Thomas the Photographer: An Aspiring Mogul

Pink is a term often culturally accepted as a color standardized for girls, but, for aspiring tycoon Thomas James, he has found a way to take the ordinary pink and make it into something extraordinary.

Senior, photographer, business man, fashion designer, artist and more, Thomas James is gifted to say the least. While majoring in business, Thomas plans on stopping at nothing to ensure his full potential is fulfilled. On February 7, 2016 Thomas James debuted his 3^rd photography series, at MTN City Center for the Arts, LLC on Main St. The free two-hour event consisted of sensational art work, Q&A’s with the photographers, music, food and casual conversation. Thomas paired up with fellow photographers Taylor Crawford and Derek Russell for the premiere of their first ever collaboration entitled, The Legion of Imagination: Versatility in Photography.

The title of the exhibition explains some of the deeper meanings behind the photographs, but for Thomas the word ‘versatility’ would best describe his work. Taking the ordinary word pink, Thomas channeled his inner creativity to come up with the title “P(ink).” As Thomas explains, the series streams from a multitude of ideas “focusing on people being overall human beings. It’s bigger than just seeing a picture of someone. That’s why I did interviews after each photo-shoot because I feel like a lot of times people are judged very quickly and don’t take the time to really get to know one another. The ‘ink’ part is in parenthesis because the stories that we tell are our autobiographies. Since everything we are saying is essentially being written in ink, and we’re writing our own stories I decided to combine all those thoughts and ideas and that’s how P(ink) came about.”

The idea P(ink) is one of many series that Thomas has put into action. The first being ‘We Are My Brown, Don’t Shoot’ Project. “I want my photos to say something and people seem to like my stuff so I realized I can really make people pay attention,” says Thomas. The idea was derived from taking something negative and turning it into something positive. The second series titled ‘Don’t Police My Body’ focused on the idea of people having a voice and not being told things such as what they can do, wear and even who they can be with.

When speaking with Thomas, he spoke out about how important the number three is to him and how he applies it to his life by living by the three pillars. “The first being ‘honor’ meaning everything has to be done honorably in terms of loyalty and not breaking my moral code. The second is ‘community’ so anything I do has to be done for the greater good of the community, and the third is ‘hustle’ which means no matter what I have to keep going.” The third pillar ‘hustle’ meant a lot to Thomas throughout the creation of this exhibit. Once realizing “it was more work that I thought it would be,” Thomas showed his hustle through the amount of preparation he did to make the exhibit all that it turned out to be.

Preparing for his upcoming second exhibit this September, Thomas will be featuring his work at a gallery in Annapolis, Maryland, hoping to take his dreams to the next level. For more information about Thomas’ work you can view his website Thomasthephotographer.com, contact him at (301) 356-2390 or photosbythomas3@gmail.com.