How to photograph hail damage — documentation nobody can challenge

Good photo documentation of hail damage shows three things: that it is a specific vehicle, what condition the whole car is in, and how many dents each panel has. You achieve this by combining identification shots, overview photos from every side and photos of the panels in reflected light, in which every deformation is visible. An organised gallery assigned to the job is then hard to challenge.

Why such thorough photo documentation

Photos are evidence of what you recorded during the inspection. When the insurer's claims handler, the customer or your own manager asks where the dent count on the roof came from, the answer is a photo, not an assurance. With hail damage, where the estimate depends on the number and size of dents, a missing photo of one panel can open a discussion about the whole estimate.

Photos also protect you. They show the condition of the car before the repair, including damage unrelated to hail — previous repainting, scratches, chips. Without them it is hard to prove later that something was already there before the car came into the workshop.

Three types of photo you must have

Identification photos

Start with what links the documentation to a specific car:

• the VIN (on the windscreen, the pillar or a label),
• the number plate,
• the odometer,
• a shot in which the number plate is visible together with the damaged bodywork.

Without these shots, the damage photos could be attributed to any car of the same model and colour.

Overview photos

Walk round the car and take photos from every side and from the corners, so that the whole body is visible. Photograph the roof from a raised position — a step ladder or a platform — because from ground level you cannot show its surface. Overview shots show the scale of the damage and give context to the detailed photos.

Photos of panels and dents

This is the most important and the most difficult part. Every damaged panel should have:

1. a shot of the whole panel, from which it is immediately clear which panel it is,
2. a shot of the dents in reflected light, in which they can be counted,
3. close-ups of specific damage: larger dents, cracked paint, damaged mouldings, lights and glass.

Keep a fixed order of panels, the same as during the inspection. This makes it easier to compare the photos with the record in the technical assessment — more on the order of work itself in the article inspecting a car after hail.

How to show dents in a photo

Shallow hail dents simply disappear in a photo taken straight on in daylight. The camera needs contrast, and reflection provides it.

• Use a lamp or a reflective board. The lines of light reflected in the paint bend at every dent — that is what shows up in the photo, not the dip itself.
• Find the angle. Shoot at an angle at which the reflection of the lamp passes through the damaged area. Move a step if the dents are lost in the glare.
• Work under cover. Full sun and an overcast sky produce reflections that distort the image. Indoors, you control the light.
• Turn off digital zoom. It is better to move closer than to enlarge the image on the phone.
• Keep the focus on the paint. Phones like to focus on the lamp's reflection; tap the screen where the damage is.
• Show the scale on large dents. A ruler or an object held against the panel helps prove that a dent belongs in the 41–70 mm or above-70 mm band, not in the total of dents up to 40 mm.

If you are counting dents on a large panel, it often helps to take several photos of parts of the panel instead of one shot of the whole. Each photo then shows a smaller area, on which it is easier to count the damage. Take the photos in the same order as you count, so that when the estimate is checked it is easy to match the number recorded against the panel with what is visible in the gallery.

Common mistakes in photo documentation

The last point is the most common problem in practice. Large halls, underground garages and residential car parks often have no signal, and photos several megabytes in size take a long time to upload. In WE-PDR, photos are reduced on the phone to a size sufficient for damage documentation, upload in the background, and when there is no internet they wait in a queue on the device and go out automatically once the connection is restored. Details in the description of the damage photos and gallery feature.

Keeping the gallery in order and sharing photos

Photos are only valuable if they can be found quickly. Keep them in one place, assigned to a specific job and vehicle, not on the technician's phone, in a messaging app and on the office drive all at the same time.

When passing photos on, avoid sending dozens of attachments by email. Recipients' mailboxes have limits, and some files get lost along the way anyway. It is better to share a link to the gallery or attach selected photos to a document. In WE-PDR, selected photos go into the technical assessment PDF, and you share the whole job gallery with a single unguessable link, which the recipient opens in a browser without creating an account — see PDF documents and sending.

Checklist before leaving the car

1. VIN, number plate and odometer photographed.
2. Overview photos from every side and the corners, including the roof.
3. Every damaged panel has an overall shot and a shot of the dents in reflected light.
4. Larger dents, cracked paint, glass, lights and mouldings have close-ups.
5. Previous damage unrelated to hail is documented.
6. All photos are assigned to the right job and uploaded.

Complete photo documentation is one part of the claim file. What else is worth preparing for it is described in the article on hail damage claim documents.