The Story Up Until Now

I am going to preface this by stating, I don’t normally share my thoughts and feelings like this. So this is all still a little new to me, I hope to get better at it… but in the meantime please read and enjoy 😊

I bought my first DSLR camera in 2019, somewhere on the busy streets of New York. It's halfway through 2024 and I have decided to build and publish my own photography website (can’t say I always saw that coming). The 6-year journey of getting to this point is filled with more stories, people and pictures than I can count. I’m looking forward to seeing what the next 6 years bring.

I always enjoyed taking photos. From the day I took my camera out of the box, I wandered the streets of New York photographing anything that would stand still for long enough. Moving forward I took pictures of every new unheard-of town I visited or mountain my friends and I climbed. I saw it as a way to create my own personal photo album, one I could relive and revisit at any time. I would meticulously organize each album by date, country, location and activity. (Nothing else in my life is nearly this organized)

It took some time to grow beyond the initial “photography everything and everywhere” stage. There came I point where I wanted to also create those beautiful and impactful pictures I would see other photographers post. Queue diving down the photography rabbit hole, suddenly you learn you can’t just keep taking photos in Automatic mode. You need to start learning all about the exposure triangle, photo compositions, light, different camera settings, the list goes on (I actually thoroughly enjoy

the learning process). You now start looking at scenes differently than before, appreciating the smaller details, looking at the combinations of shadows, light, texture etc.

I can’t really say that I know exactly where I am going with this, but I knew that I had to start. I am deploying the dive headfirst and see where you land approach. I know that I love taking photos and that it is something I want to be good at. I know that I love the medium of photography and its ability to communicate emotion, offer perspective or tell a story. The past few weeks while building this I’ve been dealing with my fair share of “fear of failure”. Constantly worrying my website or images aren’t going to be good enough. Ironically, I realised there will always be room for improvement if you’re looking to get better at something, but that shouldn’t be a reason not to start (so here we are 😊)

Although I might not know exactly where this is headed, I do know what I want it to be. That is a sort of extension of myself, showcasing my perspective on the world and bringing to life the places that I visit and people that I meet. I want people to scroll through my website and feel that they know a bit more about me, understand how I see the world, understand my wanderlust. I am genuinely in awe of the planet that we live on, the diversity between cultures, landscapes, architecture, people, food. What I love most is immersing myself in this diversity, experiencing it for myself firsthand and broadening my very narrow understanding of the world we live in. That is what I want this website to represent, and that I what I hope people will experience looking at the images that I produce.

To anyone still reading, thank you :’) I plan to make something good from this (please just be patient). I hope to bring you beautiful images, inspiring stories, adventures, new cultures and traditions, breath-taking locations and much more (no pressure).

Next Stop – Vietnam