Visuals Photography Inc.
Owner: Doreen Iafrate
Rhode Island's Market Has Changed. Developers, Builders, Investors and Sellers Must Change With It.
By Emilio DiSpirito IV License Partner | Engel & Völkers Oceanside Leader | The DiSpirito…
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Type of business: Commercial photographer
Location: 310 George Washington Hwy., Suite 200, Smithfield
Employees: 2
Year established: 1988
Annual Sales: WND
In the wake of the digital revolution in photography, many companies large and small started taking their own product pictures to cut costs. Taking shots with digital cameras in-house seemed a convenient alternative to hiring a professional photographer.
As a result, Doreen Iafrate said, she saw many independent commercial photographers downsizing – moving to smaller spaces – to compensate for the loss of business. Some even retired from the field.
Iafrate decided to take her own business, Visuals Photography Inc., in another direction. She and her assistant moved from an 800-square-foot studio in Lincoln to a 1,500-square-foot studio and office in Smithfield.
“I took a bigger space for more opportunity,” she said, adding that her goal is to attract more clients. She decided to stay in northern Rhode Island because of its convenient location between Providence and Boston; most of her work is regional, she said.
Since moving to the new space last October, she’s changed its décor, using layout, paint and furniture to give it a fresh and modern appeal. She’s also purchased new computers, new software and a $40,000 digital camera.
Iafrate said she took those risks because she believes the need for quality photography “will never leave.”
She’s revved up her image as well, through use of promotional materials such as the postcards she sends to prospective customers – mostly, small to medium-sized manufacturers, restaurants and retailers, she said. She follows up her direct mailings with phone calls.
Through re-branding her image, Iafrate said, she is “trying to show it’s a professional studio.”
And to some extent, she said, her efforts are working: Visuals Photography Inc. is slowly but surely recovering from the dip in clientele caused by the digital photography craze, which inspired a slew of amateur photographers to offer competing services at lower prices.
Iafrate attributes that recovery to diligence, quality and experience.
For the past 18 years, Iafrate has been taking photos of products such as glassware, flatware, jewelry, buckles, food and machines for companies’ brochures, catalogs and magazine ads. She’ll do shoots either in her studio or on location.
And she has all the necessary resources to offer start-to-finish completion of a project, she said. If a client comes in wanting a brochure, Iafrate said, she will take the pictures. She will provide the layout design, through her assistant or a freelancer. Then she will outsource the printing. She does the same with Web design.
“I try to work within their budget,” she said. “Everything is always on time.”
Iafrate understands that, by taking photos in-house or hiring amateur photographers, her prospective clients are “trying to cut their budget,” she said. “But in the long term, they’re cutting their sales if an image doesn’t look appealing, if it doesn’t say, ‘Buy me.’ ”
The most difficult challenge, she said, is making people “see that you still need lighting, you still need quality to make the product look extraordinary.”
In addition to quality, Iafrate said, she takes the time to sit with clients and discuss the product, including who they are selling to, where the image will be published and how they’d like the image to look.
“I’m not a drive-through studio,” she said. “Sometimes a simple product can take three or four hours to photograph.”
She added: “It just smiles at you, when you have the right shot. You can see all the texture, all the little detail. It has to glow.”
Iafrate said she decided to specialize in commercial photography after graduating from the Rhode Island School of Photography, in Providence, because she liked the challenge of making simple things look extraordinary. (A Rhode Island native, she has been a photographer since age 17.)
In 1993, she earned a master of photography degree from the Professional Photographers of America. It took 10 years of educational courses and workshops and submitting work to competitions, she said.
In that time, she has won three Kodak Gallery Awards for Photographic Excellence.
Her hope for the future is that “people will stick with the service and quality. … I hope people realize [photography] is a craftsmanship, it’s an art.”
