Creative Director, Photographer
Origin: Miami, Florida
We featured Noah Villamar, who goes by "Noah the Innovator." Born and raised in Miami, Noah explains his creative process and plenty more with us! Check out a snippet of the interview on our IGTV / Youtube or read the full interview below:
What do you do? Where are you from? My name is Noah. I'm a creative director, photographer, editor in a sense to and then a stylist as well. Pretty much, I like to put together the whole shoot if I'm not already working with a stylist or somebody who handles wardrobe and I'll take on that task like myself and handle it with the model of whoever it is that I'm shooting with or whoever's you know, in the frame will get the outfit and everything going together.
How did you develop your style? Well, I really love art, especially contemporary art. I definitely got some of my style from that. Also, a HUGE one that influenced my style was Tumblr back in like 2012 – 2015. I was always on there admiring a lot of the content that was on there and moved on to how a photo or art can make you feel if you truly look at it and attempt to digest it. With taking in all that, I wanted to make sure that I need to display the same effect and make it different each time, so things don’t look repetitive although to me at times things do look repetitive, but that’s okay. I’m always improving.
Film / Digital? Preference if so why? That’s a tough one but I would say film because when I shoot digital, I still edit and make it look like it was photographed on a film camera. Film gives everything the perfect aesthetic and when you are shooting film it forces you to think about each photo. Whereas digital, I can snap away, delete, and redone some poses or whatever it is I’m shooting.
What is your creative process?
Sometimes the ideas I have for shoots are spontaneous, but when they do pop up in my head, I have to start to write it down as I see it before I lose it in my head. Not too sure if that sounds wild or not but it’s like when you are telling someone a story or something and they cut you off and you forget the story or whatever your train of thought was. When it comes to getting the whole shoot together, I generally have a mood board and within the mood board, I’ll have a series of inspo photos of poses, props that may be used, briefing on the style/wardrobe for the shoot. (If I am not already working with a stylist.) The location of the shoot & a briefing out what we are attempting to tell throughout these photos. Lastly, execute the idea!
Your work is very versatile, and I’d say each piece is distinct and different within each one. But you defiantly show a lot of color and emotion. Through your work, is there something specific you always aim to convey? I generally like to express a lot of emotions within the photos to really gain the interest of the consumer. The main thing that I always aim to paint in my photos is a story. I’m sure that may sound cornball-ish. But we all know there are millions of different types of stories to tell, from passionate, moving, euphoric, to traumatic.
Tell us a little more about your photo series (On IG based on emotions and color) The photo series is pretty much some of the projects that I have conducted so far and yet more to come. Now the color aspect of the projects varies, most of the time I imply the color based on what we are attempting to express in the photo(s). For instance, my profile photo is the color orange. That color orange has enthusiasm, fascination, happiness, creativity, determination, attraction, success, encouragement, and stimulation. To the human eye, it's a very hot color, so it gives the sensation of heat.
How has quarantine been affecting you as an artist? More creative or less? I would say somewhat more creative, however, the past couple of months I took a lot of the creative hats off and put the business caps on. It’s very important to understand the business side of things and balance both the creative & business side. Most importantly to value yourself / craft or brand. But I have been sketching out some of the group projects that I will be shooting when things get better of course.
What’s next for you/ what are you currently working on?
I have a handful of group projects that I want to do. I still have solo projects that I'm doing with individual subjects but the more group ones that tell me more in-depth stories are the ones that I actually want to submit to galleries. I have them sketched out already. I just need to do them. There's a couple left that I still need to tweak upon but I definitely want to get those done so I could display them. I don't want to talk about names or anything here because I haven't gotten there yet. But I have that to come. I'm really attempting on reaching out to bigger companies to get more campaigns and work more with them. Since right now a lot of their creative teams are reaching out and they're needing more since it's a slow time right now for companies and they're going to need more creative advertisements. As long as everybody understands that you're at a low right now and that it doesn't mean you're gonna stay there. It's all a mindset. We're all either in the same position or you might be fortunate enough to still be working, but take it with a grain of salt and figure out what's best for you because it's unfortunate that so many people are not working. And then it also shows how a company is so quick to get rid of you. If they're so quick to get rid of you, I'm not saying don't work, still do your thing, but also have your own shit going on because you will always take care of yourself better than anybody else. You just need to do for yourself.
Don't forget to check out Noah Villamar on Instagram!
Interview by Dreina Bautista.