ABOUT US & THE STORY
What some might not know is that next to being business partners we, Roel and I (Lars), are also brothers, making this in some way a family business. We grew up in a small town in the South of The Netherlands, Maastricht, where Roel lived till his 18th (he is now 31) and I left when I was 19 to Rotterdam (I am now 24).
Growing up both Roel and me, as well as our other brother Rick, had an affinity for photography, and on vacations having the camera with us was a necessity. From early on we were introduced to photography, and we all, at some point in our youth, owned a camera to capture life around us. Eventually we all went our own way in regards to photography, and Roel and I continued to pick up the camera occasionally as a creative outlet.
Roel eventually moved from the Netherlands to Geneva and has called this his hometown for already five years. Two years ago he started his own marketing agency in Geneva, and that is when his passion for photography lit up again. Through his marketing agency he had to do creative projects more frequently, and this also involved picking up his camera way more. He would then also spend his Sundays capturing the city of Geneva and its people, further inspiring him. After a while photographing more and more he realized that he wanted to make this a bigger part of his life and saw an opportunity to do so. He wanted to help photographers and models land more projects while also making it easier for brands to get high-quality content for their campaigns. He knew that with his marketing background he could make an actual difference.
I switched my digital camera to an analogue camera, first using disposable camera’s to capture the life of me and my friends in our hometown. As I wanted to improve the quality of my pictures I went through a series of compact analogue camera’s, as these broke so many times. Bringing my camera’s on nights out with friends gave me the opportunity to immortalize all the beautiful and fucked up moments we went through as kids growing up. And here I found that portrait photography was my favorite thing to do, getting close to subjects and capturing the emotion shown on their faces. But, as time went on and I moved to Rotterdam I wouldn’t touch my camera for a long time, till this crazy journey started and I switched back to using a digital camera.
Fast forward to the end of 2023 where I saw that Roel was thinking about a certain photography project, and was interested to hear more about it. After a call we noticed that this could be something that we can do together, as my experience and education in business would combine perfectly with Roel’s expertise in marketing. At the end of this call one night OhMy-Photography was born.
Early-on there was one person who believed in us and is the one who makes sure we also smile at times of stress, this person is Khrystyna. She joined at first to create our website, but us three grew closer and soon she became an integral part of our company.
For a long while we did a lot of collaborative shootings to build our name and create an expansive portfolio so we had the proof to show that we can do what we say, and really stand by our quality. And as a lot of start-ups have to do, we had to evaluate after a few months if what we are doing is working and ask the question, are people interested in our services? in our ideas? and if not we have to pivot. So as you may guess, our start-up also had to pivot from a sole focus on models, we expanded our business model and starting focussing on nothing, everything became game for us and we started to grow.
Even though in essence the company is a content creation agency, we did not want to have it that small, we wanted to be able to scale it up and help other people, to create an international network of like-minded indivuals who work together, that is the end goal, that is what we pursue everyday and what our motto ‘Collaborate to Create’ stands for. For this reason we also identify us more as a networking agency whose service is content creation.
It has almost been a year since we started this journey together, and we still cannot comprehend how far we have already come in this short time. Our team has grown substantially and we now have seven photographers working with us in four countries, Switzerland, Netherlands, United Kingdom, and France. We also hosted our first Content Creation event at the Beau Rivage Hotel in Geneva where models and influencers collaborated with luxury brands together with our team of photographers. And this is just the tip of the iceberg, we have so much still in mind to accomplish but we also have to stop sometimes and be grateful for everything already achieved, all things that could not have happened without you, the one reading this, you are the one making the dreams true of two guys from a small town somewhere in the Netherlands. So in behalf of our team, thank you for everything past, and everything to come.
Collaborate to Create, Lars
09/10/2024
