Today we’d like to introduce you to Joel Hernandez.
Joel, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
My name is Joel or better known as Judo, I am a creative that makes a lot of visual content and occasionally makes clothing for my brand, Regular Humans Rebellion. I started in photography while I was in high school. I picked up my sister’s Nikon 1 camera and just took photos of random things, trying to figure out the whole functionalities. I mostly took photos of my friends and random scenes of lines I saw. Throughout my figuring out the camera, I met my friend Neff in Photojournalism class. he was a videographer. Very into it too. He inspired me to start creating videos. primarily at the time, he was making music videos for his brother-in-law. Observing his videos and taking photos of my friends sparked some ideas to make music videos for my friends who were making music. We all teamed up to shoot a music video for our friend Mikey. It was my first music video and honestly, it was a really nice one too.
In school, they had me shooting for Yearbook the last two years, after that and learning my camera and overall goal I wanted to manifest, I went into creating content for myself. I sat in my mom’s garage at home. Ha-ha, I made it into an office space. As I sat there, I thought of things I wanted to create because my master plan was to be an overall creative individual. This is in 2016, I had just graduated high school. I set myself a long-term goal, be able to shoot photos, videos, make clothing, be a somewhat stylist, be able to have set designs, create a retail architectural style, and do pop-ups, you know an overall creative individual manifesting a creative lifestyle. With all these thoughts in mind, I had sat in my mom’s garage and was listening to Kid Cudi’s new album, Passion, Pain, and demon-slaying. One of my most favorite albums ever! I sat there and I wondered how I can make all of these creative endeavors and combine them into a massive mental construct to always have my skills go hand in hand. I thought okay, photography and video can definitely shake hands, now, I need a subject, I thought models?? No, I needed something more. I thought about the way we live as humans. I told myself, as humans we are all the same, the money in our pockets, the color of our skins, the race we have that divides us into a category of humans. I thought all this and said out loud, we are all by the reality of the universe just regular humans.
I canceled out all the things about race and money, social statuses, everything that does not matter because of the ultimate reality. I thought now the Human mind. How can we even obtain such thoughts and items? It’s because someone went out of the norm of thought and CREATED, MANIFESTED the ideas. They rebelled against the norm and created it. If I can somehow redesign the thought into a conceptual sub-universe It clicked to me… Regular Humans Rebellion. Humans with the capability of manifesting creative ideas from mind to reality. Rebel against the norm! Rebel against the desire of social status and being above others, we are all one race. I figured out my subject. This universe in my mind was now my story. My art from that day forward. I constructed the whole brand that month. I then now needed models to put in my clothing and a team that could help on set. I gathered about 13 individuals for this, many were my good friends I grew up with. They helped me build a character and a narrative within the brand. My first chapter of this new journey was amazing. I love and appreciate every person who helped me bring the idea into manifestation. I’ve created about 18 pieces of clothing. many were exclusive for the Apollos Room shows and some a collective drop, along with sub-collections that sparked the interest of sub-stories within my brands’ universe. The photoshoots for each product always had me in tears of happiness, to witness my clothing gain their own characters in the photoshoots and be presented in such a creative direction that included individuals to part take in important roles, like Models, Make-up artist, stylist, music for the videos, anything I could think of it was right there and it was amazing to witness such a creative force being blindly made by all of these creatives! It gave strength and encouragement it made me fall in love with my brand’s message too much. Humans with the capability of manifesting creative ideas from mind to reality. My friends were living breathing individuals who reflected my brand, the brand was made for people like them to flourish and feel the enlightenment of creating art.
We made, short films, music videos, skate videos, did shows, made clothing, did photoshoots for magazines, makeup concept shoots, lifestyle shoots for other designers, helped many other artists expose themselves to the light. It was the most amazing idea to ever bulb with and I didn’t think it gets this far with doing pop-ups around Texas. In Austin SXSW, San Antonio, and Killeen, soon we will adventure out into doing pop-ups in more cities, but this time with a new presentation of Retail architectural style in mind. I want my booth to feel like an experience more than just a table and clothes laid out. I wanted to create this sub-brand within mine for a video production team, I teamed up with my very good friend Jamal and we brainstormed in my mom’s garage (again) and it happened again *bulb* another great idea! The production team, Regular Humans Studio. A production team with a million-dollar mindset. We created a few videos; Jamal was our like film guru, he wanted to pursue being a director and I thought this is amazing because we can help each other prosper! I’m not sure what I did really, I just had a lot of ideas, haha! I also created a Magazine as a sub-brand of Regular Humans Rebellion. I called the Magazine HUMANS Magazine. It contains a lot of behind the scenes of my journey, I feel like a lot of people see my photos and you know the final product.
So, my magazine was for the realness of who I am. I poured my mind into the details of my magazine. I added other creatives to show their art as well. The production team RHS created exclusive video interviews with the artist. I don’t know if you can see how all the sub-brands connect into the big universe I created. It almost makes me emotional thinking about how far I didn’t think I’d get. It’s crazy because I am only just getting started! Man… Many, many amazing things have happened on my journey to where I am now. So many things and there is more to do! I love that about my path. Ideas are endless, we just got to be consistent! I know the future holds big events for the better. Nothing but a blessing for the love of art!
Has it been a smooth road?
It was rough mentally. And well, you know money was an issue for some things. The struggle to sustain a living and then create art all at once is crazy. I love the hustle but seesh… not being able to eat sometimes sucks. yet I do not hate the process where obstacles lay await. I feel like the mistakes leave me only wiser. I feel like I can be a problem solver with most cases on my journey. I don’t let obstacles get to me too much. I do have bad habits that cause me to slow down and I struggle to really grasp time and scheduling myself a deadline or time period to get stuff finished. I have a bad habit of subconsciously procrastinating hahaha.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
My business is unique in a way. We specialize in Videos and Photos. We are known for our way of expressing and capturing visual arts. The Magazine we created was phenomenal. I am very proud of that! I believe we set apart from others by just being ourselves and creating a very detailed concept of art that’s slowly developing into a bigger perspective!
Is our city a good place to do what you do?
Yeah, there are a lot of creatives around. It’s all a matter of networking with the right people that have similar goals as you. You know surround yourself with likeminded people!
Contact Info:
- Website: judovisuals.com
- Instagram: judovisuals
- Other: odachi.us
Image Credit:
Judo Visuals & Mekal Rodriguez
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