We recently connected with Michael Letterlough, Jr. and have shared our conversation below.

Michael, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?

I think it takes a lot of different ingredients to make yourself successful. The first thing to creating or achieving success I think is having an understanding of what success means to YOU. Everyone has a different standard or definition of success. Some equate success to how much money they’ve made and material possessions they own. Others equate success to how many people they’ve helped or lives they’ve touched. And others feel they’re successful because they’ve followed their own path and chose to live life pursuing passions and interests that make them happy, regardless of monetary compensation. Once you know and establish why you’re doing what you’re doing, then you can determine what success means for you from there. I also feel that you have to believe in what you’re doing, because it takes an incredible amount of focus and determination to be successful at anything. You also have to really be passionate about something and truly believe in it if you’re going to put in that type of focus, time, energy, money, and faith into building anything you want to be successful. Most successful people don’t get that way overnight. It takes years of believing in something they’ve had a passion for and not giving up on it when things got tough, or when disappointments happen, because they will. I think it also takes being open–open to advice and criticism, open to learning new things and growing, open to ideas, and being open to failure, because if you’re afraid to fail, you’ll never know what it’s like to really succeed.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m a portrait, fashion, and commercial photographer. I’ve been a photographer for the past 17 years and I’ve photographed everything from iconic celebrities, cultural figures, and fashion models to business professionals, family portraits, soon to be moms and wedding day brides. However, when I first began my journey I was primarily focused on shooting fashion, which culminated a lot of my early work. But through the years I’ve grown in to more portrait and commercial work, although at the end of the day I just really love taking photos of people.

I wasn’t introduced to photography until my senior year in college where I decided to take a two-credit course in the subject, which I needed in order to graduate for my degree in journalism. At the time I had never actually given photography a thought. I was a writer. I had been writing my whole life–winning short story essay and poetry contests, and penning novel length letters to my loved ones on cards for birthdays and holidays. So I discovered magazine journalism and that became my major. I was intent on becoming an award-winning journalist, which I did go on to graduate and become an entertainment journalist for one of the country’s most historical African American publications, interviewing and writing about celebrities and their interesting lives and events. However, my photography professor, Dr. Ed Trayes at Temple University believed I had a gift and really pushed for me to keep pursuing photography. “You have the eye,” he said to me after class one day. “I really believe you have a gift for this. Every few years I have a student that comes along that I think really has a natural gift for [photography] and I think you’re one of them.” However it wasn’t enough to persuade me to change my major senior year, but I did continue photography as a hobby. It unlocked something in me I never knew was there. It was a new way to create and be creative that aligned with the artistic side of me.

My artistic journey actually began when I was just a small kid, around 3 or 4. I spent my childhood coloring, sketching, painting and drawing cartoon characters, self portraits, and caricatures from Mad Magazine. When I was in elementary school I used to charge the kids in my class .50 cents to draw their favorite characters or portraits of themselves. By the time I was 12, I had already began displaying and selling my artwork in galleries. And every Christmas I would gift my family framed art pieces that I would draw of “Black scenes,” mostly from my imagination, but also inspired by pictures I saw in books I had as a kid about African American history (my family was huge on me learning about my heritage!). However, as much as I loved art and excelled at it, no one ever gave me the idea that I could make it a career, so it remained just a hobby.

The most amazing experience I have now as an artist is being able to see an image in my mind, pick up my camera and turn that vision into reality. I get to work with amazing people, and with each person I shoot, and each project I undertake, I walk away with a new, memorable experience, and a smile on every single one of my client’s faces…that feeling really feeds my soul. And every shoot is different and each has its own set of challenges, and fun, but I’ve been doing this so long that even the challenges begin to feel familiar. My goal is to make my clients see themselves in the best way possible and to create images that align with their vision and showcase my creativity to create something memorable and iconic. I’ve always been a perfectionist, especially when it comes to my craft, so I always strive to create images as flawless as possible, but that still feel real and natural and resonate in people’s hearts, and souls.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

Talent, consistency, and likeability. People wanted to work with me because of my talent. I studied the work of some great photographers when I first began, and I had dozens of magazines I would collect just to look at all of the ads and editorials. I would also visit photographer’s websites and study their images–analyzing styles, technique, lighting, and how the photos were retouched. Since I hadn’t studied photography in depth in college, I felt primarily self taught, aside from the “silent mentors” I studied through the pages of magazines, photography books and online. So I was developing my own signature look, or a style, very early on by studying a lot of inspirational artists like David LaChapelle, Gordon Parks, Annie Liebovitz, Patrick Demarchelier, Steven Meisel, and Norman Jean Roy (to name a few), while also teaching myself about lighting and using strobes, composition, and the big one–RETOUCHING, along the way. But it’s always been my consistency in the quality of images I produce for each and every person–whether you’re an A-list celebrity or a first time mom–that made people want to work with me over and over again, or refer me to their colleagues, family, friends and business partners. My mission has always been to create photos that make people say, “WOW”; to see an image of themselves in a way they’ve never seen before. I want people to look at my photos for longer than a quick scroll by on IG…I want them to really take in the work–the details, the style, the story, and the quality. And I love working with people! I’m authentically me with everyone I meet, and my ability to make everyone (even the ones who claim to hate taking photos, or don’t have a lot of experience in front of the camera) feel comfortable like they’ve been doing photo shoots for years. When people like you they trust you, and when they trust you they’ll see what you do as a value and not just a price.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Before photography became my obsession I was a journalist, as well as a magazine owner. In the early 2000’s I founded and published one of the first full online publications with my brother called SUAVV Magazine, which is still around and thriving today (thanks to him). It was/is a lifestyle magazine for men of color, similarly to what Essence has been for Black women, with just a splash of GQ. I just didn’t see any magazines out there that really reflected Black men in their entirety the way Essence did for women. There were magazines like King and Smooth marketed for Black men, but they lacked a lot of substance. So it was my dream to create a publication that was for men of color what Essence has been for women. At the time I was also still working as an entertainment journalist for a well known newspaper in Philadelphia, which also published a monthly magazine I wrote regular feature and cover stories in. When I was faced with a conflict of interest between my job as an entertainment journalist for them, or running my own publication, I chose to leave and fully invest my time, energy and money into SUAVV with the help of my brother. My family didn’t necessarily agree with my decision, but I knew it was the right move for me. While they may not have fully understood why I would leave a full-time job with decent pay (for a 21/22 year old), I was very clear on what I wanted and the journey I was getting ready to take as an entrepreneur. I poured everything into SUAVV–designing the layout of the magazine, conducting interviews, writing feature editorials, assigning stories to my small and eager writing staff (some of whom I poached from the job I quit), marketing and advertising, as well as contributing to some of the photography I needed for various articles. Photography was always right there, but still just a hobby…until it wasn’t. Photography began pulling at me in a way I had never anticipated; it was like a drug. I saw myself as the next John Johnson, so becoming a professional photographer was never in the cards. However, when my passion grew in photography it became more of a struggle to balance my desire and craving for taking pictures with my editorial duties for the magazine. I made the decision to leave the magazine and hand over editorial control to my brother and I stepped down as Editor-in-Chief to pursue photography full time. It’s a decision I’ve never regretted. My career in photography flourished as a result of giving it my full, undivided attention every day, all day. Fast-forward to now, and I’m still taking new turns on this creative path; adding fine artwork to my repertoire with an online fine art gallery of unique, original art pieces inspired by urban graffiti and many other subjects, objects, places and things. It essentially puts me right back at my roots with art, but with digital tools, combining it with my love for photography. I’m also embarking on a brand new journey in writing that I can’t wait to share with the world! I’m very open to change, and challenging myself with new creative ways of expressing myself through art, so I don’t think pivoting is a bad thing at all. I believe it’s just the next phase in your evolution.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.michaelletterlough.com
• Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/michaelletterloughjr
• Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/michael.letterlough
• Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelletterlough

Image Credits

All images photographed by Michael Letterlough, Jr.