In Focus: Sanford Health Recognizes Native American Youth Photographers

By in Native

In Focus: Sanford Health Recognizes Native American Youth Photographers
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The halls of Sanford Bemidji Medical Center now feature photographs from local Native American artists.

“Eagles Come Telling Stories,” or Bi-Dibaajimowag, is a collaboration between Sanford Health and the Watermark Art Center that spotlights Native American culture and art.

When it comes to holistic healing, this practice can go past the physical. For area hospitals like Sanford Health in Bemidji, they are considering the cultural aspects of the process. By integrating Native American practices like smudging or photographs by up-and-coming artists, these efforts can work to create a more inviting and educational environment for all patients.

While the main exhibit is through the East Entrance at the hospital, more photographs are scattered around the halls. One other practice To help make things more inclusive, Sanford is also planning is to hold a discussion with patients about their treatment.

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image

Focus on a personal photography project

By in Photography

Focus on a personal photography project

If you feel like you haven’t seen many articles from me, you’d be correct. I’ve finally decided to focus on a personal photography project.

To be honest, this has been in my head for about four years. Many of you are likely similar to me in the fact that you tend to have several projects going on at any one time. Website updates or creation, submitting images online to sell, contacting design firms and commercial art agencies, and the list goes on. With that comes anything that might be a distraction or excuse to NOT work on it — well for me anyway.

Personal photography projects help us focus

I’m done not working on my own work. Personal photography projects can help us refocus, get us back on track with our own work and veer us away from the distractions that surround us. While writing articles is part of my work, it is still a turn off the path of my own personal projects and photography.

I happen to be someone who is constantly looking for something to distract me from what I really should be focused on. Trust me, it doesn’t take much.

So, as I’m working on this project I thought I’d share some of the process and hopefully it’ll help you move forward on your own personal projects.

Some steps you can apply to any personal project

Come up with ideas

Coming up with ideas seems like the easy part. I have a never-ending list of ideas. Ideas wake me up at night and keep me awake. Do yourself a favor, write them down or record them somewhere. It doesn’t matter how silly or unobtainable they seem, keep track of them. They may not come to fruition right away, but they never go away and this way you’ll be ready to tackle whatever it is when it comes up again.

Research what you need to

Thankfully, we have access to so much information (too much so I think) that we can get help easily. Do you need to figure out how to self-publish a book? How about finding out what you need to do to start leading local photo tours and all that comes with that? Do you want to create a series of images and exhibit them at a gallery?

No matter what the project is, look up what you can and make the phone calls you need. Talk to others who have done similar projects. All of this research will help your project come together more quickly and go much more smoothly.

screen shot of Lightroom catalog
A view of my project images

Just start your personal project

This can be the hardest step. Start. Now. Do one little thing that gets your project going. Once you start you’ll get excited about it. When you’re excited about it you’ll want to work on it and you’ll (I’ll) stop looking for distractions.

Then just keep going. One little step at a time. Edit an image. Write the text that goes with an image. Create a mock-up book cover. Write your artist bio. Commit yourself to working on your project every single day. Even if you do something you think is so minor, it’s still progress.

Hold yourself accountable

Not good with accountability to yourself? Find a way.

Ask a friend, fellow photographer, coach or mentor to be an accountability partner. Have a plan for yourself to share with others either publicly or privately, so you are accountable to them and yourself for having to make progress they can see.

Write about your project. Post updates on social media, your blog, or you know, even write an article about it.

Ask for help

Make sure whoever you are telling about your project knows it’s ok to nudge you once in a while. Ask them to check in with you every so often to ask how your project is going.

If you are feeling you’ve hit a wall, reach out to someone and ask for some help to just talk you through whatever it is that has you stuck.

What are you waiting for?

OK, get going. Start.

Then share your project, the progress or when it’s finished. Tell us about it in the comments or share more about it in the Photofocus Community. These things are always easier when we share.

Woman demands full refund from wedding photographer after divorce. WhatsApp chat goes viral

By in Photography

Woman demands full refund from wedding photographer after divorce. WhatsApp chat goes viral
ByArfa Javaid
May 08, 2023 03:48 PM IST

Four years after her big day, a woman contacted her wedding photographer demanding a full refund. She cited divorce as the reason for her request.

People hire wedding photographers to capture the moments from their big day that can be cherished for years to come. Some couples appreciate the work of their photographers so much that they contact them again for future events. However, a woman contacted her wedding photographer four years after her big day with an unexpected request. She demanded a refund, citing divorce as the reason. Yes, you read that right!

A screengrab of the viral WhatsApp chat. (Twitter/@LanceRomeo)

A screengrab of the viral WhatsApp chat. (Twitter/@LanceRomeo)

At first, the photographer thought that it was a prank. However, he later realised that she was serious and believed that she was ‘entitled to a refund’ because of her marital status. The photographer denied her request and shared the screenshots of their WhatsApp chat on Twitter. As expected, they went viral and received numerous responses from netizens.

Also Read: Katy Perry reacts to her clip from King Charles’ Coronation

“I swear my life is a movie. You can’t make this stuff up,” reads the caption of the WhatsApp screenshot shared by Twitter user Lance Romeo Photography. In the screenshot, the woman says, “I don’t know if you still remember me. You did a photoshoot for me at my wedding in Durban in 2019.” She adds, “Well, I’m now divorced, and those pictures — I and my ex-husband don’t need them anymore. You did a wonderful job on them, but they went to waste as we are now divorced. I will need a refund of the amount we paid you because we don’t need them anymore.” The photographer then asks if it was a joke, but the woman insists it was not. The photographer denies giving her a refund, saying he ‘can’t untake the pictures.’

Also Read: Woman’s farewell dance to Choli Ke Peeche Kya Hai goes viral. Seen it yet?

The exchange continues with the woman saying she is ‘entitled to demand a refund’ as she no longer needs those pictures, but the photographer refuses to budge. The woman then threatens to take a legal action, to which the photographer agrees.

Also Read| Viral Brain Teaser: Can you solve this maths puzzle before the clip ends?

After the screenshots of the WhatsApp conversation went viral, the woman’s ex-husband contacted the photographer. On the condition of anonymity, he shared, “I read the articles. I apologise on her behalf.” He also added that it is “embarrasing”.

Since being shared on April 11, the primary tweet has accumulated over 3.8 lakh views, and the numbers are still increasing. The share has also prompted many to leave their thoughts in the comments section, with many saying that they are waiting for the woman to say that ‘it’s a prank’.

Also Read: Viral video shows ‘Grim Reaper’ at King Charles’ Coronation

Here’s how people reacted to the viral tweet:

“I can’t untake the pictures,” posted an individual with laughing emoticons. “There is noooooo way she is serious! The lawyer in me now wants to do a self moot and see how I’d deal with it if she was my client… but again… I suspect she wouldn’t be able to pay my fees… or later ask for a refund after we lose,” joked another. A third added, “It’s not a refund that’s needed here!” “Waiting for the part where she says it’s a prank,” added a fourth. A fifth commented, “I love how professional you were with your answers. But it was a prank, right? Cause wow! This is so wild. I have a friend that got divorced even before her wedding pics came, and she didn’t even ask for a refund, cause that is just not how it works!”

Also Read: Netizens react to street vendor’s fruit chai with ‘RIP tea’


  • ABOUT THE AUTHOR





    Arfa Javaid

    Arfa Javaid is a journalist working with the Hindustan Times’ Delhi team. She covers trending topics, human interest stories, and viral content online.

Topics

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its viral
wedding
wedding photographer
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Opinion | Photographing child workers helped change the law. They need help again.

By in Photography

Opinion | Photographing child workers helped change the law. They need help again.

Ken Light is a documentary photographer and professor at the University of California at Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. He is author of the forthcoming “Report to the Shareholders,” about the Rust Belt in America.

Recent headlines about the widespread exploitation of children in America’s workplaces shocked me as it did many in our country. It was all the worse that the exploitation targeted undocumented migrant children who had recently entered the United States, seemingly abetted by a Health and Human Services Department determined to clear unaccompanied children from detention.

Perhaps it shouldn’t have been a surprise. As a documentary photographer of nearly five decades’ experience, I had witnessed similarly cruel treatment firsthand in the late 1970s when photographing migrant workers in the agricultural fields throughout the United States for my first book, “With These Hands.” This news story drew me to pull up film contact sheets from the work I had done all those decades ago.

Even then, what I was seeing in the fields had much older echoes. I found inspiration in the work of one of our country’s most famous social documentary photographers, Lewis Hine, who in 1908 became the photographer for the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC). Over the next decade, Hine documented child labor to aid the NCLC’s lobbying efforts to end the practice, photographing in coal mines, meatpacking houses, textile mills, canneries and many other workplaces.

Hine’s photos played a significant role in exposing the harsh realities of child labor in the United States during the early 20th century. He wanted to show both what had to be corrected and what had to be appreciated — namely, that our market full of goods depended on hard labor by some of the country’s smallest inhabitants. His photographs helped to pass the first federal child labor laws in the nineteen-teens. In 1938, finally, the Fair Labor Standards Act set new standards for the hours and conditions under which children could work.

When I started to photograph agriculture workers in 1979 and found children as young as 5 working in the fields, I was stunned. I had thought that Hine and his fellow social advocates had effectively eradicated child labor. But now it was my turn to travel across America to document this phenomenon.

Alexandra Petri: We must protect the children by … rolling back child labor laws

I got up early in the morning to see children working out in the fields. Entire families were picking together, because there were few child-care facilities and the family needed the extra income to eat. Often the children were swaddled in blankets half asleep as their parents began work, then slowly joined in, picking onions or tomatoes or strawberries or blueberries or other crops. These children were exposed to pesticides and savage conditions — heat, lack of water and toilets, constant bending — that are so much a part of agriculture. I met a 7-year-old boy being paid 30 cents a bucket to pick tomatoes in Leipsic, Ohio. As I raised my camera, his eyes met mine. I could see his tiredness, and his childhood being stolen by this hard labor.

I remember showing my photographs to editors at numerous publications in the early 1980s. “Oh, we know that children work in the fields,” some told me. To many, it was not a sexy enough story.

The Post’s View: The rollback in child labor laws is disgraceful — and short-sighted

Today, if we show my photographs from more than 40 years ago alongside Hine’s work of more than 100 years ago, it is not because the phenomenon of child labor in America is a new one. It’s because it continues, often with minimal consequences for the companies that benefit, bolstered by the efforts of a conservative advocacy group that is actively trying to roll back labor protections for kids. As Cesar Chavez wrote in the introduction to my book: “Exploitation of farm workers and their children is just as real today as it was twenty years ago. The fight is not over — it has just been renewed. You see, time does not heal injustice; only people do.”

When I was photographing these young children at their work, I often asked myself, where was the empathy for them? A lost childhood is something that can never be regained. Whether in Hine’s era, in mine, or now, children who work in these oppressive conditions need witnesses, and ones who are willing to fight on their behalf.

SVA Continuing Education Offers Summer Courses, Workshops, and Artist Residencies

By in Art World News

SVA Continuing Education Offers Summer Courses, Workshops, and Artist Residencies

Andrea De Luigi (Artist Residency Alumnus ’22), “Against All Odds” (2021), acrylic, ink, relief, and collage on canvas

Ready to take your practice and creativity to new heights? SVACE has the resources and expertise to help you go to the next level. With a diverse range of more than 200 courses and ten artist residencies, you’ll find everything you need to achieve your goals and actualize your potential. Whether you’re looking to advance your career, explore new artistic avenues, or simply deepen your practice, our experienced faculty will provide the guidance and support you need to grow.

Head to sva.edu/ce to explore our offerings and register for upcoming free events.

Artist Residency Programs & Intensives

Online and on-campus courses are available in:

Free Virtual Events & Information Sessions

Registration Details

Course Advice
If you need advice or have questions, please email ce@sva.edu to connect with one of our course advisors.

About the School of Visual Arts
School of Visual Arts has been a leader in the education of artists, designers, and creative professionals for seven decades. With a faculty of distinguished working professionals, a dynamic curriculum, and an emphasis on critical thinking, SVA is a catalyst for innovation and social responsibility. Comprising 6,000 students at its Manhattan campus and 35,000 alumni in 100 countries, SVA also represents one of the most influential artistic communities in the world. For information about the college, please visit sva.edu.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article SVA Continuing Education Offers Summer Courses, Workshops, and Artist Residencies appeared first on Colossal.

A Photographer Embraces the Alien Logic of A.I.

By in Photography

A Photographer Embraces the Alien Logic of A.I.

A Photographer Embraces the Alien Logic of A.I.

Charlie Engman’s experiments with Midjourney have yielded fleshy distortions, peculiar make-out sessions, and unfamiliar pictures of his mother.

By Chris Wiley

May 8, 2023

An AI image of a person morphing into a horse.
“Horizon Horse,” 2023.Photographs by Charlie Engman

The Pope is wearing Balenciaga. Donald Trump is resisting arrest. Alejandro Jodorowsky’s version of “Tron”? Looks amazing. But, of course, none of these things are real. As A.I. technology advances at a queasy speed, all manner of artificially generated images are flooding the Internet, adding sludge to an already super-saturated visual soup. They fool credulous social-media users and threaten to put people out of work. An A.I.-generated image recently won a prize at the Sony World Photography Awards (the author rejected it); another won an award at the Colorado State Fair. Such incidents have prompted a lot of hand-wringing among artists and critics. Will computer-generated art mean the obsolescence of the artist?

A collage of images made by AI.
“Apple Layout,” 2023.

Many working artists—3-D modellers, graphic designers, illustrators—have good reason to fear that much of what they do day to day could soon be accomplished by machines. But it’s also true that all “art” made by A.I. is derivative—the programs generate imagery by drawing upon enormous “datasets” of already extant images—and, perhaps as a result, little of it so far rises to the level of audaciously original. The film director Bennett Miller, who spent five years making a documentary about A.I., recently exhibited a collection of nineteenth-century-style A.I. images at Gagosian. A girl in one portrait looks like a mutant version of a Julia Margaret Cameron subject. Another image could be an Edward S. Curtis or a Carleton Watkins. This is neat, I guess, but I can’t get too excited by the idea of using new tech to make fake versions of old things.

The artist Charlie Engman is one of the few photographers who have leaned into the alien logic of the new machine age and found a way to make something that feels new. Previously known for his theatrical, provocative photographs of his mother, Engman has in the past year turned his attention to producing work with the A.I. image-generation software Midjourney. To my surprise, when I reached out to Engman recently, at his Brooklyn studio, he described himself as a “technophobe.” A native of the Chicago suburbs, he studied Japanese and Korean at Oxford University and became interested in photography after stumbling on a book by the Japanese artist Rinko Kawauchi, who makes lyrical pictures of nature and domestic life. In a sense, his foray into A.I. started with a similar process of accidental discovery. On the recommendation of a friend, he started toying around with Midjourney. “For the first while, it was just novel to me—Wow, you can make these funny pictures. But it wasn’t good,” he recalled. “And then, one time, I randomly did make something that I was, like, This is maybe cooler than anything I’ve ever made. How did that happen?”

An AI image of three woman kissing a white ghost shaped doll.
“Office Romance II,” 2022.
An AI image of a figure draped in black cloth merging with a chair.
“Chair Hug (Black),” 2023.
An AI image of a person merging with a chair.
“Office Chair III,” 2023.

The image in question was of a pair of ginger-haired boys perched on a couch with what looks like a miniature horse. One boy is affectionately nuzzling the other’s face. There is a distant resemblance to Dorothea Tanning’s surrealistic scenes of people and their animals, perhaps, but on closer inspection Engman’s images reveal layers of A.I. oddities. One boy’s legs appear to be merging into the sofa, and his hands have too many fingers (an easy A.I. tell). The lower halves of the second boy and their equine companion both seem in the process of being swallowed up, like loose change, by a black hole between the couch cushions.

An AI image of two boys kissing a horse on a couch in a home.
“Pony Couch (Kiss),” 2022.
An AI image of a child and a horse sitting inside a home.
“Pony Couch (Squat),” 2022.

Engman continued to make variations on the “couch with a horse” theme, each one stranger than the next. Like the Midjourney program itself, which responds to prompts with batches of four images at a time, Engman as an A.I. artist is dizzyingly prolific. “The amazing thing about A.I. is that I can make, like, three hundred pictures a day,” he told me, “And every single one of them can be an entirely different set of characters, and new location, and new material. I’m not constrained by physical reality at all.”

Physical reality, of course, is something that A.I. is completely unfamiliar with, a fact that Engman exploits to his benefit. “There was a while where I really loved how it iterated bodies in space,” Engman told me, “I was, like, How does it understand how people sit in chairs? How does it understand how people hug each other?” One series of images he made shows contorted, malformed human figures sitting in and often merging with various chairs, like a freaky update of a series of hilarious photographs by the artist Bruno Munari titled “Seeking Comfort in an Uncomfortable Chair.” Another features groups of businesswomen amorously engaged with a motley collection of semi-humanoid inflatables. My favorite series shows groups of middle-aged suburbanites standing in parking lots kissing. Each configuration looks like a hybrid of an erotic-contact improv troupe and a swarm of feeding lampreys.

An AI image of three men kissing each other in a parking lot.
“Parking Lot I,” 2022.
An AI image of three men kissing each other's shoulder in a parking lot.
“Parking Lot III,” 2022.

Elsewhere, Engman goads the algorithm into creating creepy malformations of digital flesh. In one image, a fried egg perches atop a sickly shiny, headlike glob, which has a nose and a mouth but no eyes. In another, also reminiscent of Tanning’s work, a woman stands in a field with her face not so much obscured by a sunflower as grotesquely grafted to it. Such scenes call to my mind both the new-flesh body horror of David Cronenberg’s “Videodrome” and the disturbing corporeal distortions of the photographer Asger Carlsen. They also evoke the tech-world ethos of bodies as outmoded encumbrances, mere “meatbags” to be sloughed as our consciousnesses fuse with the digital pleroma. At their best, Engman’s images feel like bizarre new icons of a future that’s already upon us.

An AI image of a woman with a sunflower merging with her face.
“Sunflower Face,” 2023.
An AI image of a person with a fried egg on their head.
“Fried Egg II,” 2023.

Engman has a cavalier attitude toward the thorny copyright issues surrounding how A.I. programs draw upon image datasets. To him, such “borrowing” is not much different from the way he cherry-picked from a range of aesthetic influences to make his pictures of his mother, or, for that matter, the way that any artist is trained by studying the work of others. Arguments about sampling, appropriating, or remixing artworks or the flotsam of popular culture seem to him painfully retrograde. “Y’all, we are all trained on, like, everything,” he told me. Recently, he has been combining his real-world and computerized photographic interests by making A.I. pictures of his mother. To train Midjourney’s algorithm, he’s been feeding it his old photographs as prompts, resulting in such newfangled scenes as a glowering facsimile of his mom emerging from what appears to be an oozing wheel of soft cheese. I asked him if he had ever tried just writing a prompt using the phrase “Charlie Engman’s mom.” “I have tried that,” he said. “I don’t think I’m famous enough.”

An AI image of a person in a cake.
“Mom (Brie),” 2023.
An AI image of a woman.
“Mom (Clay II),” 2023.
An AI image of a person whose face is merging into a horse embracing a horse at sunset.
“Blond Horses,” 2023.

Two Creative Directors on Sports, Hip-Hop and Faith

By in Art World News

Two Creative Directors on Sports, Hip-Hop and Faith

For the Taking the Lead series, we asked leaders in various fields to share insights on what they’ve learned and what lies ahead.

The birth of the partnership between the creative directors Free Richardson and Phil Cho hinged on, of all things, their shared faith. In 2018, Mr. Cho, the founder of NoLedge Productions, pitched a collaboration between his company and Mr. Richardson’s creative agency the Compound.

“I go to slide two, and he goes, ‘Yo. Turn that off,’” Mr. Cho recently recalled. “He’s like, ‘Do you love God?’ I was like, ‘Yeah. I’m a believer,’ and he goes, ‘All right. We’re good.’”

Of course, it wasn’t just spirituality that brought them together. Mr. Richardson also was impressed with the effort Mr. Cho showed when documenting an event through photos and videos at the Compound’s art gallery. “Phil has something special about him,” Mr. Richardson said recently. “You can just feel a good presence of energy.”

The two companies are now a major force in the world of marketing, particularly around the intersection of sports and hip-hop. Together, they have curated an impressive portfolio of campaigns for brands including the shoe company Clarks, ESPN, the software company Niantic and DraftKings. Last year, the duo won two Cannes Lions and one Cannes Dolphin advertising awards and five Muse Creative Awards, given for inspirational marketing campaigns. Last month, they won 12 Clio Awards, given for creativity in advertising.

Mr. Richardson, 50, also known as Set Free, is African American and was born in the Bronx. He grew up in Queens and Philadelphia and was deeply involved in the hip-hop community and the world of street basketball culture. In 1998, he created the AND1 Mixtape, a video compilation documenting a traveling basketball competition, and in 2007, he founded the Compound.

Mr. Richardson’s story has helped shape and inspire many, including Mr. Cho.

Born and raised in Edison, N.J., Mr. Cho, 33, is Korean American and grew up with a passion for both basketball and hip-hop music. He was a middle school student when the AND1 Mixtape Tour debuted. (“Some moms in Korea probably know about AND1,” Mr. Cho said about the tour’s reach.) Since starting NoLedge at the age of 26, he has collaborated with a variety of brands including Toyota, the record label 300 Entertainment and musicians like Akon and Year of the Ox.

Today, Mr. Richardson and Mr. Cho are innovators in the crowded landscape of creative marketing, and consider themselves family as they “navigate the invisible handcuffs of corporate rule,” as Mr. Richardson put it.

“Authenticity is a word that gets thrown around a lot in our industry,” Ari Weiss, chief creative officer at the advertising agency DDB Worldwide, wrote in an email. But “you’re either authentic or you’re not. Mr. Free Richardson and Mr. Phil Cho are pure authenticity.”

The two spoke at the Compound’s headquarters in Brooklyn to discuss remaining authentic to their craft, being relevant and their shared faith. The conversation has been edited and condensed.

An illustration of two figures against a light green background: On the left, Free Richardson, a Black man with a graying beard, wearing a peach hoodie with red and white stripes. On the right, Phil Cho, an Asian American man, wearing a dark blue T-shirt and ball cap.
Adriana Bellet

FREE RICHARDSON I think it always goes back to staying authentic and storytelling. Everybody has a story, and you can tell it through A.I., pictures, music, all the creative elements. Look at the NFT [nonfungible token] world. It came, and though it’s not gone, the whole time, I was like, I’m still going to go with touchable, feel-able art. Authenticity within. Look at a tree. The leaves will die before the root of the tree dies. A lot of things are happening through technology, and a lot of things are going to happen, but I don’t know anything that is bigger than the Mona Lisa. No matter what happens in technology, the root of creativity will always be around.

PHIL CHO The root of what we are is: It’s always been about relationships. When I walk into the Compound, and I see all this artwork, like Jonni Cheatwood, and you see how long it took for them to come up with these ideas and wasn’t A.I.-generated, I feel like that’s what drives more value.

RICHARDSON Yeah, I think it’s a lot of relationships. That’s with everything. The two things in life are communication and relationships. If we don’t communicate, you can’t make the relationship. Creativity is a revolving door. I still work with people that I worked with 20 years ago. It’s the reason we still hear Fleetwood Mac and Marvin Gaye songs in the same rotation that you hear Drake. And so when things are authentic and true, the creativity never goes away.

RICHARDSON I think the ratio of African Americans and Asians is very small. I don’t blame everything on race, but I think it’s a tougher role for me and Phil being a minority, because there’s not a lot of dominance of minorities in the advertising agency world, especially with Fortune 500 companies, C-suite level and businesses, especially small ones. [According to a 2022 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics survey, of workers in “advertising, public relations, and related services,” 7.8 percent were African American and 6.6 percent were Asian American.] We’re kind of small, SWAT-style — boutique-small.

That’s what I consider Compound and NoLedge. It’s a strategic partnership that executes some of the same things that big advertising agencies execute, without the red tape.

CHO Before doing Compound, there weren’t people telling me how to facilitate production, and I felt like I had to just learn from trial and error. And a lot of the people that I would meet, they did happen to be white. So again, I’m not trying to make it a race thing either, but I just felt like there’s not a lot of people with my skin tone that are doing this and can help me out. So I think even merging with the Compound, it was a whole new world for me of just trying to be confident in what I’m doing and understanding that.

RICHARDSON At the end of the day, everybody makes mistakes. And myself, just looking people in the eye and just being like, “All of us are the same.” I think learning and working with NoLedge, it takes time. Everybody needs time — to execute a task, to learn, to communicate, to talk. To respect time and respect people and giving them time. Not to where you just want to get them to or the client, but just everybody needs time.

CHO With the guys that are in NoLedge, for me, it’s patience. I’ll say this, but it’s harder to practice it. You might be able to do X, Y and Z, and you want the same from your guys, but you got to understand that they also need to learn X, Y and Z first. So you can’t expect people to move how you move.

Adriana Bellet

RICHARDSON I try to give everybody their own white box. When you go look at an apartment, you’d rather see the apartment empty so you can dream of how you’re going to decorate and design it. But if you go into a home that’s already furnished, it already blocks you in. You can’t really put your ideas on it. And so walking into brands and working with companies, I try to give them the white box and tell them, “How do you want to design this?”

And then my job after that is just to put a magnifying glass on your ideas. You’re there to help the brand, not really to put your ideas on their brands. And doing it that way, it always helps expand what the goal is. The goal is not for my ideas to be presented. The goal is for my ideas to latch onto your ideas and make them bigger.

CHO I really do feel like Free kind of sets his own trend. And I think that’s what a real creative is, right? To me, the better creative director you are, the more you don’t care about what other people think about you, and I think that’s given me confidence, too. It’s just what comes out of when we facilitate a project — just do what we feel would be dope. Just be comfortable with it.

RICHARDSON Time. We can’t do everything we want to do. I mean, you have to understand what you’re going into with partnerships. It’s like a marriage. Phil, I love him. He’s my brother, my little cousin and a son. Then there’s times that he’s my uncle. I got to look up to him in certain areas.

CHO It’s always about communicating. People have different work flows. It’s not like mine is exactly the same as Free’s. But I think the reason this works is so many young guys want to run the ship, right? So even while doing production, there’s certain things that I would do differently if I was shooting. But at the same time, a good leader is a good follower. I feel like these years right now, I’m soaking up the game. The same way Free was talking about clients and how you got to support their vision. I’m kind of doing a similar thing with Free. I’m supporting his vision.

RICHARDSON God. I want the world to understand that. He’s just the creator of all. If you can’t be inspired by thinking of that, I don’t know what else you’re going to be inspired by. God is my source of creativity.

CHO I agree. All the stories in this world from different people and backgrounds — he’s the biggest artist.

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