photo-order

---
name: photo-order
description: Names the six pictures a venue website actually needs, gives each one a job, checks what you already have against the six, and returns the shot list for the gaps with the consent, the alt text, the file weight and the honesty check on every one. Use before a photographer quotes you, when the site is full of pictures and nobody books, or when the photographs are three years old and the chef has left.
---

# Six pictures, each with a job, in the order a stranger decides in

You give this every photograph currently on your website, the menu, and a note of who works there now. You get back the six slots named and ordered, each of your existing pictures matched to a slot or retired, a shot list for the slots you cannot fill, the alt text for each one, the consent position for every identifiable person, the file weight each picture must come in under, and the trigger that tells you when a slot has gone stale. It does not take the photographs, it does not retouch anything, and it will not keep a picture of food you no longer serve.

## What it does

1. **Name the six slots before you look at a single photograph, and never roll them up.** Slot one, the room at the busiest hour you genuinely trade, so a stranger knows what kind of place this is. Slot two, the outside with the sign and enough street to recognise it from, so they can find the door. Slot three, the dish you sell most of, photographed as it leaves the pass. Slot four, one real person who works there now, named. Slot five, the one thing you have that the places nearby do not. Slot six, the table or space a group is deciding about. Six named slots, each with one job: recognise, find, want, trust, choose, book. A folder called "gallery" is not a slot and never becomes one.

2. **Match every photograph you already have to exactly one slot, and retire the rest without negotiating.** Go through the site image by image. For each one, write which slot it fills and why, or write retire. Most independent venue sites hold between twenty and sixty images, of which four or five are doing any work at all. Nielsen Norman Group's eyetracking finding is the reason to be ruthless: "users pay attention to information-carrying images that show content that's relevant to the task at hand" and they "ignore purely decorative images that don't add real content to the page". A sunset, a wine glass against a window and a close-up of cutlery are not answering anybody's question.

3. **Do not fill a slot with a stock photograph, and particularly not slot four.** The same NN/g work is direct about this: users "ignore stock photos of generic people", while photographs of real staff are studied. In one example the participant "spent 10% more time viewing the portrait photos than reading the biographies, even though the bios consumed 316% more space", and the article's conclusion is that "the key point is that these are real people who actually work at the company". A stock photograph of a smiling chef in a venue where nobody looks like that is not neutral, it is the first thing on the page that is not true, and the reader does not know which of the other things are.

4. **Check the food photograph against what actually leaves the kitchen tonight.** CAP Code rule 3.1 requires that "marketing communications must not materially mislead or be likely to do so", and rule 3.11 that they "must not mislead consumers by exaggerating the capability or performance of a product". A burger built for the camera with a different bun, a portion that is a third bigger than the plate that goes out, a garnish the kitchen stopped doing, and a dish that has been off the menu since spring are all the same failure. The test is simple and nobody applies it: hold the photograph up next to a plate as it actually comes out and decide whether a customer who ordered from the picture would feel misled.

5. **Settle the consent and data protection position on every identifiable person before anything is published.** The Information Commissioner's Office puts it plainly: "If someone can be recognised from a photograph it's usually considered their personal data. As with any use of personal data, choosing your valid reason or 'lawful basis' is essential." The ICO also notes that legitimate interests "can be relied on when you're doing something outside the scope of any public functions and processing data in a way people might expect or you can justify. This can include promotion and marketing", and that whatever the basis, "you must tell people upfront what you're going to do with their personal data" and "where possible, you should also still give them the chance to opt out". Staff, guests in the background, children: each needs a recorded position and a named date.

6. **Write the alt text for each of the six at the same time as you choose them.** WCAG 2.2 success criterion 1.1.1 Non-text Content, Level A, requires that "all non-text content that is presented to the user has a text alternative that serves the equivalent purpose". Equivalent purpose is the phrase that decides what to write. For slot two the purpose is finding the door, so the alt text names the street and what the frontage looks like. For slot three the purpose is wanting the dish, so it names the dish as it appears on the menu. Decorative images get an empty alternative so a screen reader skips them rather than announcing a filename. Write the alt text into the shot list, not afterwards, because afterwards never comes.

7. **Give every slot a weight limit and a format, because a beautiful homepage that takes nine seconds is a closed door.** Google's mobile guidance asks for good quality without waste: "provide high quality images", "don't use images that are too small or have a low resolution on the mobile site", "use a supported format for images" and "don't use URLs that change every time the page loads for images". Google's page experience self-assessment asks whether "your pages have good Core Web Vitals" and whether "your content display well on mobile devices". Set a ceiling per image, use a modern format, size each one for the space it actually occupies rather than uploading straight off the camera, and check the total weight of the first screen separately from the rest.

8. **Put them in the order a stranger decides in, and put slot one in the first screen.** Recognise, find, want, trust, choose, book. Slot one belongs on the first screen because it answers the first question anybody asks, and nothing else competes with it there. Slots two to six follow in that order down the page, each next to the words it supports rather than collected into a gallery at the bottom. A gallery is a place photographs go to be scrolled past. A photograph beside the sentence it proves is doing work. Where a slot is empty, leave it empty rather than filling it with the nearest available picture, and put the gap on the shot list instead.

9. **Date every photograph and write down what makes it stale.** Slot three goes stale when the dish changes or the plating changes. Slot four goes stale the day that person leaves, and a departed chef smiling on a homepage is the version of this that embarrasses a venue publicly. Slot one goes stale when the room is redecorated or the furniture changes. Slot two goes stale when the sign or the frontage changes. Write the date each was taken, the trigger that retires it, and who is responsible for noticing. Then put a review in the diary twice a year, because the trigger that nobody owns is the trigger nobody pulls.

## Then it checks

1. All six slots are named, each carries its one job, and no slot holds more than one photograph or is described as a gallery.
2. Every photograph currently on the site is matched to exactly one slot or marked retire, with the reason written, and no image is left unclassified.
3. No slot is filled with a stock photograph, and slot four names the person in the picture and confirms they work there now.
4. The food photograph has been compared against a plate as it currently leaves the kitchen, and the dish is on the menu as published today.
5. Every identifiable person in every published photograph has a recorded lawful basis, a record of having been told, a recorded opt-out position and a date, and any person who cannot be identified or contacted is listed rather than published.
6. Every slot carries its alt text, its file weight ceiling, its format, the date the photograph was taken and the trigger that retires it, with no cell left blank.

Any check fails: name it, redo that step once. Failed twice: say what is wrong and stop.

## Rules
- Public information only.
- Never invent a fact, a number or a quote.
- Anything sent in someone's name says whose name it is. A photograph of a member of staff goes to that member of staff before it goes on the website.
- Never publish a recognisable photograph of a person without a recorded lawful basis, a record that they were told, and a date. This includes staff who have left, guests in the background of a room shot and anybody under eighteen, and where the position cannot be established the picture is not used. This rule has no exception for a photograph the owner likes.
- Never use a stock photograph to fill a slot. An empty slot with an entry on the shot list is honest, and a stock kitchen with somebody else's staff in it is the first lie on the page.
- Never publish a photograph of a dish that is not on the menu today, and never publish one built differently from the plate that goes out. Retire it and put a reshoot on the list.
- Never generate a photograph of the venue, the food or the people with an image model, and never present a generated image as a photograph of this business. A picture of a room that does not exist is a misleading action whatever it cost to make.
- Never state a figure for how many more bookings a photograph produces, or what proportion of visitors look at pictures first. No published figure exists for a single independent UK venue and an owner who budgets against a borrowed number will overspend on a photographer or underspend on the kitchen.
- This output is a working document prepared for the owner to check against their current menu, their current team and their own data protection records before anything is published, and for their solicitor or data protection adviser to check the lawful basis for any photograph of an identifiable person. It applies published advertising rules, published accessibility criteria and published data protection guidance to a set of images. It is not legal advice and it does not confirm that any photograph may lawfully be published.

## Built from
- Jakob Nielsen, Nielsen Norman Group, "Photos as Web Content", https://www.nngroup.com/articles/photos-as-web-content/, published 1 November 2010, read 16 September 2026: the information-carrying against decorative finding in step 2, and the stock photograph finding and the real-people result in step 3.
- Committee of Advertising Practice, CAP Code (Edition 12), Section 3 "Misleading advertising", https://www.asa.org.uk/type/non_broadcast/code_section/03.html, no publication date shown on the page, read 16 September 2026: rule 3.1 on materially misleading communications and rule 3.11 on exaggeration, which is the test in step 4.
- Information Commissioner's Office, "Taking photographs: data protection advice for schools", https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/advice-for-small-organisations/news-blogs-and-events/blogs/taking-photographs-data-protection-advice-for-schools/, no publication date shown on the page, read 16 September 2026: the statement that a recognisable person in a photograph is personal data, the legitimate interests description covering promotion and marketing, and the tell-people-upfront and offer-an-opt-out expectations, in step 5.
- World Wide Web Consortium, "Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2", W3C Recommendation 12 December 2024, https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG22/, read 16 September 2026: success criterion 1.1.1 Non-text Content and the equivalent purpose standard, in step 6.
- Google, "Mobile site and mobile-first indexing best practices", Google Search Central, https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/mobile/mobile-sites-mobile-first-indexing, last updated 10 December 2025, read 16 September 2026: the image quality, resolution, format and stable URL instructions in step 7.
- Google, "Understanding page experience in Google Search results", Google Search Central, https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/page-experience, last updated 10 December 2025, read 16 September 2026: the self-assessment questions on Core Web Vitals and mobile display used as the weight test in step 7.

# photo-order

## You are given
Every photograph currently published on this UK hospitality business website, as files, each with its address on the site, the page and position it appears at, its file type, byte size, pixel dimensions and existing alternative text exactly as written. Claude's assignment of each photograph to exactly one of the six named slots, or to retire, with the reason written for each. The six slots in order: `room at the busiest hour`, `outside with the sign`, `the dish you sell most of`, `one real person who works here`, `the thing nobody else nearby has`, `the table a group is choosing`. Claude's shot list for any slot that cannot be filled from existing photographs, and the alt text Claude has written for each slot. The menu exactly as published today. The current staff list with the name of any person appearing in any photograph. The owner's data protection records: the lawful basis relied on for each identifiable person, whether and when they were told, and whether an opt-out was offered and taken. The date each photograph was taken, where known. The weight ceiling and image format the owner or their developer has set.

## Produce
Write into a `./photo-order-output/` folder:

1. `slots.csv` with these columns in this order: `slot_no`, `slot_name`, `job`, `filled`, `image_ref`, `alt_text_verbatim`, `weight_ceiling_bytes`, `required_format`, `date_taken`, `staleness_trigger`, `owner_of_slot`. Exactly six rows, `slot_no` 1 to 6 in the order given above. `job` is exactly one of `recognise`, `find`, `want`, `trust`, `choose`, `book`, one each. `filled` is `yes` or `no`, and every `no` row has an empty `image_ref` and a matching entry in `shot-list.md`.
2. `existing-images.csv` with columns: `image_ref`, `file_address`, `page`, `position_on_page`, `file_type`, `file_size_bytes`, `pixel_width`, `pixel_height`, `existing_alt_verbatim`, `assigned_slot`, `verdict`, `reason_verbatim`. `image_ref` is IM001 upward. `assigned_slot` is 1 to 6 or empty. `verdict` is exactly one of `keep in slot`, `retire`, `no verdict supplied`. Every image published on the site appears exactly once and none is omitted.
3. `honesty-check.csv` with columns: `image_ref`, `slot_no`, `subject_type`, `is_stock_image`, `is_generated_image`, `dish_on_menu_today`, `matches_plate_as_served`, `person_still_works_here`, `rule_cited`, `verdict`. `subject_type` is exactly one of `room`, `exterior`, `food`, `drink`, `person`, `other`. `rule_cited` is exactly one of `CAP Code 3.1`, `CAP Code 3.11`, `none`. `verdict` is exactly one of `publish`, `retire`, `reshoot`.
4. `people-and-consent.csv` with columns: `image_ref`, `person_name_or_description`, `identifiable`, `role`, `lawful_basis_recorded`, `told_upfront`, `date_told`, `opt_out_offered`, `opt_out_taken`, `under_18`, `clear_to_publish`. `role` is exactly one of `staff`, `former staff`, `owner`, `guest`, `supplier`, `unknown`. `clear_to_publish` is `yes` only where `identifiable` is `no`, or where `lawful_basis_recorded`, `told_upfront` and `date_told` are all present and `opt_out_taken` is `no`. Every other case is `no`.
5. `alt-text.csv` with columns: `slot_no`, `image_ref`, `purpose_of_image`, `alt_text_verbatim`, `alt_characters`, `alt_is_empty`, `marked_decorative`, `repeats_filename`, `criterion_cited`. `criterion_cited` is `WCAG 2.2 SC 1.1.1` on every row. Alt text is copied verbatim from the input and is never written or edited by Codex.
6. `weight-and-format.csv` with columns: `image_ref`, `slot_no`, `file_size_bytes`, `weight_ceiling_bytes`, `over_ceiling_by_bytes`, `file_type`, `required_format`, `format_matches`, `pixel_width`, `displayed_width`, `oversized_by_factor`, `url_is_stable`. Plus a final row with `image_ref` of `FIRST SCREEN TOTAL` carrying the summed byte weight of every image in the first screen.
7. `shot-list.md` - one numbered entry per unfilled slot, copied verbatim from the input: the slot name, its job, what is to be photographed, when, who must be present, and the consent to be obtained beforehand. Written empty if no shot list was supplied.
8. `gaps.md` - a numbered list of: any slot unfilled; any published image with no verdict; any stock or generated image found in any slot; any food image whose dish is not on today's menu; any person image where the person no longer works there; any identifiable person with `clear_to_publish` of `no`; any slot with no alt text, no date taken or no staleness trigger; any image over its weight ceiling; and the first screen total weight.

## Rules
- Codex sorts, measures and records. It never invents, never rewords the owner's copy, and never makes the judgement that was supplied to it. Which slot a photograph fills, whether it is honest and whether it may be published are all decisions that arrive with the input.
- Never write, edit, shorten or improve alt text, a shot list entry or a reason. Where any of them is missing, the cell is left empty and the fact is listed in `gaps.md`.
- Never mark a person `clear_to_publish` as `yes` without a recorded lawful basis, a record that they were told and the date they were told, all present in the row. A person recorded as under 18, as a guest with no record, or as unknown is never `yes`.
- Never generate, edit, retouch, crop, upscale or composite an image, and never create an image of the venue, the food or the people by any means. Any image supplied as generated is recorded as such and routed to `gaps.md`.
- Never assign more than one photograph to a slot and never create a seventh slot, a gallery row or a category. Six rows, no more.
- Never write a figure for bookings gained, engagement or click-through attributed to photographs. No such figure exists for a single independent UK venue.
- File sizes and pixel dimensions are read from the files themselves and displayed widths from the served page, never estimated. Where a displayed width cannot be read, `oversized_by_factor` is left empty and the row goes to `gaps.md`.
- Every quoted string is copied exactly, including punctuation, capitalisation and any emoji, and a person's name is copied exactly as the owner supplied it.
- Use British English, GBP and DD Month YYYY dates. No em dashes in any file you write, and any supplied text containing one is recorded verbatim and flagged in `gaps.md`.
- Every file ends with this line: this is a working document prepared for the owner to check against their current menu, their current team and their own data protection records, and for their solicitor or data protection adviser to check the lawful basis for any photograph of an identifiable person. It applies supplied rules to a set of images and is not legal advice or a confirmation that any photograph may lawfully be published.

## Return
The absolute path of each file written and the row count of each CSV. Which of the six slots are filled and which are not, by name. The number of photographs published on the site, how many kept and how many retired. Every stock and every generated image found, by reference. Every food image whose dish is not on today's menu, and every person image where the person no longer works there. Every identifiable person whose `clear_to_publish` is `no`, with the reason. Every slot missing its alt text, its date taken or its staleness trigger. The number of images over their weight ceiling, the largest single file, and the first screen total weight in bytes. The number of shot list entries. And the `gaps.md` item count.