"Internet and digital photography changed our business completely"

The Dutch company Visions has a good position in the market because of their botanical photography. They have been in the market since 1988, since then the world of photography has changed a lot. "Back in the days my work mostly existed out of sending dias (diapositives)," says Annemarieke Hooij. "We made a duplicate from the picture. We gave or sent one to the customer, if he was interested, and we had one for ourselves, which meant that if another customer was interested in the picture, we had nothing for ourselves."

Stephan Vernooij and Annemarieke Hooij

Online
In 2005, the company went online and changed a lot. The customers search in a digital image library with more than 300,000 photos in it. If they make an account, they can order them as well. This is way different than how it used to be. "Delegations from the other side of the world passed by often and would spend a whole afternoon staring into the dia archive," said Annemarieke Hooij. "We still have that dia archive," adds Stephan Vernooij, also the account manager at Visions. "It is a waste to throw it away. It remains special and every now and then someone needs a specific photo that we took a long time ago and which is not in the digital library."

The studio where the photography of plants and flowers takes place. Beside this studio there are rooms for production photography, culinary photography, a space for time-lapse videos, the dia archive and an office room.

Digitalization changed photography completely and it didn't get easier on the market either. Everyone has the right equipment to take some nice photos nowadays. "But that's not true," says Stephan Vernooij. "The quality is unmistakable when you realize that the consumer can't see the plant blossom and only sees that one picture that you took. The colour is the most important part of a picture from plants and flowers and this is not very easy to create. Beside, we have the knowledge about botanics: when is a plant at its peak and what are the best circumstances. And taking a perfect picture under pressure is quite difficult."

Diversify
Besides plants and flowers, Visions also does commercial and product photography. Like fashion, interior, commercials, food as well as yachts. Another upcoming thing is making videos. Annemarieke knows that if people search for something they often search for videos. "Instead of google they place their search item in youtube. Many companies want to present themselves through that way and Visions can help them with that."

For more information:
Visions
Meer en Duin 80
2163HC Lisse
Annemarieke Hooij
T: +31 (0)252 420 446
E: annemarieke@visionspictures.com
Stephan Vernooij
E: stephan@visionspictures.com
www.visionspictures.com