I always have trouble taking pictures for things I make, so I'm curious about how other people do it. Do you use sims from neighborhoods you play, or create new ones just to showcase the CC? Do you reuse sims? Is there a story behind the pictures?

For mine:

Extended Family: The family tree is from my main neighborhood, although all but two of those sims are dead now.
In-laws Fix: One of the two sims from the extended family picture who isn't dead yet, but she is an elder now.
Use Loose Books...: Another sim from the main hood in the same generation as the in-laws fix sim, who's also an elder now.
Hire Anyone in Person: The selected sim is a sim who I created specifically to receive college tuitions back before I made the college tuition mod. I've never actually played him, and these days I only go to his lot if I need to test things out in my main neighborhood. The other sim was just a random walkby.
Servos clean and repair showers: The servo is from my old test neighborhood, since I don't have any servos in my current main neighborhood (the one I originally made this mod for got deleted at some point).
Children and teens use communal showers: These are also from my old test hood, like the servo, I created them to take a picture for the mod. I think I didn't have any families in my main hood with both children and teens in them at the time.
Smarter Choice of Parent...: I created these sims in my test hood for the purpose of testing the mod. I wound up creating so many teens and sending them to college for this one, because you can't send them back once they've gone.
College Tuition: Both sims are from my test hood.
Stop Inviting Yourself In: More from the test hood. The male sim is Julien Cooke, of course, the other one is actually a sim I originally created to be the founder of a new neighborhood, who was originally going to marry Julien Cooke. Then I decided to redo how I set up the custom neighborhood, and created a new one to be the real hood, and the old one because my test hood, so I wound up using my founder to test a few mods. This founder is also the female sim in the college tuition pictures.
Reduced apthack deposit and rent: I created this sim to test these mods, I don't know why, actually, since I had so many other sims in my test hood at this point.
Sibling torment for all: These sims are from my main hood. They were the same age at the time I took the picture (and best friends, actually), and they wound up both dating the same townie in high school. Now the female sim is ~15 days (out of about 40) from elder, while the male sim is still 35 days from elder, because he has a cowplant. They didn't really keep up with each other after college, either.
Orphaned sim scholarship for aliens: This sim is from my main neighborhood, he was I believe the second alien birth there, and the first sim out of the whole neighborhood to qualify for this scholarship, alien or otherwise. He was born right before his mom became an elder. He now lives with his fiancee and has three kids with her, including one who's already gone to college.
Met new great-grandchild memory: These babies were all in my test neighborhood. There were a ton of babies there after this mod was tested.
Less attractive vending machines: This sim is a former dormie from my main hood, in this picture she was recently moved into a college lot and married to one of my playables. Later she had three kids with him, and was tragically eaten by the cowplant that now belongs to the kid from the sibling torment picture. Then her eldest daughter brought her back to life 30 sim years later with a genie wish, and it turns out she was pregnant with twins before dying, so now that's happening. Her husband had in the mean time gotten remarried to a vampire, but divorced her after his first wife came back to life and his vampire second wife drank her blood and caused her to pass out. He's probably going to get remarried to the first wife again when I play them next.
Sentrybots shock coaches: This is a coach from my main neighborhood, as far as I'm aware he's still hanging out there and getting shocked by my sims' sentrybots.
Fight while pregnant: The pregnant redhead is the vampire second wife of the guy who was married to the woman from the vending machine picture. The guy whose ass she's kicking is her first husband, who actually is her second husband's brother. He cheated on her with a lot of people, because he rolled the 20 woohoos and 30 first dates LTWs, including with the blond woman in this picture, who is Heather Huffington, who wound up in a poly relationship including a couple of the (now dead) sims from the extended family picture, and was actually kind of a non-biological mom of the sim who owns the cowplant. Heather is dead of old age now; the cheating husband was summarily divorced, got engaged to someone else (because he makes great decisions) and eventually got eaten by the cowplant, because he deserved it. The vampire is still exactly the same age as she is in the picture, because vampire, but she's now divorced from her aforementioned second husband and living in an apartment with two of her nine kids and pretty much no money.
Gender Transition Potions: Lylesnake took all of these pictures, so the sims in them are his.
Found Family: This is the same sim from the test hood that featured in the apartment mod pictures. You'll notice that the pie menu also says "Talk to Baby George" on it, because the sim that's being clicked on is holding a baby. That baby is one of the babies I created while testing the great-grandchild mod.
Abduction Reaction Fix: This is the first picture that's from my new test hood - the old one got junked when I got a new computer and opted not to transfer it over. In this test hood, I opted to avoid creating CAS sims unless absolutely necessary and did a lot of testing and picture-taking with the premade bin sims instead. In this case, we have here the Ottomas family witnessing the abduction of Peter.
Name the Father: This is the female sim from sibling torment picture, I think here she is pregnant with her third child out of four. The sims in the bottom right are from the new test hood.
Pass Along and Transfer to all: This is Sam Thomas, who married one of the sims from the extended family picture, and also the sim from the use loose books picture. The selected sim is her eldest son. Sam Thomas is now dead of old age, and her son is married with five kids, the eldest two are in college.
Ask Visitors for Homework Help: This is Gaven Newson and Coral Oldie, I wanted to use premades for this who were unlikely to be in the same household to make the functioning of the mod clear. Ginger is also in some of the other pictures. I took this in my original N001 Pleasantview, which I never played and which I think still uses the original EA template.
Can my friend come over too?: This is Nina Caliente, also in my original Pleasantview. I picked her mainly because I knew she would be very likely to invite Dina over.
Fairy Changelings: These are the Gavigans in my new test hood, with a fairy changeling baby. I think this specific baby doesn't actually exist anymore, as I quit without saving after he was born and aged up, but the Gavigans do now have an adult fairy changeling child that lives with them now who I've used to test various fairy-related stuff.
Apartment Moveout Finance Fixer: This is Matthew Picaso from my new test hood.
Autonomous Gift Giving at Parties: These poorly-dressed sims are from my new test hood. These sims were originally employed as testers for the gender transition potions, and transitioned back and forth between various genders several times and got a new and more terrible set of clothes every time. The black-haired one was originally Julien Cooke. Not the same Julien Cooke as the one from the stop inviting yourself in picture, though, this was a different test hood.
Sperm Donors: I created these sims to test this mod, because I wanted a particular relationship setup, they are from the new test hood.
Pneumonia Fix: This is Sanjay Ramaswami, from, the new test hood.
Autonomous Have Meal Fix: This is Mary Gavigan, from the new test hood. At some point the Gavigan household, which now contains also the adult fairy changeling sim and the female sim from the sperm donors picture, has become my go-to lot for testing random stuff.
Car woohoo wants limits: This is Mary Gavigan's wants panel, naturally.
Use Toddler Toys from Anywhere: I believe this is Tommy Ottomas, from the new test hood. At some point I combined the Ottomas, the Newsons, and the Goodies into one lot in that hood so that I could have one lot with every eye color represented, so that I could do a binary search for my default eyes, which all had garbage names in my Downloads. I try not to load this lot because there's way too many sims on it, but I made an exception this time because it was the only lot that actually had any toddlers.
Surrogate Hack: This is the female sim from the sperm donors picture, and Nathan Gavigan. I actually did use the same sims I tested the sperm donors hack with to test this one, Nathan wasn't involved in that, he just happened to be there.
Claim Painting: Another picture from the Gavigan lot, where I also tested this mod.
Kill Visiting Playables: This cowplant is on the lot where I tested sperm donors and the surrogate hack, it has just eaten Matthew Picaso. I kind of wish I had had it eat someone else, though, because now whenever I try to get Jessica to test something for me I have to wait while she goes into aspiration failure and gets a visit from the therapist. It's very annoying.
PregRel compatibility patch: I created this set of sims in the new test hood specifically to test this one (because again, I needed a specific relationship setup). Komei Tellerman is just visiting, however.

I've got a handful of 8-person households that are each generally suited to a particular kind of setting... at the moment it's three; one for European-inspired medieval/fantasy settings (you can see them in the screenshots for Stormwall, the wagon caravan, the witch's cottage, the river pirate fortress, and the renaissance faire), one for more traditional modern urban/suburban settings (see them in the Landgraab Country Club, the renaissance faire as well, and a fair number of one-off screenshots I've posted), and finally, Santa and Mrs. Claus and their merry band of Christmas elves (I think only used in my Father Winter's Workshop). Each family is reusable since they're always attired differently as suits the particular lot and particular story I'm using them for, but some of my projects will eventually call for creating a few new households.

I don't create new Sims for pictures. I generally use Sims in my hoods, sometimes change their hair or some other features so it doesn't appear that I'm always using the same Sims, maybe age them up or down, take the needed pictures and then quit without saving.

Pictures are a PITA. There's stuff I haven't uploaded because I don't want to take pictures. XD I usually use the sims in my test hood when I do take pictures. If I don't have a family that fits then I'll make a new one.

Most of the sims I use are sims I've made, and on extremely rare occasions EA sims (mostly if I'm too lazy to use one of my test families).

If the sims are not from my story or from a variety of one-off photoshoot families, they're most likely from a test family of some sort. For CC testing I usually have a couple sets of sims with a somewhat generic look, and reuse them but with different hairstyles/clothes.

Sometimes I've been very lazy and just used pictures I've already taken for my story, if it's a CC item I've used there and later shared. Occasionally I just can't be bothered to take new pics if I already have something I can use...

I haven't uploaded anything here at MTS, but plenty of stuff elsewhere.

Yeah, that's the main reason I didn't upload here initially, and the reason I don't have all my mods here as well.

Most of my uploads with sims are random ones I made in 5 minutes in a test hood. I think only one or two uploads like my back to school t shirts actually have sims that I play. Most of those children were born into the game.

I'll likley use pictures of some sims I've created to showcase my neighborhood though no SC4 file is being included in that upload because it's an EA terrain file shipped with the game and anybody playing UC already has that terrain installed.I would include a few sim templates pre-dating my CC laden play made on my older computer in my vanilla days.The town is to be populated by the downloader and is left with no buildings as most of us can at least build halfway decently and I started playing terrains like that back when I was terrible at building and that's how I got better at it.There's a great example of a recently uploaded town calledHARROW CREEK where the creator shared the SC4 file because it was a custom one while mine won't include that bacuse it's only an edited version of Arbordale from the EA terrains shipped in the game.I do have a few custom sim teplates that go well with the town and would include them.