Discover: Vista Pictures
- Written byGiada Maestra
- Published date 18 May 2026
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We caught up with London College of Communication alumni and twins Juan and Daniel Montanchez to hear more about their time at college and their London-based business, Vista Pictures. After participating in the LCC Accelerate programme and the UAL Pitch It! competition in 2025, they have now been nominated for the UAL Future 50 Founders and Freelancers Awards 2026.
Hi Daniel and Juan – nice to meet you! To start, please tell us a bit about yourselves and your backgrounds.
We are Juan and Daniel Montanchez, Peruvian twins you can find every day at Big Ben photographing hundreds of tourists.
We’ve always had the spirit of creating our own opportunities. From the age of 21, we’d seek out the right people and designed campaigns for Nike. We learnt that asking the right questions always leads to answers. Over time, the people around us kept saying the same thing: that there was something bigger waiting for us abroad. And they were right.
In 2022 we moved to London to do an MA at London College of Communication (LCC), and it was one of the best decisions of our lives, not only for what we learned inside the classroom, but for what we discovered outside of it. Just a few minutes from LCC, right in front of Big Ben, we spotted a problem no one had solved: thousands of solo travellers wanted real photos of their trip, and street photographers with real talent had no way of finding clients to make a living from their art. We saw the opportunity and took it. That's how VistaPictures.net was born.
In less than two years, our idea has grown so much that we now have up to 11 clients every single day. We started as two people; today we are five photographers, operating in London and Paris, with plans to reach many more cities!
What did you study at UAL, and why did you choose that specific course and college?
We studied an MA in Graphic Branding & Identity at LCC. We arrived with real industry experience; back in Peru we’d worked at agencies designing campaigns for clients like Nike, Jack Daniel's and Samsung, which gave us a solid foundation. But we wanted to go further and truly specialise.
We chose this programme because we’ve always believed that every designer has the potential to build their own brand. The course helped us understand what really lies behind a brand: the logic, the strategy and the system that holds it together. Not just how it looks, but how it works and how it builds trust.
What marked us most about UAL was its philosophy: before designing anything concrete, you first have to dare to explore, to make mistakes, to follow your personal passion. That emphasis on experimentation didn't just change the way we design, it changed the way we build businesses!
And there's something that doesn't appear in any syllabus but is worth just as much as any class: Paul Jackson, the course leader, had an amazing quality. He valued people for who they were, their character and he recognised and encouraged that in each student. He was genuinely attentive to people. That meant a great deal to us, because there are things no grade can measure, and he knew that.
What is one thing you remember most vividly about your time at College?
What we remember most about UAL is the freedom. No matter what programme you're enrolled in, you never feel tied down to it. You can borrow cameras, there are workshops in 3D design, woodwork and much more, and projects are designed so that different specialisations work together. The library is open 24 hours, and it was so much fun staying there late with friends, making progress on work and having a great time all at once.
There are also societies for everything, from football to illustration, where you meet people from completely different worlds. It was through one of them that Juan perfected his sports photography in a way no class could have ever taught him.
And beyond the academic side, spaces like LCC Accelerate were key: they bring in specialists who help you refine your business idea and organise competitions like Pitch It!, which push you to think big. That's where Vista Pictures stopped being just an idea and became something real and scalable.
What are you working on at the moment?
Vista Pictures now operates in London and Paris, and very soon in Madrid. But beyond geographical expansion, what keeps us busiest is improving and promoting the system behind it all: a fully automated platform where travellers can book, pay and receive their photos without any friction, and where photographers can make a living from their art, with no middlemen.
And the results speak for themselves: in 18 months we surpassed 1,100 international bookings and grew 180% year on year, all with a bootstrapped model, no external investment! We believe an ecosystem only works well when everyone involved truly benefits.
A key part of our strategy has been validating ourselves through partnerships. We have collaborated with the British Embassy in Peru, with global platforms like Trip.com, and with e-SIM companies like Sim-Local. These alliances position us within the global tourism value chain and build trust with travellers who find us for the first time. In parallel, we continue closing agreements with photographers across Europe, especially in Italy. If anyone wants to join, send us a message.
How did you two decide to work together? What are the unique challenges of running a business as a duo?
It all started with Juan. With no business plan, he simply went to Big Ben to take photos out of pure passion. One day, someone left him a tip. Another day, someone else asked him to come back for a full session. That's when something clicked, and we joined forces, not imagining how far we would go.
The advantage of being twins is that there's a foundation of trust that very few partnerships have from the start. But that doesn't mean we're the same: each of us approaches life and problems differently, and that is a strength. A lesson we learnt early on is that the person who delegates and distributes goes much further than someone who tries to do everything alone.
To those who are afraid of working in a team, we say this: there is no way to go far on your own. Differences don't weaken a project; they make it bigger. Every new person who joins brings a different way of seeing the problem, and that makes the solution more unique and more complete. There are no perfect partners; what we do is treat every problem as belonging to both of us, no matter who caused it, and focus on solving it together. The conversation has always been more powerful than the ego.
You took part in UAL Pitch It! and have now been nominated for the UAL Future 50. Could you tell us more about that experience?
First of all, we want to thank UAL for investing in these competitions. Their real value lies in forcing you to organise your ideas: the more competitions you enter, the easier it becomes to explain your project, and each one leaves you with a framework that makes the next one easier and more ambitious. They are also the only moments where real deadlines exist, which pushes you to move forward and not get stuck.
And here is one of the most important pieces of advice we can give: it’s not about coming first. Even if you don't take the top prize, you can get something out of a nomination or a participation, perhaps more than the winner if you play it right. It's a showcase, use it to get press coverage, get closer to potential partners and to show the world what you're building.
Beyond what we learned, it was also incredible meeting people like us, people who also want to leave their mark. When you're in those spaces, you realise you are not alone on the journey, and that changes everything.
How have these opportunities helped you and your business grow?
In ways that go far beyond the obvious. Yes, they opened doors and generated visibility. But the deepest impact was on our mindset: when UAL puts you in the same room as the best creative entrepreneurs in the world, you start thinking at that scale.
One of the most concrete lessons was understanding the power of digital marketing and Live Commerce. We were among the first in our photography sector to use TikTok Live to sell sessions in real time, building trust with people who had never heard of us. We understood that marketing is not a cost, it's an investment, and that translated into a return of up to 6x on paid digital.
We also learned to build from the minimum. Instead of waiting to have a perfect app, we launched with a simple website and manual processes. The goal wasn't for it to look polished; it was to prove it worked. And it did. When something works with the minimum, it works at scale. That mindset helped us sharpen our value proposition and close partnerships like Trip.com, Sim-Local and our collaboration with the British Embassy in Peru.
And the concrete effects weren't long in coming. Thanks to the UAL Future 50 nomination, doors opened that we hadn't expected: more press coverage back home in Peru and the opportunity to speak at events and spaces that had previously been out of reach. A well-leveraged nomination has a domino effect that goes far beyond the competition itself.
Finally, what's next for you both?
The goal is clear: to scale Vista Pictures across Europe first, and then across the world, so that any traveller in any city can have quality photos at accessible prices, and so that photographers everywhere can make a living from their art. We want booking a photo tour to feel as natural as booking a hotel or an experience, just another part of travelling.
To get there, we will keep strengthening alliances with more brands and opening the door to new partners in the tourism world, from hotel chains to lifestyle brands.
And beyond Vista Pictures, we also want to build a collective for people like us: entrepreneurs who made the difficult decision to bet on their project during the two years of the Graduate Route Visa. We know how lonely and challenging that path can be, and we believe it's so much more manageable in community. If that's where you are and you want to connect, we'd love to hear from you.
Opportunities don't come to you; you have to build them. If Vista Pictures can show a photographer in Lima, in Rome, or anywhere in the world that it is possible to live from their art, then we will have achieved what we set out to do when we left Lima.
