Meet Tony

HOW DID THIS ALL START? WHAT EXACTLY SPARKED THAT WICK FOR YOU TO START CREATING?

Everything started back in 2016 when I went to kick in California for a week. While I was there, me and the homies Josh and Fabian ended going to a skate shop and copped some skateboards. While we were there we met a dude named Lyle and it was another dude too, but I forgot his name. They were both cool as hell and we ended chilling in the skate shop just chopping it up for about an hour or two. Then Lyle asked if we wanted to kick it tomorrow and go around taking pics or whatever, so we said yeah. Once we went out to kick it with them, buddy goes to his trunk and grabs his camera bag with like 2 or 3 cameras and a couple of lenses, so I asked him if he was a photographer and asked what he like to shoot. He said “I just like catching people in the moment”. When he said that I was like alright im copping a camera lol, and ended up getting one for Christmas.

 

WHAT IS YOUR CREATIVE PROCESS LIKE? DO YOU FIND INSPIRATION IN THINGS OR ARE YOU MORE OF THE TYPE TO JUST DO THINGS?

I find inspo from pretty much the basic places, music, videos, other photographers and shit like that. For sources I use Tumblr and Pinterest, mainly because to me it's more dope and aesthetic photos to find compared to IG. My creative process don't really start until I know who I'm going to be working with and what their fit is gonna be like. After that I go and scout a location, generally downtown, and try to map out some of the shots I wanna get and then kill shit once the day of the shoot comes.

 

WHAT HAS PHOTOGRAPHY TAUGHT YOU THAT GOES BEYOND KNOWING YOUR APERTURE AND ISO? I GUESS WHAT I'M ASKING IS WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED ABOUT YOURSELF THROUGH PHOTOGRAPHY, TAKE THAT AS DEEP AS YOU WOULD LIKE. 

Photography has taught me A LOT of patience and a lot about the growth you go through when creating. You gotta have patience when you’re learning the camera and when you’re working with people, ‘cause everything’s not gonna always go as planned. Sometimes you work with people and it's their first time shooting, so you might have to warm them up to being in front of the camera. You might be in the middle of a shoot and the sun is hitting in the right spot and you’re ready to start getting the shot but a fat ass cloud comes through so now you gotta wait like 10 minutes for it to pass. It be lil things like that you gotta be patient with. As far as the growth I went through with creating, it took time, well shit, I'm still going through it now. I deadass don't think I started taking real good pics until like a year ago, so that was about 2 or 3 years of straight trash ass photos lol. Through those years though, it was just me figuring out my camera, what I like to shoot, how I like to shoot and how I want my work to look, ‘cause when I first started focusing on this and looking at other’s work  thinking “yeah I can do that”, then going out and trying to recreate that and being lost as hell. After doing that a couple times, it made me realize that I had to just go and put in some work before I can get to their level, ‘cause these people been shooting for some years and I wasn’t just ‘bout to pick up the camera and start killing shit.

 

WHAT'S THE END GOAL FOR YOU? FULL TIME CREATIVE WITH KIDS IN THE SUBURBS? WHERE DO YOU SEE YOURSELF? WHAT WILL YOU ACCOMPLISH?

To be real with you, I deadass don’t know, lol. I definitely wanna do this full time though for sure and be able to inspire others from it. I don't see that happening for a couple of years. I always keep one quote in mind tho when I start thinking ‘bout stuff like this and it's from the goat himself, J. Cole. It goes “keep grinding boy, ya life can change in one year.”