We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jayquel Williams. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jayquel below.

Jayquel, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Alright – so having the idea is one thing, but going from idea to execution is where countless people drop the ball. Can you talk to us about your journey from idea to execution?

My process of going from idea to execution has changed for the better as an artist and entrepreneur and It’s all thanks to 1 photobook. When I started my journey 8 years ago as a photographer the idea of planning seemed foreign to me. Every project would be taken on at the same time as others with little to no pre-production planning. As I gained mentorship from more experienced creatives I earned to at east established a moodboard for my work but that still did not fully get my idea realized in my work. In 2021 I decided after a few years of wanting to make a photo print project I reached out to my friends Matthew Loyd for collaboration and Calvin Wu for creative consultation to help me execute on this endeavor. To start since this project needed to reach an audience we had to pan out not only what it would look and feel like but what the experience could mean to said audience. From there we planned out what our goals and objectives were and if there were any key performance indicators for our project that aligned with our goals. As we went through the project racking where we were in our project doc felt great as we had a physical representation of progress even without the finalized product in front of us. It felt amazing to release a well-thought-out project like it out into the world in 2022. Not only was it the idea that I needed to succeed but also a plan full of tangible goals to get there.

Jayquel, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Hi, My name is Jayquel Michael Williams. Born in Harlem and raised in The Bronx, I am a proud native New Yorker. I wear many hats daily but at my roots, I am an artist and an entrepreneur.

My main title would-be photographer. I have been shooting photos since 2015 and since then focused on commercial and Editorial photography as my specialty for clients. In my art, I like to pair street photography and portraiture to create what I wall environmental portraits that utilize the streets to be my backdrop and the natural light and grit of the city to light my subjects. For my clients, I work to help them align with modern street culture and tell an authentic visual story to their communities by combining their community’s niche cliches and brand pillars with a familiar backdrop of a city street or location.

As the founder of my creative production studio Landline Studios, I wear the hat of a producer and creative director and take on editorial & commercial photography productions. Through Landline Studios I am focused on building out teams through my network of creatives to execute from the initial pitch to pre-production, production, and post-production for our clients, delivering to them the most authentic branded stories relating to their communities and audience.

I am the cofounder of Analog Nostalgia Club a photo club founded on the values of the experience of nostalgia that forms from photography. Our mission is to not only share our member’s nostalgic moments with the world but through our events and community challenges create new memories for them from any level of photography.

And last but not least I am the Co-Host of Keeping It 9000, New York City’s anime podcast. Alongside my Co-Hosts Kev and Akil, we are bridging anime culture with our city and communities. We release weekly episodes that not only talk about anime as content but we explore the anime industry, and interview guests who participate in building out the community from a community organization, anime music projects, cosplay, and fellow anime content creators to even people taking anime into the film world and producing documentaries. We want to ensure that everyone knows they should be able to enjoy the medium and express their opinions and love with people who would not judge them.

TLDR: I do a lot :)

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

If you make $10, spend $2 and save the other $8. To get started on my creative endeavors I spent some of my part-time work money while I was in college on a camera. I was saving this money to purchase more clothing but I realized I wanted to invest in myself and take my photography beyond using my phone and point-and-shoot. Not even a year after starting I got hired by the photographer for my university campus recreation center’s marketing team. I took the earnings from that job and saved as well as reinvested into more cameras and gear to aid in growing my photography career. For every gig or project I take on I always allocate 20% of my profits to reinvesting in my toolkit. That enabled me to go from no camera to building out what I needed to execute personal and client work.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

My mission is to provide creatives, especially youth living in poverty with the tools, education, and mentorship they need to build a creative career. Growing up everyone mentions the starving artist but not many people can give stories of the successful artist who made it out of their starving phase. To execute this mission I lead by example and am working hard to establish my artists and operational foundations to be able to one day provide my abundance of resources, knowledge, and network to other young artists.

Contact Info:

• Website: landlinestudios.com jayquelmichael.com
• Instagram: @jayquelmichael @landlinestudios @analognostalgiaclub @keepingit9000
• Twitter: @jayquelmichael
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@landlinestudios https://www.youtube.com/@keepingit9000