Creating memories, excellent service key to survival in entrepreneurship — David Adelakun, TAP CEO

David Adelakun is the Chief Executive Officer and founder, Taiwo Adelakun Photography (TAP) and the TAP Creative Academy. Burning with a passion to training and equipping creatives with entrepreneurial skills that would enable them compete on a global stage, he also seeks to change the face of the industry, one shot at a time, creating evergreen memories. He spoke recently on his entrepreneurial journey so far, and why he has created an academy to birth a new generation of young global creatives.

Why did you decide to invest in photography?

I studied Computer Engineering in Covenant University, but I picked photography as a hobby in my 200 level. I was good at it in school and I thought that was it but after school, I worked in a TV station and I developed the passion for storytelling. I was in the HR programming department where we created different contents to fit different audiences. It helped me to see that the need of a particular demography of people was different from the audience and so telling stories can be specific to who you are trying to tell that story to. That’s where it started getting interesting to me.

From there, I picked up my camera to create memories for people and also give them an experience that had an excellent service delivery.  There were people doing photography at the time but then I realised some of the complaints I would see online were that the quality of images and service delivery wasn’t good, and that became a path to fill since 2017.

What particular challenges did you particularly face in your entrepreneurial journey?

First, human capital; because of the vision, I was good at what we were doing, we had a great product. But I was also keen on the experience of our customers and that would be from the time they step into our office till when they step out of our studios. That experience was something that left them refreshed, made them feel like royalty and loved.

I needed a team of people that could pass that experience, and it was quite draining, especially when you have to always repeat yourself while correcting the team.  I realised I had no other job than to keep training the team to be able to create the culture and experience I want the brand to pass across.

Another thing was trying to get the customers to understand our unique selling point which was the experience we were giving. Some people didn’t mind having a bad experience as long as they had good quality pictures; and I had to let them understand that we didn’t do that; we offer good experience and better picture quality. So, I was trying to convince people knowing they could go somewhere else for cheaper prices, but we were unique in our own way and this was another challenge at the beginning phase.

But now, customers that know our style, love it, and when you see their reviews online, they say appreciate our art.

Ibadan is a city where ancient and modern urban growth, how has starting your career here changed your visual storytelling and what unique Ibadan culture will make your work stand out in the global scale?

For what we offer, we have a boutique studio that caters to our customers’ needs, and those needs vary. And as you said with the question, Ibadan has a mix of the modern part and still has the culture. So, we try our best to preserve those stories.

For instance, we have clients that come in with their traditional outfits and instead of telling them we can only shoot a certain way, we infuse that culture with the fashion they are presenting into how we photograph them, which includes the elements that we use in our backgrounds, the music we play to get the reaction we want from our clients etc. So, we usually infuse the culture into everything we do.

Also, our studio is strictly by appointment, we don’t have a walk-in studio, so we get our clients to send in pictures of the fashion they want to use during their shoot. That helps us plan out the types of poses they would do, etc.

Entrepreneurship in Nigeria comes with challenges, how you navigated it to maintain professional standards?

I would say power is a major issue. What we have done is install solar/battery-powered lights that would work instead of relying on PHCN. If power was taken care of for creatives, it would be a massive burden taken off their shoulders and one can use that energy on other things.

Many creative struggle with the transition from being a person with the camera to a business owner. What’s the most difficult lesson you’ve learnt from pricing, contract, or client management in Nigeria market when bargaining is the norm?

I believe that being a business person is different from being the creative carrying the camera. Understanding that these are two different roles is the first step to growing. I’ve been shooting since 2013 as a hobby and it has been 12 years now but I didn’t start the company until 2017. Even with that I was doing multiple roles, meaning if I was the CEO, it was a different role from being the photographer, and so understanding the difference is what has helped me in business side of things.

I can also delegate the duties of the photographer to somebody equally trained and can deliver on the quality the brand represents. So, understanding that difference is important, many people don’t know that.

Also, contracts are very very important, it protects the customer and you, it gives clarity and helps expectations. The truth is, I think you’ve heard the saying that says under-promise and over-deliver. if there’s no contract and there’s no promising, if you want to go beyond the contract, its fine.  However, it is better if there’s a baseline of understanding of what the customer expects from you, what you plan to deliver to the client and what you expect from them in return.

 I think many creatives just focus on their creative side, they don’t pay attention to other areas and it makes the business side of their creativity look funny. I think it is important that creatives learn that the business of creativity is different from creativity itself. You can play both roles at a time but if you know that they are two roles, you can easily delegate one of the roles and become a proper business owner.

With the rise of AI and automated editing tools the photography industry is facing massive shift. Do you believe Ai is a threat to the authenticity of Nigerian photography or is it a tool you are embracing to keep your workflow from the local to international standard?

The topic has been in the news lately and it is only wisdom to take AI as your friend because it is here to stay and not a threat. With the advent of camera phones and phones that had digital cameras on them, some people don’t see the need to come to the studio when they dress up to preserve their moment. Now, to take a picture, preserve the memory and post on social media without coming to studio is the norm.

When they want more creative shots, different ideas are brought to life in the studio, and that’s what we’ve been doing. But now it’s shifting to a point where people can just prompt AI to create whatever they want, They can put themselves in different scenarios, which means there would be a reduction in the number of people that need the services that we provide. However, we will still be relevant in terms of creativity. We have adopted AI as a tool, in fact currently, in our editing, we use AI. It makes work faster for us. If you take it as a friend, it’s better for you.

Instead of building set designs that cost millions of naira, you can just generate the set designs online which look almost as realistic as doing it live on set.  Things are going to get easier, faster and that’s what we are embracing with AI.

The Nigerian photography scene is highly saturated. Beyond just taking pictures, what are you doing to ensure your brand remains sustainable and relevant 10 years from now?

One of the things we’re doing is investing in human capital, so no matter what happens, human capital appreciation will forever be relevant in deciding what we create as a team. We have invested so much in training, and we have training programmes for people that can afford to come to our academy. We have an academy that runs every year and now with the internship programme, we created a community that helps photographers to find their feet in a creative space.

Creative leadership is one of the highest employers of labour and it has different sectors in it. From fashion to filming and music, people want to find their feet in the industry. They need a community to stand by them, and that community is what we created with our first conference on December 22 where we had seasoned professionals in film making, photography and entertainment journalism come together to speak about the issues we are facing as creatives, how to navigate them and thrive.

We will be doing more of this to raise the human capital the mindset that information and knowledge is required for every photographer, filmmaker and visual storyteller in this age. Our reward is that the next big storytellers are going to come out from Africa.

To take Ibadan to the world, the ecosystem needs to grow together. How do you intend to mentor emerging followers in Oyo State to ensure that Ibadan school of photography becomes the global standard?

Like I said earlier, I believe in human capital. We have people that come to our training academy and are in Canada today, some are in UK, USA, and are spread around the world doing amazing stuff in storytelling and visual storytelling.

Yes, we believe in human capital and the fact that everybody deserves to tell their own story. We are equipping people that join our training and come to our community to think as creatives, storytellers, culture shapers and put them on a level that is at par with creatives anywhere in the world.

So, we are training with the best minds that will equip everyone that comes in contact with us with the right mindset.  The community is growing, and what I found out over the years, apart from what they learn in the training school, is that they start to help themselves. Our creatives collaborate on projects and help one another in business as well.

Because of this community, we birthed conference called TAP Creative Community Conference (TAP CCC). It started this year, and we are going to do more of this in this coming years just to help expand the community. We will help people think as storytellers and look beyond every limitation they are facing.

As Nigerians in fact, these limitations are stories, it can help portray or influence the decisions that are made in our environment or people outside the country.

We have many cases of people saying, “Why do we only show the bad side of Nigeria, why not show the good side?” For instance, Afrobeat is one of our biggest export as of now and there are stories around it. There is a source from where these sounds are coming from, there is a back story to people producing these sounds, etc. All of these things have to be told by storytellers, documentaries, movies, music, and that’s the thing we are equipping people and the Human Resources that comes from them.

We can look at it as Ibadan as the world but then we are just like we need to tell African stories and anyone that comes in contact with us is equipped with that information and knowledge and skill, and we are giving that person the community to get their feet on the ground until they find their place in the stars.

That’s the plan and that’s what we’ve been doing, and we’ve seen so much freshly from it, and we are not stopping now, we are not backing down, we are going louder and bigger.

We are telling people to join TAP Creative Community, join our school and if you can’t afford it, you might be chosen as an intern(we have an internship program for six months for people that can’t afford the academy).

From anywhere in Nigeria, feel free to send us a message on Instagram or WhatsApp, and we would let you know all the procedures on how to go about it.

READ ALSO: I tell stories with photography — Bolade Olawoye