Personally I suspect some of the activities are "staged", because it would be weird to have a camera at that angle otherwise, but representative of things that actually occur.
I'm not really sure anything done in the average lab makes for a great picture tbh.
Personally I don't think the activities in photos are staged: taking the samples out of the oven and the mixing of the etching acid are real steps they need to take, just not very interesting scientifically speaking.