i received my first camera as a graduation gift in march 2023. it was a small, powerful point-and-shoot that has recently grown in popularity to the point that it's just impossible to find now....so i suppose i applaud myself for choosing that camera before its praise grew out of proportion. i brought it with me on my first solo trip during my gap year, all the way to indonesia, and found a love for street photography within this adventure.

my original intentions with this camera was to get into videography, but i found it much more enjoyable to document the world around me in still form. thus, i developed a creepy hobby of photographing strangers, and to date, it's my very favorite thing to do.

street photography has turned into a game for me, with the prompt: "are you able to capture this split-second moment before it never happens again? can you capture a minute interaction on the sidewalk before it's too late? can you brave getting uncomfortably close to someone with your big, bulky camera in order to capture something otherwise unremarkable?" in a way, street photography became my catalyst for challenging social anxiety. and as much as it has allowed me to document human interaction, it has allowed me to embrace it even more.

i braved a greater purchase, the fujifilm x-T5, and brought it with me on a trip to japan with my friend from middle school. she says her first impression of me was this instance in spanish class in seventh grade where i slammed my head on the desk out of nowhere. i don't know why i did that. i don't even really remember doing it, probably because i hit my head so hard. six years after the fact, though, her and i took on the streets of tokyo, and found that photography isn't solely a singleplayer game.

sometimes, she would urge me to chase people across the street in order to take their photo. she would point out interesting-looking people that i wouldn't have noticed without her interjection, and with it came many, many of my favorite photos. she would hold an umbrella over my camera and it helped me to realize, that in spite of cameras only being suitable for one pair of hands, the process was much more rewarding with several.

i found meaning in my photography not only through those who i was photographing, but also those who stood behind the lens. i found meaning in my photography not only through those who i was photographing, but also those who saw my photos. in this meaningful approach to my art, i've created this page as dedication to my growing portfolio of street photography, as a way to connect the strangers i've seen on the street to the many strangers on the internet who come across my website.

my intentions with photography translated into my intentions with using the internet. how am i connecting with those online? is it in a meaningful, inspiring way? those were just some of the many questions i asked myself as i began neglecting social media and embracing the personal web niche. this page, not only documentation of my tangible world, is documentation of my digital world. i feel really grateful to stay "connected" in a world that seems to move from one thing to another very quickly.

i hope you enjoy my photos. i will use them when representing humanity to the aliens one day. these are updated at random and are usually of overbearingly large quantity, meaning the page may need a few minutes to load. open images in a new tab for (slightly) better quality :-)