Falling in love with a camera could be true love. Understanding how just a photo could speak a thousand words is one of the reasons many people do it. Another reason could be it being an art form for some, some people draw others paint, but Simon Silva the photographer brings models and artists into his realm with his camera. Hailing out of Alief, working as probably MIAs (Independent Alief Music Group) main photographer, while at the same time catching the life of the city on his own and releasing his photography book “Monologue” recently, Simon sat with us to share how he started Photography and his inspirations.
“Technically I’m born in Mo city, I don’t really remember where, but we moved to Sharpstown and then Alief” Simon says explaining where he was born. Alief, known for its unity throughout the community is very “multicultural”, Brown says. “Because so many immigrants live there you have a lot of Nigerians, Hispanic immigrants, and a lot of Vietnamese immigrants, so you have a lot of different cultures in one small area… And it’s a lot of creativity in the area. I feel like people from Alief will rep Alief more than a rep Houston. We’re still Houston, but it’s just a different culture I guess, almost like the north side and south side of Houston.”
Between the year of 2016 and 2017 which was his sophomore year was the time Simon began taking photos for a photography class. Not caring too much at first ended up changing to where it was a competition to see who could take the best photos between his peers and him. Playing no games, Simon joined his school‘s photography and journalism class his senior year. For one, the journalism class had mad equipment, because they would take pictures of sports games and more. What made his experience even better was the fact that his teachers were well immersed in the subject and with students, or him at least, therefore he had some guidance to help steer and hone in on his vision. With this much support, you could say it drove Simon to pursue his passion with the highest dedication as he says, “my junior or senior year I was taking photos constantly. At any chance I could I would take a photo… I would sign up for football games, basketball games even though it wasn’t really my thing, it allowed me to use technology that I had not really done before.” Even though he was Blessed with the opportunity to have teachers to push him and let him freely create. They didn’t have the complete knowledge or how to edit and color grade a photo. So adversity met innovation for Simon which led to him sharpening his skills all around the board.
Curious as to how he gets his hue ideas for his photos to come out so crisp, for instance his latest photo shoot which he kept in the vault for a while, is of Houston artist NRYZOOM and female model Erikaleww posing creating a mood of companionship, power, and stillness.
Simon explains how Pinterest is helpful because of its mood board layout. “You can just pick out photos and just be like, this is exactly what I kind of want, I wanna vibe like this, I like the colors of this you know what I mean?” But aside from Pinterest, knowing his photography types which are street and portraits, he pulls inspiration from Gordon Parks a street photographer as well. “He’s done a lot of really good photos, he was the first black photographer on LIFE magazine… The stuff he does with color, they have this really interesting vibe to them which feels really genuine, like a documentary in a beautiful way.”
Photography is so much more than just snapping a photo, it takes understanding angles, directing models, and after that the most difficult in Simon’s opinion is editing. “Sometimes you have an idea in your head, and you just don’t know how to execute it, and like editing is where you’re supposed to do that idea but it can just be really hard sometimes. It gets to the point where you have to buy certain packs, for layering just to get the right look.” But that doesn’t stop him at all. You can tell from his latest photo book monologue. “It’s a collaboration between me and my friend Terrance Carol… Every page in the book is a photo, and within that photo is a caption styled as a subtitle like in a movie. His words would be on top of my photos… I was thinking of a dark dirty grimy melancholy look. Like when you look at it you get a memory of the past. So when I would take the photos I will go to a location on the weekends when I knew people would be walking around. While waiting for people to be active, I would use my iPhone camera as a meter to make sure the exposure would be correct. It will be a slow process, sometimes and wait 10 to 15 minutes just to get one good photo. “
In love with the beauty of film Simon looks to maybe even direct movies one day with the likes of Charlie Kaufman, and David Fincher while at the same time directing music videos and gifting us with more photo books. All in due TIME.
