![Every year, when the weather gets cold and work slows down a bit, we pull everything out and assess our equipment needs. Some things are retired or sold, other things are budgeted for or bought. It's a nice exercise.
We've been meaning to add a gear list to our website since we redid it two year ago, so this weekend we killed two birds with one stone. We wrote up a new post on our Resources page on our website entitled "Gear Talk: Using The Right Tool for the Job." [link in bio]
We go into the difference between equipment we bring to an architectural shoot vs a headshot portrait session. We hope you enjoy it!](https://517visuals.com/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png)
360 Photo & Design
Why did we make this change?
Back in 2012, when we started our photography business (learn more about our history in this interview with Subkit), we made the bulk of our income shooting 360° virtual tours for Google Maps. That service has gone by a few different names, but back then it was called Google Business View.
For more than a decade, our main clients were in the property management and hospitality industries, and a whole lot of small businesses. We traveled all over the Midwest and produced thousands upon thousands of 360° photos.
When the pandemic hit in 2020, those businesses in particular were dramatically affected. As a result, their marketing budgets (and our income) pretty much dried up. As we licked our wounds, we felt we had some choices to make. Either wait things out and hope things would get back to business as usual, or pivot to something else.
At the time, we were super nervous, so we opted to do both. As our clients marketing budgets returned, we would be there for those who still needed virtual tours under our brand 360 Photo & Design. But at the same time, we would try something new.
We decided to start a new brand that specialized in a different echelon of clientele. Clients who didn’t just need their buildings documented, but would demand the highest-quality images we could produce.
So after spending nearly two years learning new techniques and investing in new equipment, we were finally ready to go in February 2022. That month, we launched our new brand: 517 Visuals.
The reception to our work with our new brand has been tremendous, and we are having a blast working in the AEC industry. We’re not sure if this was a unique way of doing things or not, but it seems to have worked well. So, fast-forward 2 years later (a year earlier than we had originally planned), we felt it was time to make another change…
It was time to take off the training wheels and consolidate our two brands. We will always be grateful to the clients who supported us under our 360 brand. And we are still here for them, but virtual tours aren’t our focus anymore, so having a name like 360 Photo & Design doesn’t make a lot of sense anymore.
Further, it was always tricky maintaining two brands and trying to explain to new clients the difference between them. This consolidation helped us further focus our attention on what we really love doing: making compelling and useful visuals.
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