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.

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.