Meet Richard Lewis | Photographer & Serial Entrepreneur

We had the good fortune of connecting with Richard Lewis and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Richard, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking
It really took a long time for me to fully understand risk and know that I’m naturally a risky person. I think “risk” is very important to understand because it plays such an important role in your life. I believe at one point everyone has to risk something and how you handle that situation determines the type of person you are. If your not really running any risk in your life then your just playing it safe, and there’s nothing wrong with that at all, I’m just not comfortable like that.

I believe the minute you decide you’re going to invest in yourself (and not just talking money) is the time you place the biggest bet in your life. When I started on my journey to entrepreneurship I understood that it was time for me to stop taking risks for someone else’s business and start risking my own. If I’m gonna place a bet on anyone it’s gonna be on myself every time. I learned that when you are making decisions for your success you want to have a level mind so that you can minimize risk. Just because you understand you are a risk-taker doesn’t mean you should let your emotions cloud your judgment. It’ll make you go through a lot more than you have to.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
As long as I could remember I had a camera of some sort in my hand. I literally have a baby picture of me holding a Polaroid One Step. My mom actually has those small VHS tapes and on them are videos of me narrating what’s going on and directing people where I want them. My love for photography could be seen in the pictures I fail to delete on my personal Facebook. When I was in middle school I stole my mom’s digital zoom camera so many times to practice shooting and editing pictures to post them on FB so I could look a lil cooler. But that’s why I love my journey and I can even see now that I’m older, how it all paid off.

I didn’t attend college after high school and most definitely didn’t think to pick up a camera to make a living. My photography came a little later in life after I figured out I wanted to start working for myself. I loved creating content, I was always for creating videos for social media or recording my gameplay and pasting it together. It all started to fall into place when my brother got a Cannon Rebel T6. It was something I put off for so long because adulthood came like a wrecking ball towards a youngin. At first, he was skeptical about me using it but later started putting it down a lot, so you know me, ima borrow it and put it back like you never touched it. Then Boom…

When you have your purpose in your hands everything doesn’t just fall into place. It took me picking the camera up and getting excited to me putting it down because the games of life were too overwhelming for me to bear both loads. But the funny thing about creating art, you can both struggle in life and document it. Instead of getting mad and putting the camera in time out, I started to develop habits of pushing out the most work when faced with adversity. By doing so I was both training my mind to get over the hurdles of life, and introducing everything I was lacking to be a Professional Photographer.

WOM stands for Word of MOUF. That’s the talent we all possess to get connections and keep relationships. Using Word Of MOUF I have been blessed with excellent relationships and have been put in amazing positions. I’m currently working with VS1 ATL at our brand new studio located on Metropolitan. I started with landscape and street photography but started practicing cropping people in for portraits. I shoot primarily with a Sony a7IV, and mainly use my 85 with 1.8f. Like I said I’ve been shooting my whole life but started shooting professionally 3 years ago. We only go up from where we’re standing so we have no choice but to elevate

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Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
If you feeling brunch we can go to breakfast at barneys, you don’t gotta spend to crazy, its just somewhere for us to look good and eat. Wakanda Forever out right now and IPIC serve liquor, so we can dip there after Barneys. After that, we can either go to The Rooftop if you wanna drink some more or we can go to the crib, chill, and change for whatever lounge gonna be lit for that night.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I definitely want to shout out God first cause if it wasn’t for him putting me on this path, I wouldn’t be here. if I never picked up Rich Dad Poor Dad I don’t think I would’ve been in the mindset I’m in now. Also, it’s not about what you know, it’s who you know. So my mentors play a major part in my life. From my guy CamNextLevel in Vegas who taught me that controlling my mind takes me farther than my pockets, to Sanchez who is constantly helping me perfect my photography. Oh yea my guy Rich just looked out, so you know…

Circle Still Good.

Website: wom.studio

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lotta.richie/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-lewis-28b53a257/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/WOMStu