I was inspired to take my mom’s point-and-shoot camera on a friend’s trip to Los Angeles in 2017 by my friend, Casey Kuwada. He had been taking his camera around everywhere he went at this point, and I saw the great photos he was taking and I wanted to do the same. The photos I took during this trip were nothing but snapshots of the activities we did, but the act of taking photos with an actual camera was an experience I wanted more of. In 2018, I finally bought my own used DSLR camera, a Canon EOS 7D, that I took on “photographic drives” I would do. During this time, I was also working at a ukulele store that had a social media account. I pitched the idea of taking photographs of beautiful ukuleles we had to post them on the company’s Instagram page. I also pitched the idea of creating videos for all the social media accounts to try and drive engagement and online sales. I directed, shot, and edited a video covering the history of the store that is still on their YouTube. I also created ukulele cover videos that were posted on IGTV (which Instagram deleted back in 2021).
In 2020, I took a break from creativity due to the lockdowns and I was also transitioning into the career I went to school for, mechanical engineering. In 2021, I purchased my second film camera, a Canon EOS 1N. I finally got my first roll of film developed and instantly fell in love with this medium. I thoroughly enjoy the slow process of taking a film photograph; making sure that my settings are correct from the beginning since I only have 36 exposures and I can’t get instant feedback once I take the shot, it’s just very satisfying once you see the developed negative. I’ve been taking my film camera over my DSLR on trips just for this reason, I want to be able to be active in the moment rather than taking lots of photographs and hoping one of them is good.
These days, I still do landscape photography. But I have also taken a likening to a journalistic type of photography: capturing fleeting moments for people to look back on. I don’t just want my clients to just look at good photographs – frankly anyone with a smartphone can do this – I want them to remember their past, how they felt during a specific period, and see how things have changed since then.