in your claim. Insurers and loss adjusters want to see what happened, how bad it is, and that the damage is what you say it is, from when you say it happened.
Before you start
- Stay safe first. Don't go into damaged buildings or onto busy roads to take pictures.
- Photograph before you clean up or repair, wherever it's safe to wait. If you must make an emergency repair, photograph before and after.
- Check your policy or call your insurer: some ask for particular photos, videos or forms.
What to photograph
- The whole scene first. Wide shots of each room, the outside of the building or the whole vehicle, so the damage can be seen in context.
- Then each area of damage, close up, from more than one angle.
- Something for scale: a coin, a tape measure or a ruler next to cracks, stains and dents.
- The cause, if you can see it: the burst pipe, the broken window, the fallen tree.
- Serial numbers, model plates and labels on damaged or stolen electronics and appliances.
- Receipts, boxes and manuals for expensive items, if you still have them.
- For car accidents: all the vehicles, number plates, the road, signs and markings, and where everything ended up.
- A slow video walk-through, describing what you see. It catches things photos miss.
How to make your photos hard to dispute
- Keep the originals. Send the original files, not screenshots or heavily compressed copies, and don't edit them. Even brightening can raise questions.
- Show the date and place. A photo whose date can be confirmed is far more persuasive. A phone's date can be changed, so use a camera that stamps the verified time and address as you shoot.
- Make them checkable. Photos taken with Timesnap carry a code. The adjuster can check each one on timesnap.info and see the time, the place and whether anything was changed, even from a copy sent by email or WhatsApp.
- Keep everything together: photos, video, receipts, repair quotes and dated notes of what happened.
Take photos with the real time and place on them: get the free Timesnap camera.
Send it as one tidy file
Insurers often prefer one PDF to fifty separate attachments. Put the photos into a single PDF with Images to PDF, several to a page and in order, and if it's too big for email, shrink it with Compress PDF. Timesnap Pro can also make a PDF verification report for any photo.
Before anything happens: a home inventory
The best time to photograph your belongings is before you need to claim. Spend half an hour walking round your home: each room, the inside of wardrobes and cupboards, valuables close up with their serial numbers, and receipts for big purchases. Keep the photos in a cloud account so they survive a fire or a theft, and update them once a year.