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

Solise, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We believe kindness is contagious and so we’d love for you to share with us and our audience about the kindest thing anyone has ever done for you?

Many people have done many kind things for me, but, the most important was believing in me.

Besides, the person in front of me paying for my food while at a drive through, when I was 14 years old, I had the community rally behind me for crime that I didn’t commit.
Like I said, I was 14 years old and it was my first time experimenting in smoking weed.
I lived in the projects in New York, and each building had a nursery on the ground floor.
I met up with my friends and the intentions were to sit outside on a bench and smoke weed for the first time. It started raining so we decided to find another location. Having the mindset of a 14 year old, we decided to climb into the window of the nursery and park ourselves on the floor to smoke out of the rain. Before you know it security came along and questioned us about our intentions. We apologize for being there and they were going to let us go, but hey said it was protocol that they called the police. When the police came, they turned it into something else. Being little black and Latin kids in the hood, we were an easy target for an arrest. So that’s what they did, arrested us on charges of attempted burglary. The idea of burglarizing a nursery with a bunch of crayons never entered our minds and we weren’t those type of kids.
Being a poor minority with no real defense, I was sent to juvenile hall for 18 months. When I was released at 16 my neighbors and the community members rallied behind me because they knew that I was wrongfully convicted. One of them was an attorney and managed to get my record wiped clean.
They also initiated a college fund for me, and through that I was able to get a higher education. I think that was a pretty amazing thing to do collectively.

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?

Once upon a time music was my life. I’ve dipped in and out of music and corporate. Being a starving artist is cute but it doesn’t always pay the bills, hence corporate.

As a business owner in the music world or moving pictures it not all about your talent by rather you contacts and ability to find new clients.

I had a recording studio in Brooklyn and was a musician/singer as well. I was able to sustain the business for a few year but them thing dried up. Hence, me going back to corporate.

I worked for Liberty Mutual insurance for a good while until they lay off 600 of us the same day.
They cut me a severance check and that when I decided to state a photography business.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

I’ve always been a stickler for good customer service. I get it from my mom. Do not give her bad customer service! lol. As a child shopping with her, I’d get embarrassed on the checkout line. Usually in department store. If something went wrong, my moms favorite phrase was ” Well let me give you a piece of my mind”, and then would ask for a manager. Embarrassing at the time but as an adult I get it. Good customer service is key. Makes you feel good and it keeps them coming back.

For instants, I’ve done some significant work with HBCU’s.
North Carolina A&T University reached out to my company to do an interview with some alumni’s. I offered them a discounted rate based on them being an HBCU.
I drove to the campus, which is typically something that I wouldn’t do because of the distance. I met up with some of their alumni’s. Working with them was very important for me, because of my past experiences. It turned into an amazing project.
Fast forward I had worked with them for approximately three years on an array of different projects, because of my dedication for higher education within the minority communities.
Word of mouth gets around, and that has led to some other pretty amazing opportunity. This has helped my reputation tremendously.

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

I care about the end result. Not all project a pretty or fun. Some may be down right boring and the client may be difficult. I’ll do my best to add additional value and try to expedite the project. Because of fast turn around time and good work they usually come back for future work.

I built a strong reputation in the market because of consistently, delivering quality material in an extraordinarily timely matter.
Though it isn’t protocol to do due diligence on a client, I typically will to enhance their stories and storylines. I’ll approach each project with the mindset of a journalist to uncover a deeper sense of their attributes in the marketplace.
With that being said, often times their ideas are expanded to places that they never imagined.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/newyorklens_atl/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook/newyorklens

Image Credits
Myself. I took these images and my ex girlfriend took the image of my seated.