We were lucky to catch up with Samuel Soliman recently and have shared our conversation below.

Samuel , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What do you think it takes to be successful?

It takes a lot of failing to become successful, and even talking on the point of failure, it’s never really a failure if you ACTUALLY learn and grow from it.

When I think about my photography business over the last 9 years, the failure I always come back to is very early on in my career is not having systems in place for backing up my photo sessions. I had my fourth photography gig lined up with the first person that found me through my work and not from word of mouth. I had finished their session and had another gig the next day. I didn’t back up the photos and went to my next gig and ran out of space on the same SD card I used the day before, I swapped it out put it in my bag and went back to shooting. I made my way back home and was about to start working on the photos from the day before and realized I lost the SD card and looked for about 2 hours and was not able to find it and had to let both my clients know I lost their cards.

When thinking about the clothing business, the failure I think about is when my business partner and I tried to custom tie-dye about a quarter of our inventory of shirts by ourselves. We spent about a day trying to tie dye the shirts and everything was going well, or so we thought. We forgot a key step, washing out the bleach before putting it in the washing machine. We came back from lunch and found our shirts all white and not tie dye and spent another few hours trying to figure out a solution before cutting our losses and laughing about it.

When thinking about the catering business, the failure I think about is not starting sooner.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Samuel Soliman has worked as a freelance commercial director and photographer for the last 8 years. He has worked on a multitude of projects ranging from local businesses to a marketing campaign that has appeared in New York Times Square.

In addition to this, Sam co-owns a mental health clothing business called The Hood Hippie Love Yourself who has collaborated with schools and organizations ranging from Lancaster Pennsylvania to Baltimore county. Sam also owns a Filipino Food Catering business called Salamat Po! which has a goal of bringing filipino culture to Lancaster Pennsylvania. Sam also sits on the board of directors for Touchstone Foundation, an organization dedicated to creating and connecting mental health resources to young people in Lancaster County.

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I got into photography because of my dad. My dad was an architect and I would always see photos that he would take of me or my family growing up and I think only recently I found the importance in making sure memories are documented physically for future people to see and understand. I’m here in America under a program called DACA and coming from an immigrant family, I think I was expected to follow the traditional route of going to school and having security in a job and then staying there until retirement. I think I realized very early on that it was going to be difficult for me to choose a career path one because of this expectation and two because from early on I really valued putting time and energy into things that really brought me joy and could care less about the other things. I started out doing senior portraits and portrait sessions Photography lead to joining forces with my best friend running a clothing brand called The Hood Hippie Love Yourself, a streetwear mental health clothing brand. I think this is when I started to really believe that this art form that I chose can open a lot of doors. I created marketing campaigns to help sell the clothes out and one of the first campaigns we did, we sold out our clothes in less than 24 hours. I’ve been doing this for the last 3 years now and honestly it’s transformed the way I work and think and create.

I started the catering business with my family in November. I think this is what I am most proud of. One of the most transformative things in my life has been food, just understanding the process, the taste and cooking has always been so interesting to me. So my mom and dad’s dream has always been to open a restaurant. My mom has taught me a lot about life through cooking and food and realizing that there is no Filipino restaurants within a 40 mile radius of where I am at in Lancaster, I knew that it had to be done. I wanted to bring my culture to an area where it didn’t have a strong presence but also help my parents in the pursuit of their dream while I have the skillset and connections to make it happen.

I think that separates me is that I try to photograph things in a way that feels close to the ground, where you can really see a reflection of yourself in whatever photograph I take. I help to find creative ways to not only make a vision a reality but also help to create strategic marketing to help it have real tangible effect on people’s business.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

One lesson I had to unlearn is that asking for help should not be seen as a weakness. People are always more than willing to help you and I just think that is how humans are innately. About 2 years into my career, I didn’t know how to take it to the next level and be able to make my career more sustainable. I was advertising, posting on instagram and everything you can think of to try and land more clients and nothing was working. I was struggling a lot mentally because I wanted this more than anything and it seemed like this was my limit. Coming from an immigrant family, there’s a lot of reluctance I think to ask for help, and in Filipino culture, we have a lot of pride. Asking for help is not on the list of things when you are struggling to do something. I remember talking to some of my close friends about it and looking back on it now, I think I was asking for help but not communicating that I needed it because my pride was in the way. It wasn’t until one day where my friend was interning for a photo studio called Photole Photography and I saw him post on in his instagram story that he was doing a really cool photo shoot. I remember asking him how he got to be able to do all these cool things and he just told me he asked the owner if he had an opportunities. Something clicked in my head at that time where I really understood that I’m not going to know about more opportunities and learn how to grow unless I ask some people for help in getting in these rooms. I asked my friend if the studio had any other spots open and they did and I immediately jumped at it. Fast forward to now, I would’t be where I am at without asking for the help and guidance of my friend Emerson and my mentor over at Photole Photography.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I think being under the DACA program has made me more resilient in my career. For those unfamiliar, DACA stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. It is a U.S. immigration policy enacted in 2012 that allows certain undocumented immigrants who entered the country as minors to receive a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation and eligibility for a work permit. It’s an immigration limbo for a lot of people and has really made me resilient but also quick to pivot. One story I wanted to share was my senior year of high school. My dad passed away right at the beginning of the year due to liver cancer and I was a little all over the place mentally. I have two sisters, one who was just graduating college and one that just turned 13 years old. One question that was always on my mind was what the right path for me after high school was, my mom wasn’t doing the best health wise and my younger sister was still very young and my older sister had a career already lined up . I wanted to go to college for graphic design and had everything lined up to go but realized that not only would I not receive any federal aid because of DACA and with the scholarships I was offered, I would still owe a lot later. Understanding my family was not the best financially, I realized the best thing for me to do was to not go to college. I knew that in my head that whatever I was going to pursue, I needed to be passionate about and that I needed to go towards it with an open mind and heart because it was going to be difficult with the hand I was dealt. I continued a pursuit in this field while also trying a bunch of other careers and hobbies that could turn into careers and that’s when I realized that it was always photography that I wanted.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: sam.soliman

Image Credits
Personal Photo – Max Molina