Alex Wilson: An Up-and-Coming Multimedia Entrepreneur
Alex Wilson is a junior business management major at Temple University. He commutes 45-minutes from Delaware to pursue his studies and his work is rooted in his Jamaican culture- he is a man of many things such as a photographer, videographer, graphic designer, business owner, and music lover. Once an athlete before the pandemic hit, his interest in multimedia took place once the pandemic first began and took off from then. He started with little knowledge of the field and now he owns Xshotit - his photography business, co-owns YNL 4L, manages two music artists, and has gained many connections along the way. For a guy who started with little, he’s sure done a lot in a hurry: getting shots of Jack Harlow at Temple’s Owlchella last Spring, starting a clothing brand, YouTube channel, music video editing, and much more- he has come a long way. This is a snippet of his story.
What else do you do other than school?
I'm a photographer videographer. I'm a graphic designer, so I make cover art for music artists around the country. What else? Pretty much I like to think of myself as a multimedia creative.
Could you give me the rundown what you do with videography?
For videography, I do tons of things. I recently just started tapping into music videos over the summer. I remember, the first music video I dropped was hit 3000 views in one night, and I thought, “Yo, this sh*t is crazy” because before that I was so insecure about putting out work like that because photography was my main thing first. I had, some people around me sometimes being doubtful of me expanding into music videos. So, once I tried it out for the first time with my friends and now, I'm just doing that now. On top of that, I do events to make some money on the side, like weddings, birthday parties, there's all types of videography.
What do you do with photography?
As far as photography goes, that's the same thing I do. Everything with it. I started out doing sports though. It’s cool to capture a moment but you don't get to do much with it. I like to use Photoshop on Adobe. I go crazy with Photoshop. I like doing crazy effects- my pictures touching up the color. You don't get to really do that much in sports in my opinion. So that's why I fell into concert photography.
What was your first concert photography experience like?
I remember my first time shooting a concert was- you ever heard the artist Maddox? It was my first ever show. I didn't know how this was gonna come out. It went crazy. Like so crazy. His mom ended up like DMing me like, “Yo, can we use these pictures for his shows coming up?” I'm like, “yeah”, and then she gave me her number. Then after that, I shot for the Jack Harlow event with Temple. That was fun. That made me realize this is something I want to do because I'm really good at it, I think.
What kind of artists do you work with?
I work with all kinds of artists honestly. I've worked mostly with the rap artists though. But I'm down to always work with you know, just different types of artists you know if there was ever painters or just fashion designers.
How do you find your clients?
It's usually comes with networking. Sometimes just going into artists as DM’s being like, “hey, if you ever need work done”, “if you ever need a music video”, “you ever need cover art or anything like anything that's like creative related you can you know, come to me”. Or sometimes a lot artists, they just they'll make a post being like, “Yo, I need work done”. And it's a good way for you to just like, get yourself out there just by networking for yourself.
Who do you work with?
I love working with other photographers and videographers on projects. In the past I've already like collaborated with some videographers for music videos. It's such a fun thing to do. Outside of videographers and photographers, I do BTS work, whenever it's needed, you know, BTS word for fashion photoshoots anything like that. Then outside of working from doing BTS, of course again I work with music artists. Some of the music wires I've worked with in the past, to be specific, I've shot for Madox, Sway Lee, Jack Harlow. Pretty much I work with all kinds of creators of any sorts. I would love to start working with organizations in the future like doing work for them, maybe doing pitches for them. Just doing pitches for like a big music festival festival as well. That's like one of my big goals this year is to get into a big music festival and do work for them.
What influenced you to begin this career path?
I say this all the time to people, the pandemic was the best thing that ever happened to me. Before that I was going to college and I was only thinking about that I didn't know what to do. Like originally, I went to Howard University, and they're like- it just made me feel iffy. Now that was like when the pandemic is about to kick off like 2020 because I'm a junior now. It kind of resulted in becoming a computer engineering major. This is not something I really want to do. The pandemic gave me that time to really sit down and tap into something that I think I could be good at. Photography was just one of those things like I wanted to, because I always want to be known for something. I was like, let me try taking pictures ‘cause my dad used to do photography. My mom got me a camera was like $200 started taking photos of my friends and they came up really fire. Then one day my friend, she put me onto a photoshoot. The girl I was shooting with gave me $100 for my first shoot and I'm like, “I just got paid like what like for this like, okay, maybe I could turn this into something more.” Then, I did like the huge risk- I took that stimulus check and spent it on a $2,000 camera. Now ever since then, things kicked off. That's what brought me to videography. I can't rap though, so I was like, “how do I connect that with both with my creativity and music?” I was like, “you know what, maybe I could just do the music videos. Let's try it out.” That's where this came to.
Could you tell me more about how your father played an important role in your career development?
Oh man, my dad's like my number one support. My number one supporter, man. You know, him being a photographer- this inspired me a lot because he's such a hard working person. Although he didn't really have that much success in his photography, I got to see some of his work in some of his portfolio. And my dad's from the 70s. So a lot of the stuff he was doing was like non technology based if you can imagine the technology back then it's so much different now. But just to see his work, and this is so cool to have it passed down to me in my opinion. I think I have that creative mindset coming from him. I love how he's so involved now in what I do. Like sometimes he's watching me work. He's watching me edit things is me being in my zone and he sometimes will come through just critiquing me, but it's a critique me in good ways. Kind of like recommended me what I should do with this photo or maybe what I should do differently with this music video. It's very cool to have that with a parent because you know, some parents aren't sometimes supportive of someone chasing their passion, but he's definitely all about it. And he's definitely all about trying to help me get better.
How did your mother buying your first camera impact your career?
It was just.. it was a great feeling. It was just the boost. Looking back on it, it was the boost I needed from the start. If you can imagine now my mom never bought me that camera, I don't I probably wouldn't be where I am today and I really thank her.
Tell me a little bit about more graphic design. How did you start and what's your favorite part of it?
I first downloaded like Adobe Photoshop, because I was bored in the pandemic. I was like, you know, let me just do something for fun. You always see those edits on Instagram that people do with, like sports. Yeah, so, yeah, so I just like to have a little Uzi loose. He's like, my favorite artists. I did something and people were like, rockin’ with it, but back then looking back on that so trash, but people were giving me that love and support so I was like, “I'm gonna keep going”.
Do you guys design your own graphics for your attire, YouTube thumbnails, and everything else as well?
We do. I mean, the logo for our business- that was designed by somebody else. Everything else after that, though I do. I started doing that. Over the summer I started making cover art and that has been going crazy.
How does your major connect with what you do?
It's gonna teach me how to be a better business owner. I kind of already see the benefits now.
You have your own business, right?
Yeah. YNL 4L. It stands for young and lit for life.
Nice. That’s for your photography and videography, correct?
We call ourselves a multimedia lifestyle brand so we do videography, photography, interviews for creatives, music artists, fashion designers - just the culture, you know. We also sell merchandise now for our supporters. It's just been such a fun journey. Originally, we were a YouTube group. We tried to be like DDG and Kyson. But we realized like, that's not us. We're mature people. I love those guys, but that's not our personality. We wanted to display something that was more professional, but creative at the same time. That’s where we result in a multimedia industry some more.
What's your favorite part of it?
I can express myself. Do my creativity, I think. I love receiving love from the work I do. That's one thing I love about this whole thing is I just been receiving nothing but support.
Have you ever gotten comments, or I should say just people that are non-supportive?
I'm glad you asked. Yeah, so much. One thing I realized with this whole journey of running your own business and just pursuing your dream, you're gonna get some people that leave you and you're gonna have fallouts unfortunately. You just gotta follow your own gut.
Could you talk about more of the business side of you setting your business up rather than the creative side?
It's a quick but huge process at the same time. It requires a lot of sitting down, thinking and consulting with a lot of people. Just a lot of like careful decisions you have to make in order to make sure everything is good in the future. Making sure you have the right just the array, LLC, making sure everything is good like as far as like legal wise too because a lot of things get very technical in the business world. Even the way you get your money or once you start earning a lot of money, that's when you have to look at the way your taxes are done. That's where things get really technical. And we're only we're two years in, we're still kind of new to this. But we have people who are experts I will say who have definitely helped us along the way and knowing like here's the route you guys should go, here's what you shouldn't do, and here's what you should do. So that's pretty much what we had to deal with sometimes.
Aside from like the beginning, do you still run into some walls when it comes to business?
Business and just creatively like I say for me and my partner, he's gonna be laughing when I say this, but like, yeah, like, man, we've had so many like, artists like colleagues, just we've had so many slap in the face moments. We have moments where we’re like; we literally drove two hours to like New York have had and have had artists abandon us like oh, yeah, I'm not coming anymore. Like, we spent all our money driving there, like gas every day, just stuff like that. It sometimes makes us question things like, are we not respected enough? And it's just like stuff like that is what makes us go harder, you know? Because we want to be respected in what we do. And as far as far as business goes, Yeah, even with business, we meet people, or even like, we're hit with like slaps in the face and business too. We get people who we feel like don't respect us sometimes, as far as like accountability and punctuality goes, like people sometimes will, like, have a meeting with someone, and there'll be late in the meeting, or they just act like they don't care because they just think oh, we're some young guys that don't know what we're doing. It's like, come on, man. We want to be in the same field you're in.
Yeah, it has to start somewhere.
Yeah, exactly.
Could you tell me more about the experience you and your team faced in New York City?
I'm not gonna say the artists name but we were getting to a show. We had gotten there early and they told us to and this was the artists we were like talking to for months. It's like kind of like hyping up us meeting up and hyping up the situation. So we finally get there. We get to the show and that's when you know, the artist is not answering us. We're like “yeah, we're here”. They're like, “oh, okay, well, I just gotta like do some rehearsals and stuff”. He just started like pretty much beating around the bush and stuff and not really trying to like get help us get in and because we couldn't get into the show. Without a media pass, and he never told us that. He kept telling us like, oh, you should come to the front, I'm gonna send my representatives from my entourage to come outside to get you. They would say, “what’s your names”, leave, then they would come back again. Or sometimes they wouldn't come back. It was just a whole mess. And it was I was standing outside for a long time looking dumb in front of security guards.
Yeah, so from then on it was a lot of just like the representative from the entourage coming back out back and forth just being a messenger. It was getting a bit annoying to the point where he comes finally comes back out and he's like, “oh, yeah, so the show is about to start, you guys think you can wait after the show?” And my partner I was just kind of like, “what, are you crazy, we've been here for hours as it is, we've been waiting here in the cold and you expect us to wait again after the show”. And he's like, “or you can reschedule with the manager”. It was annoying because they should have from the get-go, left it up to the manager to handle everything. Because that means probably things wouldn’t have been as disorganized and our time wouldn't have been wasted. Instead he tried to take it upon himself and ended up screwing us over.
Aside from you know that love that you've been getting, do you think the hate or some of the negative comments helped you with your journey?
Yeah, I actually like that more sometimes. It's crazy to say like, um, when that video I was telling you about my first music video when I hit like 3000 views. It got a lot likes. I want some people in the comments. I want some dislikes; I want some mean people in there because it fuels me to go harder. You know? Yeah. I wouldn’t say I love the hate. I just love that motivational energy.
Aside from like the beginning, do you still run into some walls when it comes to your business and creatively?
I say for me and my partner [he's gonna be laughing when I say this] but yeah, man, we've had just so many slap in the face moments. We have moments where we drove two hours to like New York and have had artists abandon us like oh, yeah, I'm not coming anymore.
How do you think your culture and intertwines with the work that you do?
It makes me look at things differently. Especially appreciating life like especially people in Jamaica, they're all about positivity. Even just like, again, create creatively. I look at things just more in a beautiful way. Jamaica is a very beautiful country. I feel like with the work I do, I want to express that beauty that I always see in my life through what I do.
What's the greatest lesson you think that your line of business has taught you?
Patience. You know, good things will come. You just got to work hard and, you know, stay discipline.
What do you envision for yourself? For the future of your business and/or for yourself and academically?
I just want everybody I want to be good. I want to be at level 10 in life. I want everybody around me to be at a level 10 in life because I care about everybody. If you're my friend, you're coming with me to the top. I want my family to be good.
Do you have anything else you would like to say or the audience should expect from YNL 4L?
There’s a ton of projects. There’s a cypher and a music video I just shot with my bro. You can check them out at YNL4L.com and check me out at xshotit.com.
