We recently connected with Elijah Smith and have shared our conversation below.
Elijah, looking forward to learning from your journey. You’ve got an amazing story and before we dive into that, let’s start with an important building block. Where do you get your work ethic from?
Where do I get my work ethic from, probably my Moms. My mom was a single mom with a lot of help from my grandparents, I’ve seen her work 2-3 jobs sometimes and get everything that we wanted as a kid even if we didn’t deserve it all the time. She even went to school getting her masters while raising us, and working. I probably owe all that to her because without her we wouldn’t be where we are today.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
Hey, my name is Eli smith , known as Visualsofeli. I’m originally from the city they call Inglewood California. My family and I moved out here in 2010, wanting to better ourselves and keep me out of trouble haha. The stuff that I am focused on right now is photography, in all aspects. I also own a mobile car detailing service, formerly known as Aqua Free Details. We are going through a name change at the moment.
Some of the stuff I do is photography/videography, I started in 2016/2017 and started shooting for myself meeting up with people walking around the city doing street photography and what not and I also started shooting stuff for this collective called P$O intl. and after that it really took off.
I picked the name Visualsofeli because I thought it was different than all the others I was seeing. I used “of” instead of “by” because I feel like it was more personal and it was a look inside of my mind. Every photo I take or every video I shoot is like a little piece “of” me.
But later 2024 I will be dropping a photobook of some released and unreleased photos of just my adventures my friends and I have been on throughout the years. Don’t have a name for it yet. But be in the look out!
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
The three qualities, or skills that were impactful for me was, that I had a will to learn something new all the time. I’m not the best but if it’s something that I see and I really like it I’ll try to learn how to do it and make it my own. The skills that I already had coming to photos and stuff was growing up skateboarding, it helped a lot in life in general. Teaches you patience, calmness so you can get it just right and just like skateboarding once you land that trick it’s a big relief, happiness and joy cause you got what you exactly wanted.
The advice that I have for people that our on there journey is not too quit keep going, go out and shoot and improve everyday. Practice really does make perfect, and YouTube is your best friend.
What has been your biggest area of growth or improvement in the past 12 months?
Mannn, the biggest area of growth for me was actually posting things to my social media. I have a lot of things that I’ve done that I never post because I just like to have it. I feel like I’m sharing more with people so they can get to know what’s really going on in my mind haha
Contact Info:
- Website: TBA
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/visualsofeli
- Facebook: https://Facebook.com/visualsofeli
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/visualsofeli
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@YoMommasFavoriteSon
Image Credits
In photos @snot @xlimited_edition @vonaeluv Shot image of me @shotsbykwama
