That's the reason that LFSs are declining. Folks are buying everything online, and the more they do so the less brick and mortar stores there are. This is the pattern in a wide range of hobbies, and has been for a couple decades, at least. One contributing reason the 1980s was the golden age of fish keeping is that the internet wasn't a thing yet.
I think online vendors will list everything that they tend to carry, and then toggle the listing between in stock and sold out. Some vendors have a 'email me when back in stock' option so that you can get notified when that species is available again. This is arguably a better situation than if they would delete the out of stock listings entirely.
There are WYSIWYG listings for fish, occasionally (SFW.com has a few; LA Diver's Den has 100 listings right now). But in general, having a full time photo taker of fish that all look identical to all others of the species isn't typically a good use of resources.
If you're concerned that the fish you'll get will be thin and beat up, that's where careful vetting of the vendor comes in. If you have a serious concern that some vendor won't send you a decent fish, then that's not the vendor to buy from, individual photo or not.
I drive 2 hours one way to get to good shops. The LFS I used to work at had buyers that were out of state and spent the day driving to and from the shop, and I recall at least one customer flew in to buy fish (we were pretty near the airport).
