We recently connected with Kevin Holliday and have shared our conversation below.
Kevin, appreciate you joining us today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?
It started off around 2015. What people don’t know is that I started being a editor before picking up and camera. I didn’t physically touch a real camera until the following year and that was because I was just going around and taking little photos of plants and buildings. Once 2018 came around I realize that sports wasn’t really me anymore. It’s kind of wild to think I went from wanting to go and play sports to someone calling me up telling me it’s a workout session coming up, I just fell out of love with the sport of basketball and that’s when the camera came back around. ‘m in college (community college) at the time and started to take film photography class after my father gave me a little point and shoot camera and basically telling me to figure it out ! Did exactly that !
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?
The type of work I am involved with is mainly photography/videography, but I call myself a designer that takes photos instead. What I provide everyone is visual stories, a documentary, editorial visual whether it’s black and white or color, film or digital. That main problem that is solved is having my clients understand the vision and their own story. I believe what sets me apart from the other photographers/videographers is that I don’t dare to classified myself as a photographer/videographer, I believe anyone could grab a camera and take a portrait, but do that person know how to design the scene around them and make an impact on the image. We don’t know. The main thing I’m proud of is actually never getting above and beyond of myself. Kevin Holliday (me) wanting to improve is the proudest thing I can think of. I’m also proud on how far I done came, this went from a hobby to a career in a matter of 10 years and these 10 years has been a RIDE, but I’m able to have my clients visions come to life and sometimes that’s hard for a person to do.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
The kids in Chicago. I’m from the westside of Chicago and it wasn’t a easy place to grow up in and to top it all off I’m from a neighborhood that you had to be tough in, but showing the kids from the west side, south side, north side, and east side that anything is possible if you have hope and belief in yourself.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
That’s a funny story to tell it’s actually two stories. The first story started off with me wearing a hoodie that Kelly Oubre Jr made for his brand DOPE$OUL. I met him as a basketball player myself at the time and I was helping rebound for him and he told me about this clothing brand he had and me being a man of my word I told him that I would buy and hoodie from him and post the image on instagram. Did exactly that then he reposted the outfit I had on. That got me the women attention on instagram which got me up to I’ll say 5,000 followers. The second story was being reposted by a person I believe was an Kylie Jenner or one of those high end models associate and that took me from 5,000 to 10.9 thousand really had nothing to do with my pictures until the audience I capture saw my gift that I had.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://kevinholliday.art
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lonestone__/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-holliday-4b2981210
- Youtube: @kevinholliday1384
Image Credits
Nathan Suggs