Today we’d like to introduce you to Benjamin Rouse.
Benjamin, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I was born in Alpharetta Georgia to a Mormon family of 6. I studied out west at Brigham Young University for a time but later dropped out of the religion & university to finish my degree at UGA.
For most of my career, I have been focused on fine art photography. Recently, however, I decided to expand the business to also include 360 virtual tours for real estate and small businesses. I shoot weddings, headshots, and product photography as well.
I am currently about a year into this new venture and incredibly excited to see the business grow.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
As far as major setbacks, I feel I’ve been incredibly lucky so far. Several of my closest friends are business owners, so I’ve felt very supported along the way with advice.
When I do encounter obstacles, I find they primarily come from within myself. Left to my own devices, I can be a bit shy and not share what I’m working on outside of my immediate circle. Over the last year, however, I’ve noticed the more I open myself up to the world in good faith, the more the world opens itself up to me. It’s very inspiring.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
At the moment I am primarily focused on the 360 virtual tour portion of my business. Photography has always been my passion, so expanding into 360 photography felt like a very natural progression. Overall, I just love that my business can help members of my community succeed.
The virtual tours I’ve created for local businesses have already surpassed over a half-million views on Google street view and this has tangibly helped them bring in more foot traffic. Sites like Zillow prioritize homes with virtual tours 2 to 1 in search results as well, so it truly helps my clients sell homes faster.
I feel what primarily sets me apart from competitors is my attention to detail and overall quality. In a lot of virtual tours I try, you can see the 360 camera reflected in home mirrors. Or if you look down, you can see the tripod below. I always take the extra time to edit out distractions like these which cumulatively makes for a much better user experience.
One of my biggest pet peeves is seeing others claiming to provide virtual tours, but when you click the link, it’s just a phone video of someone walking around a space and you can hear them breathing and everything. It’s very strange! In contrast, I provide premium virtual tours for my clients that are immersive, beautiful, and simple to use.
What were you like growing up?
Growing up, I was a very happy child known for having hyper-specific interests and then focusing on them till I felt competent. For example, I had an entire year where I became obsessed with drawing hands and filled many notebooks with these sketches.
I started little businesses when I was young as well. The main one I remember was re-painting the house numbers on people’s sidewalks.
I had read that it was mandatory to have these numbers clearly painted for mail delivery and if they were faded or flaking off, you could receive a fine. For my business, I would find houses with unreadable house numbers and then approach them about repainting the numbers for less than the impending fine. It ended up being a pretty successful business for a 14 years old kid.
Contact Info:
- Email: newview360scans@gmail.com
- Work Samples: https://linktr.ee/newview360
- Instagram: @newview.360
Image Credits
Photos by Benjamin Rouse
