Before I begin, if you've not read the intriguing tale of how two Nigerian undergraduates started up a growing photography agency in Nigeria with nothing more than a tiny camera and a reflector made up of some shiny cloth and bits of cane , I Suggest You Click Here Now . No one likes to walk in at the middle of the movie.
Now that its out of the way, i'l go on from where i stopped over a year ago.
from setting off into "the cruel world where we met nice people", to our first photo shoot , to our NYSC travails, meeting victor, and some really awesome celebrities..... to our encounter with the The Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum..
Although it feels like 5 years, its just been 1. and boy what a year it has been.
It started on a good note , I was at home, working on some projects , papers all over the place , thinking of the next step to take and how best to direct us to a better place, (as i believe most entrepreneurs do from time to time) when i got a call from Somto
Somto : Makay guess where I am
Me : Dude go away I'm a little busy (jokingly)
Somto : Just Guess Jo!
Me : Hell Fire ???
Somto : ODE!!! ( means "fool" in Yoruba language ) I'm at the NICON hotels in Abuja
.
Me: (thinking sarcastically "yaay your in a hotel and I'm here going crazy amidst my imaginary friends having a paper fight ). What are you doing there???.
Somto: I'm here to shoot the president with Y! Naija
Me: Are they paying??? (my most famous question at the time)
Somto: At all,o . its just for publicity
And there I was thinking "what the hell" lol, if no ones paying, this better get us some mileage. And it did it opened us up to other great magazines and more awesome people. So profound was the effect of this, that a good number of people still strongly believe the photo to be "photoshopped " lool , we love them all..
Not a bad way to start the year I guess and it got a whole lot better. The amount of exposure we were getting was incredible. Somto was out shooting Asa and other great projects , Victor was Improving his skills by shooting A list celebrities in the Nigerian Entertainment Industry, I was out driving publicity and taking care of the business aspects of the whole thing. We were all learning , making mistakes, and growing, Money wasn't coming in thick and fast still, but we kept on pushing hard, making sacrifices if we needed to, weathering storms that hit us from within, and outside our circle of trust.
Things were looking up, and when we got a call from Chocolate City (One of the biggest music labels in Africa), we knew we were on the right track. Mr Chucks ( awesome graphics artist / guitarist), made it happen. He was their Publicity Person, and we had been in talks for quite some time. The moment had finally come.
We were asked to come up with photographs for Ice Prince's Album and campaign. And we had a whole lot of fun, and exposure (and yes, they paid, Thank God!!! lol). And the partnership began, we take awesome photographs, Mr Chucks adds his Mental graphics skills to the mix, and art would be born. With the awesome work we were able to create we were further tasked with making photographs for the entire music crew, more recently .. Brymo , "The Frank Sinatra of Africa"
Everybody was pitching in. even I had to model for some of our jobs.
Before we knew it, 2011 was over, and we decided to take 2012 more seriously. We launched the website , I even shipped in a camera, The canon G12, (awesome little Machine).
We were raring to go!, then we heard the news. Our Dear Friend up there had removed the subsidy to be paid by the government to the petroleum industry to keep petrol prices at a bearable N65 ($0.40) per litre to N141 per litre. This signalled the start of the Occupy Nigeria Movement , and because our economy is heavily dependent on this single resource, Prices of Everything Sky-rocketed!
This took away the whole of January from our calendar. but it Did give me time to practice and support the movement in my own way. Since I was virtually banned from hitting the streets I did the next best thing.... Support the movement through photographs.. (yea call me a chicken I don't care, and i would've gone out too, if it wasn't for my meddling parents lool )
When that blew over and things began to normalize, although things weren't back to normal, we had to press on still, and by the end of February, i got us our first publicly accessible studio space.
Thanks to my mom ( awesome by the way) , we had a place to actually work in peace and really settle down.
Not long after we had a torrent of people come over, people from all works of life, dropping in for shoots with somto and victor, we even had some "repeat offenders" if i can put it that way lol.
Things were beginning to look up, with our successful law suit, to the addition of another blogger to this page (Lovely young lady from India) and even my discovery of the cinemagraph on the internet while searching for new content for the blog and our amazing Radio Interview with Dotun From Cool FM 96.9 , I think I enjoyed it a little too much cos Somto and Victor made fun of me, as they normally do when I perform well at something .. haha. I'd love to do it again :-)
The year was going good until the ill fated Dana Air Crash . it seemed to drain away a good measure of enthusiasm from us at the time. We all lost or knew someone close that had a friend or relative on that plane.
Even then, i didn't fully understand the gravity of what had happened, till I went over to see a friend of my mom's. we stopped at this beautiful house, went in, wonderful architecture and incredible cars, I was appreciating this silently till I saw the little gathering of people outside an open doorway. It was a very strong feeling of sadness, gripped me really hard, i couldn't muster up the strength to speak to the mother of the child that had passed away, a girl, my age, just starting out in life with a glistening future.
This is to Adekunmbi Adebiyi and all those that lost their lives. they will never be forgotten
Life is Precious. I've come to realize . I'm 23 by the way and this incident amongst others gave me a serious wake up call. So serious that now instead of asking people "Are they paying? " , I move away from that and ask myself "Are We Making A Difference?", because in the end when all is said and done , in my final moments, when all has been said and all has been done if my answer to that question is "YES" then I will gladly accept my passing as a thing of celebration and happiness.
Please Continue To Help Us Make A Difference.
Have A Great Day. And Thank You For Reading.
If you enjoyed it, please share it using the buttons below, we'd appreciate that :-).
See you with an update on how we are doing in another 12 months ...
Hopefully...
Photography
August Udoh
Macaulay Ayobami
Obi Somto
...
Words? .... : Macaulay Ayobami
For
Orbit Imagery
Now that its out of the way, i'l go on from where i stopped over a year ago.
from setting off into "the cruel world where we met nice people", to our first photo shoot , to our NYSC travails, meeting victor, and some really awesome celebrities..... to our encounter with the The Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum..
Although it feels like 5 years, its just been 1. and boy what a year it has been.
It started on a good note , I was at home, working on some projects , papers all over the place , thinking of the next step to take and how best to direct us to a better place, (as i believe most entrepreneurs do from time to time) when i got a call from Somto
Somto : Makay guess where I am
Me : Dude go away I'm a little busy (jokingly)
Somto : Just Guess Jo!
Me : Hell Fire ???
Somto : ODE!!! ( means "fool" in Yoruba language ) I'm at the NICON hotels in Abuja
.
Me: (thinking sarcastically "yaay your in a hotel and I'm here going crazy amidst my imaginary friends having a paper fight ). What are you doing there???.
Somto: I'm here to shoot the president with Y! Naija
Me: Are they paying??? (my most famous question at the time)
Somto: At all,o . its just for publicity
And there I was thinking "what the hell" lol, if no ones paying, this better get us some mileage. And it did it opened us up to other great magazines and more awesome people. So profound was the effect of this, that a good number of people still strongly believe the photo to be "photoshopped " lool , we love them all..
Not a bad way to start the year I guess and it got a whole lot better. The amount of exposure we were getting was incredible. Somto was out shooting Asa and other great projects , Victor was Improving his skills by shooting A list celebrities in the Nigerian Entertainment Industry, I was out driving publicity and taking care of the business aspects of the whole thing. We were all learning , making mistakes, and growing, Money wasn't coming in thick and fast still, but we kept on pushing hard, making sacrifices if we needed to, weathering storms that hit us from within, and outside our circle of trust.
Things were looking up, and when we got a call from Chocolate City (One of the biggest music labels in Africa), we knew we were on the right track. Mr Chucks ( awesome graphics artist / guitarist), made it happen. He was their Publicity Person, and we had been in talks for quite some time. The moment had finally come.
We were asked to come up with photographs for Ice Prince's Album and campaign. And we had a whole lot of fun, and exposure (and yes, they paid, Thank God!!! lol). And the partnership began, we take awesome photographs, Mr Chucks adds his Mental graphics skills to the mix, and art would be born. With the awesome work we were able to create we were further tasked with making photographs for the entire music crew, more recently .. Brymo , "The Frank Sinatra of Africa"
Everybody was pitching in. even I had to model for some of our jobs.
Before we knew it, 2011 was over, and we decided to take 2012 more seriously. We launched the website , I even shipped in a camera, The canon G12, (awesome little Machine).
We were raring to go!, then we heard the news. Our Dear Friend up there had removed the subsidy to be paid by the government to the petroleum industry to keep petrol prices at a bearable N65 ($0.40) per litre to N141 per litre. This signalled the start of the Occupy Nigeria Movement , and because our economy is heavily dependent on this single resource, Prices of Everything Sky-rocketed!
This took away the whole of January from our calendar. but it Did give me time to practice and support the movement in my own way. Since I was virtually banned from hitting the streets I did the next best thing.... Support the movement through photographs.. (yea call me a chicken I don't care, and i would've gone out too, if it wasn't for my meddling parents lool )
When that blew over and things began to normalize, although things weren't back to normal, we had to press on still, and by the end of February, i got us our first publicly accessible studio space.
Thanks to my mom ( awesome by the way) , we had a place to actually work in peace and really settle down.
Not long after we had a torrent of people come over, people from all works of life, dropping in for shoots with somto and victor, we even had some "repeat offenders" if i can put it that way lol.
Things were beginning to look up, with our successful law suit, to the addition of another blogger to this page (Lovely young lady from India) and even my discovery of the cinemagraph on the internet while searching for new content for the blog and our amazing Radio Interview with Dotun From Cool FM 96.9 , I think I enjoyed it a little too much cos Somto and Victor made fun of me, as they normally do when I perform well at something .. haha. I'd love to do it again :-)
The year was going good until the ill fated Dana Air Crash . it seemed to drain away a good measure of enthusiasm from us at the time. We all lost or knew someone close that had a friend or relative on that plane.
Even then, i didn't fully understand the gravity of what had happened, till I went over to see a friend of my mom's. we stopped at this beautiful house, went in, wonderful architecture and incredible cars, I was appreciating this silently till I saw the little gathering of people outside an open doorway. It was a very strong feeling of sadness, gripped me really hard, i couldn't muster up the strength to speak to the mother of the child that had passed away, a girl, my age, just starting out in life with a glistening future.
This is to Adekunmbi Adebiyi and all those that lost their lives. they will never be forgotten
Life is Precious. I've come to realize . I'm 23 by the way and this incident amongst others gave me a serious wake up call. So serious that now instead of asking people "Are they paying? " , I move away from that and ask myself "Are We Making A Difference?", because in the end when all is said and done , in my final moments, when all has been said and all has been done if my answer to that question is "YES" then I will gladly accept my passing as a thing of celebration and happiness.
Please Continue To Help Us Make A Difference.
Have A Great Day. And Thank You For Reading.
If you enjoyed it, please share it using the buttons below, we'd appreciate that :-).
See you with an update on how we are doing in another 12 months ...
Hopefully...
Photography
August Udoh
Macaulay Ayobami
Obi Somto
...
Words? .... : Macaulay Ayobami
For
Orbit Imagery