Rule one: stay off the roof
Nearly every photograph in this guide can be taken from the ground, from a ladder set at the eave, from a pole, or from a drone. None of them is worth a fall. A hail-struck asphalt roof sheds granules, and loose granules on a slope behave like ball bearings. The roof is also usually still wet at exactly the moment you most want to look at it.
Your options, in rough order of preference:
- From the ground, zoomed. Stand back far enough to get the whole slope in frame, then use the telephoto lens for detail. Optical zoom holds up; digital zoom past a couple of steps turns bruising into mush.
- From a ladder, at the eave, without stepping onto the deck. Set the base one foot out for every four feet of height, extend the ladder at least three feet above the eave so you have something to hold, have someone foot it, and keep your belt buckle between the rails instead of reaching sideways. OSHA's ladder guidance is written for job sites, but the physics are identical in your driveway.
- On a pole. A phone clamp on a painter's extension pole, recording video and walked slowly along the eave, covers a low slope better than most people expect. Pull stills from the video afterward.
- By drone. Flying your own drone recreationally means following the FAA's rules for recreational flyers, including registration and the free safety test. If you pay somebody to fly for you, that is a commercial operation and the pilot needs a Part 107 remote pilot certificate. Ask to see it.
- By hiring it out. Sometimes the right answer is to pay someone with a ladder and a certificate of insurance. What that costs, and when free is genuinely free, is covered in what a roof inspection should cost.
Downed lines, standing water and active weather are worse hazards than a delayed photo. Wait for daylight and dry ground. Damage does not disappear overnight, and adjusters do not expect heroics.
What you actually need
A phone, a stick of carpenter's chalk or a lumber crayon, a coin, a tape measure, and a notepad. That is the entire kit.
The coin matters more than it sounds. Adjusters and contractors size hail impacts against familiar objects, and a coin in the frame turns a picture of a dark smudge into a measurable observation. Useful diameters: a penny is 0.75 inch, a nickel is 0.835 inch, and a quarter is 0.955 inch, which is why the National Weather Service treats quarter-size hail, one inch, as the severe threshold. A tape measure works too and is harder to argue with, but a coin is always in your pocket.
Our interactive photo checklist is the same nine shots as a tickable list you can carry outside on your phone, with a counter so you know what you still owe yourself.
The nine shots
1. Wide elevations, with the address visible
One photo of each side of the house, taken far enough back to show the whole elevation, roof to grade. In at least one of them, get the house number in frame, or shoot the mailbox and the front door number as separate establishing photos. This is the shot that ties the entire file to your property rather than a property. If a claim is later handled by someone who has never stood in your yard, these are the photos that orient them.
2. Each roof slope, framed whole
Every slope, not just the ones you think were hit. Hail comes in on a wind vector, so a north-facing slope can be destroyed while the south face looks new. That contrast is evidence, and you only get it if you photographed the clean slopes too. Name the slope in your notes as you go: front, rear, left, right, or by compass direction if the house is oddly oriented.
3. The chalked test square
The standard unit of a roof inspection is a ten-foot by ten-foot area, one square. Adjusters mark one on each slope and count impacts inside it, because a per-square hit count is what drives a repair-versus-replace decision. If you can safely reach a slope from the eave, chalk a square, circle every impact inside it with chalk, and photograph the whole square with the circles visible. If you cannot reach it, chalk a square on a low slope, a porch roof or a garage and photograph that. A drone photo of a chalked square is very good evidence.
4. One impact, close, with a scale marker
Pick a clear impact and shoot it tight, coin or tape in frame, from directly above rather than at an angle. Take three or four of these across different slopes. This is the shot that establishes size, and size is what connects your roof to the reported hail on a given date.
5. The mat fracture
A true hail hit on an asphalt shingle is not just a missing patch of granules. It is a bruise: the fiberglass mat underneath has fractured, and the spot feels soft, like the bruise on an apple. Photographically this is the hardest of the nine, because a fracture reads as a dark circle in flat light. Shoot it in low, raking sunlight, early or late, so the depression casts a shadow. If someone with a ladder can gently press a thumb beside the impact while you shoot, the deformation becomes visible. Telling a genuine bruise from ordinary aging is its own subject, covered in hail damage versus normal wear.
6. Granules in the gutter and at the downspout outlet
Two photos. One looking down into the gutter trough at the accumulated granules, ideally with your hand or a coin for scale. One at the bottom of the downspout, where granules wash out onto the splash block or the driveway. Fresh granule loss looks like coarse black or grey sand and there is usually a lot of it. Some granule shedding is normal over a roof's life, so this shot supports the others rather than standing alone.
7. Soft metals
Hail dents aluminum and thin steel long before it fractures a shingle mat, which makes soft metals the most legible evidence on the property. Photograph the gutter faces and the drip edge, roof vent caps and turbine housings, chimney caps and flashing, garage door panels, the metal fascia, and the fins on your outdoor air conditioner unit. The condenser fins are the classic corroborating shot: they are thin, they are unprotected, and once they are dimpled there is no plausible alternative explanation. Get one wide shot of the unit and one close-up of the dented fin field.
8. Window screens and siding
Screens tear or dish inward where hail hit them, and the direction of the dishing tells you which way the storm came from. Vinyl and aluminum siding show circular chips, cracks and dents, usually concentrated on one or two elevations. Photograph the screens from outside, straight on, and the siding both wide and close. Siding damage matters twice over: it supports the roof claim, and it is often a separate covered item people forget to ask about.
9. Collateral and date evidence
The mailbox, the grill lid, the deck rail, the car hood if it was parked outside, patio furniture, dented downspouts, and stripped leaves under the trees. If you still have hailstones, photograph one on a ruler within minutes, before it melts and shrinks the apparent size. Then add the non-photographic date evidence to the same folder: the time-stamped weather alert on your phone, a local news screenshot, and the county-level hail report for that date. If you are unsure which storm hit you, the RoofTake hail history lookup and our methodology page explain how radar-derived hail data is matched to an address and a date.
Metadata, timestamps and why before matters
Every phone photo carries embedded EXIF metadata: capture date and time, camera model, and usually GPS coordinates if location services were on. That metadata is the quiet backbone of your file. It answers when and where without you having to argue about it.
Three habits protect it:
- Send originals, not screenshots. A screenshot of a photo has the metadata of the screenshot. Messaging apps and some email clients also downsize images and strip EXIF, so attach full-size originals or upload through the carrier's claim portal.
- Do not edit the masters. Keep an untouched master set. If you want to circle impacts or add arrows, do it on copies and label them as annotated.
- Leave location on for the session. If it was off, note the address in the file name instead. A burned-in date stamp from a camera app is fine as a supplement but is not a substitute for intact metadata.
Photos taken before repairs are worth far more than photos taken after, for an unglamorous reason: once the roof is torn off, the only surviving evidence of its condition is your file. Insurers routinely decline to pay for damage they were never given the chance to inspect. Your policy almost certainly also requires you to prevent further damage, which means tarping a breach is expected, not penalised. So photograph the raw condition first, then photograph the tarp in place, then keep the receipt for the tarp and fasteners as a mitigation expense. Same order for a broken skylight or a punctured vent.
How many photos is the right number
Enough to cover the property, not so many that nobody looks at them. Work it out from the list rather than guessing at a total: four elevations, plus one framing shot per slope, plus one chalked square and one tight impact per accessible slope, plus two granule shots, plus six to ten soft-metal shots, plus screens and siding, plus collateral. On an ordinary single-family house that arithmetic lands in the several-dozen range, and that is the right order of magnitude.
Two hundred near-identical shingle close-ups is not a stronger file, it is an unread file. The test for each photo is whether it answers a question an adjuster would otherwise have to ask. If it does not, it is a duplicate. The photo checklist tool is built around exactly this coverage logic, so if you finish it you are done.
Labeling and organizing the file
File names do most of the work. A convention that survives being emailed, forwarded and printed:
2026-08-11_123-Main-St_rear-slope_test-square_01.jpg
Date first so everything sorts chronologically, then address, then location, then subject, then a sequence number. Group them into folders by area: elevations, roof slopes, soft metals, interior, collateral, mitigation. If you have anything from before the storm, a real estate listing photo, a gutter cleaning invoice, a prior inspection, put it in a folder called pre-loss. Prior-condition evidence is the single strongest counter to a wear-and-tear denial.
Worked example: a one-page index
A homeowner with 54 photos writes a single page that lists, in order: date and time of loss; address; the reported hail size for that date and county; then a table of folders with the count in each and a one-line description. Under it, three sentences: which slopes show impacts, which soft metals are dented, and what mitigation was done and when. The adjuster reads one page and knows what is in 54 files. That page, attached to the front of the upload, is the difference between a documented claim and a shoebox.
| Folder | What goes in it | What it proves |
|---|---|---|
| 01-elevations | Four wide shots, address visible | The file belongs to this property |
| 02-slopes | Whole-slope framing, each slope named | Directional pattern, extent |
| 03-test-squares | Chalked squares with circled impacts | Hits per square, repair versus replace |
| 04-closeups | Tight impacts with coin or tape | Impact size and mat fracture |
| 05-granules | Gutter trough, downspout outlet | Active granule loss |
| 06-soft-metals | Gutters, vents, flashing, AC fins | Corroboration that hail struck |
| 07-collateral | Screens, siding, mailbox, stones | Size and date of the event |
| 08-mitigation | Tarps in place, receipts | You met your duty to protect |
| 09-pre-loss | Any older photo of the roof | Condition before the storm |
Handing it to the adjuster
Upload through the carrier's portal if there is one, because portal uploads are logged against the claim number. If you email, put the claim number in the subject line and reference the attachment count in the body, then keep the sent copy. Ask, in writing, that your photos be added to the claim file. That single sentence matters later: if the claim is denied and you request the full file, you want your own evidence to be in it.
Do this early. Notice deadlines and proof-of-loss deadlines are real and they vary, so check filing deadlines by state and set a reminder with the claim deadline tracker. If your carrier comes back citing a cosmetic damage exclusion, your close-ups of fractured mats and dished screens become the whole argument. If it is denied outright, work through the order to do things in rather than firing off a complaint on day one.
Start with the photo checklist and go outside while the evidence is still on the ground. More on the claims process across the rest of the insurance section.
Common questions
Do I need to get on the roof to document hail damage?
No. Wide elevations, ladder-at-the-eave shots, a pole-mounted phone or a drone will cover nearly everything an adjuster needs. A hail-struck asphalt roof is covered in loose granules and is genuinely dangerous to walk.
Does a photo of my dented gutters help if the adjuster only cares about shingles?
Yes. Soft-metal denting on gutters, vent caps, fascia and air conditioner fins corroborates that hail of a given size actually struck your address, which is exactly what a no-damage-found decision disputes.
Should I photograph before putting a tarp on?
Yes, if you can do it safely and quickly. Most policies require you to prevent further damage, so tarping is expected, but photograph the raw condition first, then photograph the tarp, and keep the receipt.
Will my phone photos be taken seriously?
Modern phone photos are fine. What gets photos discounted is missing scale, missing context, and no way to tell which slope or elevation you were standing on, not the camera.
Do I need to keep the original files?
Yes. Send full-size originals with their metadata intact rather than screenshots or messaging-app copies, and keep an untouched master set even if you annotate a working copy.
What if the damage is only on one side of the house?
That is normal. Hail arrives at an angle, so photograph every slope and every elevation anyway, including the undamaged ones, because the contrast is itself evidence.
Sources
Every factual claim on this page that comes from outside our own data is sourced below. Where a number is a model or a range rather than a measurement, it is labelled as one in the text.
- Insurance Information Institute - documenting damage and the homeowner claim process
- OSHA - portable ladder setup, angle and extension above the landing
- FAA - rules for recreational drone flying and Part 107 commercial operation
- NOAA NCEI Storm Events Database - reported hail size and date by county
- NAIC - directory of state departments of insurance