EP.12 • LOUIS HOLLISON

Louis Hollinson is a creative director, consultant, and owner of @project.703. His Instagram, @l.holl, serves as an outlet for his curation, spanning design, personal adventures, and his reconnection to nature.

Let's talk a little about your Instagram profile, it's like a big moodboard from which we can draw inspiration and where we can discover places, objects and brands. With what intentions did you start posting?

I started posting on @l.holl to document what I found exciting in fashion/ aesthetics and nature, as a personal project. Then it gained some followers and I decided to share some more knowledge of brands etc. It then evolved into a community hub where similar people could connect, along with other pages which were on a similar vibe. I'm grateful for that period where everyone came together and turned online connections into real life connections. Nowadays the page is a personal page of sorts.

You practice a lot of outdoor activities and, when you post your content, you rework it and choose it with a certain logic. What is your personal relationship and correlation between creativity and the outdoors?

I think the outdoors and nature is an unlimited source of inspiration for creativity. Everything in nature works perfectly, it has unlimited organizing power if you don't mess around with it. There is a lot we can learn from that. I did a lot of growing up in the countryside with great access to nature, and although I didn’t appreciate that until I was a little bit older, it's been a big part of my life. If I can portray even a small slice of that in my work or anything I post online, then that's great.

We have noticed a common line between the content that we post on Wanderlust Vision and the content that you post: both profiles offer many seemingly different things in terms of environments, travel, objects, activities, people and brand collaborations. This, in our experience, is both a pro and a con for possible customers or users of our content. What do you think? What do you think is good and what is bad about having different 'horizontal' content on your profile?

I agree that it is both a pro and a con. Sometimes people want to consume content about purely shoes for example, and there is a place for that. However, on my page I am showcasing the things that make up who I am. It's a holistic view of my lifestyle, multidimensional. Drawing on different categories of taste can give a much more rounded view of what a person is about. You can tell a lot about a person by looking at their shoes, but you can feel what their soul might be like if you look at their shoes, clothes, music taste, how and where they spend their time, and who with.

Today there are many profiles dealing with the outdoors, how do you think your profile differs and how do you think the future development of your profile and your online work with images could be?

I think my profile is mostly just showing what's going on in my life, and inspired by my personal reference points, so I guess it's not really replicable. It's quite an organic process, I used to post every day, but now I live my life more and post only when I feel compelled to. In terms of the future, the page will develop alongside my life, interests and activities. Maybe I will make it more personal with some captions and some images that reveal more about my day to day life. I don't tend to go with a plan on the page, I let how I feel guide the way.

We noticed that initially you never used to post pictures with your face, now this is gradually changing and we are starting to see more of you, what led you to this decision? Do you plan to expose yourself even more in the future?

Initially I didn't show my face because it was only about nature and fashion/ aesthetics. Once it got some followers I thought the page was something I could develop. One thing I knew is that people are much more interested in things when they are denied some information or detail, not showing my face was something which made people more engaged and involved with the page, as though there is still something to uncover, leaving an enigma is quite a powerful tool. Also, I was not interested in the page being all about me, more about inspiring people to connect to nature. These days it is more of a personal account which I use for work and to connect with similar people, to foster a more meaningful connection, it's nice to reveal a little bit more about yourself and make yourself seem more human.

Would you like, finally, to suggest some pieces of music that you link to specific journeys, landscapes or activities?

Yes, love this question!

  1. Nils Frahm - Sweet little lie: This one relates to when I went for a lone peak bagging mission one sunny day in the lake district. I had some mushroom microdoses before I started and somewhere along the way I took a break on the top of a peak to eat an orange. This song was playing in my headphones while I watched the clouds and their shadows fly over the land, it was a lovely moment.
  2. Biosphere - Chukhung: I was listening to this while on a solo hike in the Himalayas, overlooking the village of Chukhung. I was acclimatizing a day or two before our summit push on Island peak. I was at 5,000m and trying to walk as fast as I could to get used to the super thin air, the sounds in my ears really made me feel like I was roaming a different planet.
  3. Sigur Rós - Svefn-G-Englar: This is another one from Nepal, this time on the trek towards a village called Gorak Shep, the last point of civilization before you reach Everest base camp. It was a beautiful, sunny and clear morning, I was surrounded by 7/8,000m peaks and hiking straight towards my favorite mountain, Pumori. The views were completely overwhelming and being alone in the landscape with this soundtrack created some of the craziest nature related feelings I have ever felt.

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