I was watching long before I picked up a camera.
As a kid, I learned to read a room, to notice what people weren't saying, and to understand the mood before it shifted. The world didn't always feel safe, so observation became survival. It also became the way I learned to trust my own feelings. When photography found me, it didn't feel like a new skill so much as a new use for an old one. The careful watching I'd done out of necessity became a way to preserve what I was seeing.
I'm drawn to people: what they do and what they value. I don't have to share someone's interests to be invested in them; when I'm with someone, I'm fully present. I'm equally drawn to the things people leave behind, the objects that say someone was here.
For me, emotion matters as much as composition and light. Without some kind of pull — curiosity, melancholy, warmth, even confusion — the image stays inert. I hope people will look at my photos and not just see what I saw, but feel something close to what I felt.