How clear is your vision?
For those still with me,
My eyes didn’t work last Monday. Blurriness for no reason. It scared me (what if this doesn’t pass?) but swapping out my contacts for glasses solved it a little, thankfully. My day was still ruined though. I stared at my ceiling all Sunday because my mind was just blank. So my Monday was for clear thinking and making whatever progress I could. Or so I thought.
With eyes unable to focus on anything closer than a meter away (that’s about 12 hamburgers, for the US audience), I had to pack up all my stuff and good intentions and drive back home from the studio I just arrived at (yes, I’m finally working from the daylight studio these days, more on that later.) Was the day over? No. But my energy was fully off. These days, kill my vibe and my spirit dies with it. I’m in a fragile state at the moment. It turns out blurry eyes and a blurry life feel eerily similar. No vision means no direction. No direction means nothing gets made. Everything stands or falls with clarity.
33punt
It’s March 2025 and Rafaël FaceTimes me. “Bram and I want to start doing freelance projects together again. We have so many ideas, but we don’t know what to do with them sometimes, how to see things through to the end, while also getting paid of course. Can you help?” I’m a little surprised by the question at first. How can I help? I have a full time job and a few personal projects to manage as well. Rafaël reads my mind “I’m asking because I believe you’ve learned a thing or two about project management at your job. Plus you keep talking about how structured and organized you are. Those are things we need.”
A few weeks pass and we’re all gathered in Bram’s half-finished atelier in OostWest. The space that would become our daylight studio is not even ours yet but we secretly fantasize about being neighbors on that second floor in OostWest already. Bram and Raf are looking at me, waiting, because I was the one that called for this meeting. “I want to learn two things today” I start my talk. “I want to know what you guys want to do exactly, and why you want to do them. If we can get that super clear for ourselves, we can worry about how we’re going to achieve those things after.” Back then, clarity was something we were still trying to articulate. Now, it feels like something we’ve built.
It’s early December, 2025, and Raf and I are sitting in our finished but unfurnished daylight studio. I am writing this story, Raf is editing a video for a client. Bram’s atelier is finished and used frequently, you can tell by the creative chaos he created. I created a Brand Identity Toolkit containing prompts and guidance to figure out our brand strategy & positioning, what that sounds and looks like, and how that works in practice. It became my way of making sure we didn’t lose the plot halfway through, something I’ve been guilty of too many times before. We met up a half-dozen times to discuss our visions and the progress towards them. By now I’m fully onboard with what we call 33punt, a creative collective from Amersfoort, The Netherlands, offering creativity as a service.
Just a documentation of the current details of the studio. I told you it was unfurnished, right?
33punt.nl
At some point we realized talking wasn’t enough. You can shout “clarity!” across the studio for months, but unless you put it somewhere, it dissolves. So we put it somewhere: on a website. 33punt.nl became the first public proof that we know what we’re doing. It’s a work in progress, and it will be forever, but that’s fine for something so foundational to our business.
A lot of people know me for my photography. They know Raf for his too, and his videography and creative vision. They know Bram for his skills as a painter, illustrator, and endless stream of ideas. So that’s what they approach us for. Awesome, of course, but also only part of the vision. But here’s what most people don’t immediately see: the strength of 33punt isn’t just in the individual crafts we bring, it’s in the integration of those crafts.
Integrated creativity
Modern brands don’t need “a photographer” or “someone who can shoot video.” They need someone who can understand the heartbeat of their identity, translate it into a narrative, and then carry that narrative across every medium without dropping the thread. That integration is where quality multiplies.
When we’re involved from start to finish, the work becomes consistent, coherent, and strategically aligned. And for clients, that means something surprisingly valuable: they can stop project-managing the entire creative ecosystem while also running their actual business.
Instead of coordinating five different specialists and hoping the results magically fit together, they hand us the steering wheel (only after some meaningful discussion, of course.) The creative campaign becomes our day-to-day, and the output becomes stronger because of it. Integrated creativity isn’t just efficient. It’s the only way to build work with real resonance. At least that’s my belief right now.
33punt
We've outlined out workflow philosophy on this page. Clear expectations leads to desired results.
Timing is everything right now
The luxury of time, I’m not sure I possess it. That full-time day job? It’s coming to an end soon. Not necessarily by my own choice, but well-timed nonetheless. This year-long transition suddenly feels very real. I can feel the pressure.
Either I make this creative collective thing work by finding some high-value customers that understand our offering and respect our authority in this space enough to let us carry out our integrated creative workflows, or I’m back to applying for a job in a few months again. I’m only half-joking when I call the latter "my current definition of failure." Having a job is not failing at anything, I know that. But I am in such desperate need for autonomy and creative control over my work and my life in general, that I’m willing to bet heavily on myself and 33punt as a collective.
And, no, the irony isn’t lost of me: four years ago I kicked off the monthly rhythm of this newsletter with my grand “I quit freelancing and now go on long photo walks instead” declaration. Now it seems I’m sort of back in the same position. Though this time with renewed energy, improved focus and boundaries, and a much better idea of who I am as a creative, what I can offer, and for whom that’s relevant.
So what does all this talk about clarity and integration boil down to? Actual services. Actual things clients can hire us for right now, not someday. The philosophy is nothing if it doesn’t materialize into work.
What we offer
At the center of 33punt sits our daylight studio, a space for making, experimenting, shooting, and hosting. It’s available for creators and brands who need a clean, flexible space to bring ideas to life. It’s also our headquarters so if you need to see us, you know where to find us. We’re currently in the process of building out our services portfolio.
33punt
We're open for bookings if you're interested already but we feel like the finishing touches to the space will really make this page shine too.
Photography is my main focus. I also handle operations, bookkeeping, and our timelines for now. Not always super fun, but vital to figure out and set up now, if you want the liberty to create freely at a high level next.
Rafaël and Bram are avid photo- and videographers, each with very different styles. I know a thing or two about video but wouldn’t call myself an expert. Bram is the graphic designer and illustrator. All three of us are conceptual thinkers that thrive on riffing off each other and coalescing that into spectacular ideas. Any skill we don’t have in-house, we source from our large network of creatives. A good campaign for your upcoming product launch is exactly what we can organize for you from the bottom to the top.
33punt
Check back in a month and this page will look entirely different. Work in progress, remember?
These are useful individually, but together they become that integrated approach we believe in. Photo, video and graphic design need to complement each other. They need to be in line with who you are, what your brand is about, the reason your company exists to begin with. If we can tap into your why, your reason to get up every day, your mission, if you will, and translate that into a story that resonates with your audience, only then we can build sustainable campaigns that enrich, instead of dilute, the world we live in.
Mitch
P.S. I recommend you read our manifesto on the about page if you want to learn more about our motives.
P.P.S. the website is in Dutch because our services are focused on The Netherlands. Apologies for those unable to read it (but AI translation is great these days!)
P.P.P.S. My eyes are semi-fine again. Even though the cause is still unknown to me, it looks like a minor infection that'll pass in time.
P.P.P.P.S. I have not given up on any of my personal projects. I always did those alongside whatever brought in my monthly income. I’m aiming to continue doing that into this next phase too, but hopefully with more freedom to determine when and how I do that.
Just you, me, and some occasional notes from the field. No spam.
Member discussion