00:00love is the greatest action that cannot be described in words it is an essence that speaks
00:10directly to the soul the highest vibration of the soul that fills you full to rejoice in his glory
00:19love it is unconditional love is god love is family love is friends love is home love is nigeria
00:32the concrete jungle often misunderstood yet so blessed we celebrate in its glory
00:41africa the motherland of love the land of joy the land of opportunities the land
00:48that breeds so many creatives will continue to inspire to tell their story through art love is
00:58selfless i'm so happy to be here i am in lagas nigeria all the way from la shooting with essence
01:08magazine a story and a love letter to nigeria and i have an amazing crew where we're just celebrating
01:17and highlighting some amazing talents designers and photographers of the diaspora yes i love some of
01:26the designers i told are this dress okay this dress beautiful that's lovely so we haven't we haven't
01:35picked the looks yet guys we're just kind of playing i love that i love nigeria because
01:43it's home it's the place i feel like i belong the most and it's where has my heart obviously it has
01:49loads of imperfections but it's where i feel like i want to make the most impact
01:56for me all my creativity stems from here and i build on everything that's around me here
02:03i shoot a lot of my work on the beach just because like i have a really romantic connection with like
02:15water like the intersection of water land and light today i was just trying to work with a lot of colors
02:24um monochromatic colors to tell this story of a regular sunday afternoon like you would go to church
02:34um pose in your outfits you would come home you would relax play around with your family you know
02:41sunday's a really restful day in lagos and that was really what i was going for hi i'm so happy to
02:49have you finally please introduce yourself to everyone hi what's going on my name is mikey
02:55i'm a photographer 27 years old doing the damn thing today's shoot was first of all phenomenal
03:01like the energy is like i'm just i'm just lonely i'm coming off i love it so i'm very very excited
03:08very very proud of what we did today um so my inspiration be them in the shoot for the shoot
03:12today i wanted to show boys and so i'm used to like in my if you check through my portfolio
03:17i mostly shoot boys with lagos and living here everybody's always like tough everybody's always
03:22like you know everybody has what they're going through everybody's shoulders are clenched you're
03:26looking too serious i don't want serious i don't serious okay let's see look i like i want you guys
03:30and i guess i don't know this about something i'm talking i wanted to portray my version of what i see
03:36or my experience it's not really the tough man it's not really somebody with six packs and all that you
03:41know different kind of bodies exist different kind of people exist so i just wanted to make sure
03:46that this is my opportunity and this let me just share this message
03:55can i have you speak up please i want i want them to dance
04:25i think with me i just really look at like what people wear like every day to charge to the marks
04:56offices to the clubs
05:00there was like a lot of like communal efforts i mean shooting alongside like other photographers
05:06and videographers and a lot of like stylists i think it kind of gave a sense of you know some sort
05:12of like we need each other i think it was really interesting to see you know you know photographers
05:17assisting other photographers stylists also working with stylists and models and
05:22and directors so i think it was really nice yeah i think community is so important just
05:26overall and i know that essence celebrates that a lot would you say that nigeria celebrates community
05:31as well i think also i think the essence really of nigeria is really rooted in community it might not
05:39necessarily be what people talk about now but you can see you can go everywhere and you see some sort of
05:45sense of you know community
06:01there's just something about being in a space where everyone looks like you and like not having to worry
06:09or not having to think that you have to shrink yourself but like being able to take up as much
06:14of the space as possible right um and like just be authentic and be who you are
06:19fashion has always been like one of my guilty pleasures because i think growing up i used to
06:30like watch like a lot of michael jackson and chris brown yes and i used to really love the outfits but
06:35at that point i couldn't afford to get like really really cool clothes so i always had that dream that
06:41you when i finally made it i was going to actually like branch into fashion regardless of whatever i was
06:46doing so i'm doing music now i'm big in music and i think fashion is the next step for me
06:53creating lagos is it's quite different the art you get the story you get is fantastic the creative
07:00industry in lagos is so dynamic and large like there's so many people doing big and great things
07:06and you can only get bigger from here i think we're one of the biggest out of africa yeah like you can't
07:10actually like be interested in fashion in africa and not like hear about lagos i love the chaos because
07:18you know it kind of you know keeps on like me keep moving it's a lot of moving pieces but when it comes
07:24together it's amazing you just gotta love it i wanted to dive in and highlight the nostalgia and the love
07:33that i have for my home and where i'm rooted from what was so beautiful about today was just the
07:40community that was created and the community that was highlighted my name is adai samyu i'm all the way
07:46in lagos nigeria from la this is my love letter to nigeria
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