captured work

Something changed in me when I took my first film photography class in college. At that point, I had taken photographs on a point-and-shoot camera that I “borrowed” from my mom, but I never learned the fundamentals of photography in such an intricate manner. Learning the foundations of film, right down to the chemistry, was just as thrilling as riding a bike for the first time.

Perhaps that’s the reason why I never honed in on any particular niche of the art. From the complexity of multilayered Photoshop manipulations to the raw appeal of instant film, the captivation of photography lies within its boundless interpretation.

collections

love / adventure / hospitality

I used to write a lot of poetry from the time I was a kid up until my college years. Actually, pardon my phrasing — I used to write a lot of bad poetry. Writing had always been an excuse for me to get out of my own head (or at least make sense of what was going on within it), but no matter what emotion I was subject to that day, I’d always end up writing about love. I was obsessed with love, even if I didn’t fully understand it.

For one reason or another, I put down the pen and picked up a camera somewhere along the way. Maybe, at that point, I felt that emotions are sometimes better felt and seen as opposed to read about — and whether or not my poetry was actually bad (we’re always our own worst critics, right?), the subject has remained the same. I just have a craving to capture love in a feeble attempt to understand its intricacies.

Click the photos below to experience some secondhand love.

I only started taking photography seriously back in 2012, when I made a life-changing, three-month trip up to Denali National Park in Alaska. With a borrowed camera and a kit lens, I stomped around on the diverse ecology of the area and grew even more attached to the outdoors while expanding my knowledge of photography.

Nowadays, I hoard my PTO for the opportunity to tramp outside with my boots and camera, no matter how many pounds it adds to my pack.

Click the photos below to take a hike with me.

Since I was little, I bee-bopped around between my dad’s house in Pennsylvania, and my mom’s house in…well, wherever my mom wanted to be at that particular time in her life. For me, “home” has been a strange series of different pinpoints on a map.

Between my dad’s four-bedroom home shared by eight people, and my mom’s place where I crashed on a futon, I didn’t really have my own sense of space until I was about 15 years old when my eldest sister moved out and I finally had my own room.

Despite finally getting this bit of real estate, I learned pretty early in life that home is a feeling, not a place. I believe that “home” is wherever the food, the company, and the comfort are. Hospitality is an ode to those places that we cannot quite call “home,” but satisfy at least a few of those needs.

Click the images below to explore a home away from home.