Conversations with Joshua Taylor

Today we’d like to introduce you to Joshua Taylor.

Hi Joshua, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
It all started when my dad first bought me my first camera my freshman year of high school. For a couple of years after he bought it, it just sat in the corner of my room collecting dust, then one day I just felt compelled to take my camera out of its bag and start to play with it. It was at that moment when I started to dabble more into that artform that my passion for photography started to blossom. Around 11th grade I first started to do mini photoshoots of my friends. It was nothing too major, I was just a boy with a camera having fun. After practicing with my camera more and more, I then started to realize that I was pretty good at taking pictures and I wanted to dive deeper into the art of photography. I had gotten to a point that after constant trial, error, and hours and hours of research, my perspective on photography started to change. I knew that I was passionate about what I do when I realized that capturing a photo and preserving that very moment in time was pure bliss to me. It was something about being to able to create history and have tangible evidence of that from my lens, was not only exciting but I loved it.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
With every journey to owning your own business or even pursuing something that your passionate about, there are bound to be some difficult obstacles along the way to overcome. For me, my biggest obstacle was having to pawn all of my photography equipment so that I could have a place to stay. A couple of years ago, I made a difficult decision to drop out of college to pursue photography full time. It was something that wasn’t all the way thought out, but my heart was pounding and pushing me to go another direction away from school. I knew in my heart that school wasn’t for me and that there was something greater in store for me. I didn’t have a plan, but I had to leave school. Once I made the decision that I was going to drop out, I had less than 2 weeks to find a place to stay, before my campus housing was going to expire. I found an apartment complex that had some openings, but the only thing was that I needed roughly $1200 to move in. I didn’t have much money saved up, and I tried everything to scrape up what little money I could. I knew that the end result would be to sell my photography equipment, and that’s exactly what I had to do. It was definitely a hard pill to swallow, but I knew in my heart and I had faith that I would end up rebuilding even more than what I had started with. It was all part of God’s blueprint for my life.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I specialize in creative portrait photography. I’m really compelled to more of that genre because each piece has a story that you can tell within it. That is my ultimate form of creative expression. Portraits have a way of drawing the viewer in to that piece. The emotion, the pose, the colors… Its very hard to explain the feeling behind it. Everything is simply a work of art. I feel at home whenever I am creating a portrait piece. My biggest inspiration behind building a creative portrait, is the mood I want that specific portrait to convey. What story do I want to tell ?How does it make me feel? How does it make others feel? What is this piece telling me?

How do you think about luck?
I don’t really believe in luck haha. But I will say that everything in my life has happened for a reason and for that I am truly grateful.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: instagram.com/taylor.made.images
• Youtube: youtube.com/taylored2create
• Other: tiktok.com/taylored2create

Image Credits
Alesse Beasley (IG:@alessebee) Chakara Lo’ Rose (@marlielorose) IG: (@slymgym89) Kendra Lamar (@kendralamar_)