Prime Minister David Cameron left no stone unturned in his quest to present the public with an ideal image of the kind of guy he (apparently) really is. Tony Blair may have started it with his insistence on beign pictured with a mug of tea in his hand (all action-oriented leaders are clearly heavy tea drinkers) but Mr Cameron took image management to new heights.

So his decision this week to confine his two image-conscious employees – one a personal photographer who followed him everywhere, the other a cameraman – to the party HQ payroll rather than his own was presumably not one taken lightly. A necessary move in the age austerity perhaps.

A snapper snapping at the heels of the PM, documenting his every move (and staged move) in a bulging photojournalistic archive has done wonders for Cameron at the polls. But rather than wryly smiling at the news, perhaps PRs should be turning their thoughts to how they could be better using the lens to build respect and reputation for their clients?

Why? Well there’s that simple truth that when newspaper and magazine pages are laid out, pictures go down first. Copy without pictures is far more likely to be spiked. And most journalists complain bitterly about the lack of good images to accompany information they’re pitched. So just simple personal or illustrative shots are often woefully lacking or lacking in creativity. Many are all-too-obviously an afterthought.

But more importantly, in the age of transparency, is that words can easily be crafted by someone else, whereas the camera never lies. Well, not usually anyway. Boiling it down to the very simplest, PR is all just words and pictures, and yet pictures are normally the country cousin by a country mile.

Agencies should do more to extoll the virtues of quality, regularly updated and more expansive photography to their clients, perhaps to the extent of having a line item for it in all of their plans. It should be a primary consideration for every announcement, not a bolt-on a few days before. Not just for major announcements or high-profile campaigns, but to help in conveying concepts, illustrating claims and reinforcing the words of individuals.