# The photographs to take before the adjuster, the tow truck or anyone else arrives Shoot the whole unit before you shoot the damage. The set that survives a claim moves outward to inward and wide to close, with a scale reference in frame and nothing cropped. Most owners take eleven close ups of one dent and nothing that proves which vehicle it was on. ## Four corner shots, before anything else and before anything moves Stand at each of the four corners of the unit in turn, far enough back that the whole vehicle fits in the frame with air around it, and shoot from roughly chest height. Four frames, taken in sequence, going the same direction around the coach. Those four establish which vehicle this is, what condition the rest of it is in, where it was standing, and what the light was doing, and they are the frames a carrier uses to tie every subsequent close up to a single unit. Take them before you open a door, move a chair, sweep glass or let a tow operator connect anything. Position is evidence: a coach sitting with its awning half deployed and a branch across the roof tells a story that the same coach in a yard two days later cannot. If the incident happened somewhere identifiable, include enough background to place it. Shoot in the widest lens your phone offers for these four only, and switch back for everything after, because ultra wide glass distorts panel contour badly at close range. ## Put something of known size in the frame, every time A photograph of a crack has no size. The same image describes a hairline and a hand width equally well, and an estimator looking at it has to guess, which is how a repair line gets written short. Lay a tape measure along the damage, extended, with the numbers legible in the frame. A folding rule works, a credit card works at close range, and a coin works better than nothing, but a tape measure that reads in the frame is the one that removes all argument. Shoot each damaged area twice, once with the scale in frame and once without, because the clean frame is the one that shows surface texture and the measured frame is the one that sizes it. Keep the scale flat against the panel and parallel to the longest dimension of the damage. On a dent, run the tape across the widest point and take a second shot with the tape lying along the depth if there is any way to show it. Do not hold the tape yourself in a way that puts your hand over the damage. ## Wide, medium, close, in that order, for every damaged area Each damaged area gets three frames and they are taken in a fixed order. The wide frame shows the damage in the context of the whole panel and both adjacent panels, so an estimator can see where a repair would have to blend out to. The medium frame fills the frame with the damaged panel alone and the scale reference. The close frame sits eight to twelve inches off the surface and shows the actual failure: the fracture, the crushed core at the edge of a hole, the way a seam has opened. Then add a fourth frame that most owners skip, taken from a shallow angle along the panel with light raking across it. That is the frame that shows a deformation the flat on shot flattens out completely, and on a coach with a large uninterrupted sidewall it is often the only frame that proves the panel is no longer straight. Repeat the whole sequence for each separate area of damage rather than merging two areas into one set, and shoot them in a consistent order around the vehicle so the file reads in a logical direction. ## Roof shots from a ladder, not from the membrane Do not walk a roof to photograph it. An EPDM or TPO membrane over a compromised deck gives no warning before it goes, and the deck is exactly what is in question after a strike or a hail event. A wet membrane is also close to frictionless. The photographs are not worth a fall through a ceiling panel, and a footprint on a damaged area is a change to the evidence besides. Use the rear ladder if the unit has a sound one, climb to the top rung, hold on, and shoot along the roof plane with the camera held above your head at arm's length. Then move a step ladder to each side and repeat, so you get the roof from three or four vantage points. Keep the camera close to the roof plane rather than pointing down at it, because a low angle across the surface shows ponding, ripple and a lifted seam that a plan view hides. Photograph each penetration from the nearest vantage you have: air conditioner gasket, vents, skylight dome, refrigerator vent, antenna base, and both cap seams. ## The interior shots that prove water got in Water intrusion is argued on the interior, not the exterior, because the exterior shows an entry point and the interior shows a consequence. Shoot every ceiling panel seam, every upper cabinet corner, the wall above and below each window, the slide thresholds, and the floor at the base of each wall. Photograph the underside of every upper cabinet shelf, which is where a stain shows before the ceiling does. Stains photograph badly under interior lighting, so turn off the coach lights and use daylight through the windows where you can, or a torch held off to the side so the light rakes across the surface rather than hitting it flat. A phone flash straight on will wash a tea coloured stain out to nothing. Include a frame of any lifted trim, any cupped flooring, any soft ceiling panel with a finger pressed into it, and any mould at a corner. Then photograph the same areas the coach has that are dry and undamaged, because an unstained equivalent corner three feet away is what makes a stained one legible as damage. ## Data plates, labels and the stickers nobody reads until they matter Photograph the vehicle identification number plate, the manufacturer's data plate with weight ratings, the chassis manufacturer's plate, and the federal certification label. On an RV also shoot the appliance labels: the air conditioner data plate on the roof or in the ceiling assembly, the refrigerator model plate inside the door frame, the water heater and furnace labels in their access hatches, the generator serial plate, and the inverter or converter label. Each of those is a part number that an estimator would otherwise have to guess. Then shoot the roof membrane label if the unit has one, usually inside a cabinet or on the ladder, and the tyre sidewalls with the date codes legible. Photograph the sticker on the inside of a compartment door listing sealant types where the manufacturer supplies one. None of this feels urgent while a coach is sitting damaged, and all of it saves days later, because a part sourced from a photographed label arrives correct and a part sourced from a description sometimes does not. ## Odometer, generator hours, and why both go in the file Photograph the odometer with the ignition on so the figure is readable, and photograph the generator hour meter separately. Both are inputs to a valuation, and on a coach the two frequently disagree in a way that matters. A unit with modest mileage and eleven hundred generator hours has lived a different life from one with the same mileage and ninety, and a total loss valuation built only on mileage prices the wrong vehicle. Add a frame of the dash with any warning lamps illuminated after the incident, and a frame of the house monitor panel showing tank levels and battery state. Those two are the closest thing an RV has to a condition snapshot, and they are worth thirty seconds. If the unit will not power up, photograph that too: a dark panel with the battery disconnect in the on position is itself a finding, and it is easier to establish now than to reconstruct in three weeks. ## Shoot the surfaces you are about to lose Any panel that comes off takes information with it. Before a cap, a skin section, a slide face, a window frame or a compartment door is removed, photograph the joint it makes with everything around it: the seam line, the fastener pattern, the sealant bead width and colour, the gap at each end, and how the trim laps. Those frames are how the reassembly gets back to where it started, and they are also how you prove what the joint looked like before anyone touched it. This matters most where the repair is contested. An adjuster asking whether a seam was already open before the loss is asking a question that can only be answered by an image taken before the panel came off. It matters on custom work too: a coach with an owner built solar array, an added window or a retrofitted door has mating surfaces no manual documents. Take those frames yourself if you are removing anything before the unit arrives, and tell us if you have them, because they go straight into the repair order. ## Do not crop, do not filter, do not send screenshots Send original files. A photograph carries a capture timestamp, a device identifier and often a location, and that metadata is what establishes when the image was taken relative to the date of loss. Cropping in most phone galleries rewrites the file and can strip that data. A screenshot of a photograph discards it entirely and halves the resolution besides, which is why a set of screenshots is the least useful thing an owner can send. Turn any beautifying or scene enhancement mode off. Those modes smooth texture, and texture is the finding: a matt patch of oxidised gel coat, a stress crack in a lacquer film, the granular edge of a delaminated skin. Send by a method that transmits full size files rather than one that compresses attachments to fit a message. Check the date and time on your phone before you shoot if it has been off the network, because a wrong clock on an otherwise perfect set is a genuinely annoying thing to explain later. ## How many photographs is enough Four corners, then three or four frames per damaged area, then the roof set, then the interior set, then the labels. On a single panel incident that lands somewhere between thirty and fifty frames. On a coach with roof and interior involvement it is a hundred or more, and it should be. Storage is not the constraint and neither is our patience: the file with too many photographs in it has never once been a problem here, and the file with six has been a problem repeatedly. Six good frames, taken from each corner and close on the damage, are enough to start a real conversation before you drive up from Laguna Niguel, and the request form at /contact/schedule-evaluation/ exists for exactly that. The full set is what a claim runs on. Shoot the full set even if you only send six, because the moment to take the other forty passes the first time something moves. ## What a carrier actually does with your photographs In many cases the photographs become the estimate. Photo estimating routes a set of images to a desk estimator who writes a first number without seeing the vehicle, which is fast and cheap and for a car bumper usually close enough. On a coach it prices the visible half of the damage, because a camera cannot see the tube steel behind a sidewall, the crushed hat channel under a cap, or a slide rail that no longer sits square in its opening. That is the mechanism behind most supplements, and it is described in full at /insurance-help/supplements/. Your set does two things inside that process. It anchors the date, so damage found at teardown is provably additional rather than pre existing. And it gives an estimator the frames a photo estimate normally lacks, which shortens the first pass. What it does not do is settle anything by itself. Panels come off, we measure structure against published tolerance, we photograph again, and the second set is what a supplement is written against. Further reading on the documentation side is at /insurance-help/documenting-damage/, and the first 48 hours are covered at /insurance-help/after-an-accident/. ## Questions ### How many photographs of the damage does a carrier actually use? More than you think, and the wide ones matter most. An adjuster needs context frames showing the whole side of the unit, then mid range frames locating the damage on that side, then close frames with a tape or a coin in shot for scale. Shoot the undamaged corners too. A carrier arguing that a scuff predates the loss is arguing against your photograph set, and a set with no baseline gives that argument room. ### Does photographing the interior matter after an exterior impact? It matters more than the exterior set. A sidewall strike travels: cabinet stiles crack, a slide face racks out of square, a floor seam opens, and none of that is visible from outside. Photograph every cabinet face, the floor at each slide opening, and the ceiling seams, on the day it happens. Interior damage found in week three reads as a supplement. Interior damage photographed on day zero reads as part of the original loss. --- Source: https://ocrv.guru/the-center/guides/photographing-damage-before-anyone-arrives/ OCRV Center, 23281 La Palma Ave, Yorba Linda, CA 92887. (949) 799-3387. Serving Laguna Niguel, California. All work performed in shop. No mobile or roadside service. Licences: California Bureau of Automotive Repair ARD00288521; EPA CAL000367879. Published ranges are ranges, not quotes. Every figure traces to https://ocrv.guru/prices/.