I’ve spent almost 20 years behind a camera - weddings, portraits, high-end events, editorial work -shooting around the world with work published internationally. I loved the storytelling of it. As a teenager, I thought I’d become a photojournalist, and weddings were basically my version of that. Photojournalism, but cuter. Eventually, I realized I was spending nearly every weekend capturing everyone else’s memories while missing my own. So I left weddings and opened a studio right before COVID. Excellent timing. When the world got quiet, I went full art kid: fine art portraiture, digital art, underwater photography, drone portraits -whatever felt interesting, strange, beautiful, or worth trying. For a while, I got to create simply because I wanted to. Honestly, it was wonderful. Then creativity sort of ghosted me. Or maybe I ghosted it. I got too in my head about what I was making, whether it was good enough, whether anyone cared - all the incredibly useful things creative people do to themselves. But really, I think I just didn’t want to be perceived anymore. So I went quiet. Stayed home. Focused on my family. Let myself just be a person for a while. Then my daughter started high school and I was suddenly confronted with a very rude question: What the hell are you going to be doing in four years? Excellent question. The funny thing is, I really had tried to quit photography. But people kept finding me. A headshot here. A branding shoot there. Editorial work for a local publication or business. Just enough to keep pulling me back in. And somewhere in those little jobs, I remembered something I’d forgotten: Oh yeah. I’m really good at this. Not in an ego way. In a muscle-memory way. After almost 20 years, I know how to see people. I know how to make them comfortable. I know when the shot is there. So here I am, finally taking the hint. Twenty years and twenty versions of myself later, the medium never changed. Photography.