I began photographing at the age of twelve after reading a book about a photojournalist documenting an archaeological dig in the Middle East. When I read the part where she was developing her photos in her desert darkroom, I knew I was going to be a photographer and go on a dig in the Middle East. I picked up a camera that year, and photography has remained my primary way of engaging with the world for nearly four decades. My early practice was shaped by material limits. As a teen, I spent all of my babysitting money on film and processing, learning through trial and error. There was no internet, YouTube and I didn't even have a manual for the vintage Korean camera that a family friend gave me as a gift but I was determined to figure it out. Took an entire year of shooting and sending my film off to the lab, week after week, before I got a single in focus and decently exposed image. To this day, I'm forever grateful to the librarian at the local library who showed me where all the photography resources were at. At seventeen, I traveled outside the United States for the first time, spending a summer on an archaeological dig in Jordan. That experience deepened my interest in people, culture, and continues to guide my work and world view. I went on to get my degree in photography which opened up so many doors for me professionally as an artist. But I chose early on to pursue a career in marketing so I could use my photographic skills for my job but also protect my art form from the pressure of having to provide my way of life. Photography isn't just about the final photos for me, it's about who I become to get those shots. Much of my landscape photographic work is rooted in questions of scale and presence. I am repeatedly drawn to expansive landscapes in which people or animals appear small within the frame. These images are not intended to romanticize wilderness or dramatize absence. Instead, they explore the tension between immensity and vulnerability, asking how living beings exist within spaces that are vast, indifferent, and free of human interference. By photographing animals as minor elements within large environments, I aim to resist anthropocentric readings and instead emphasize coexistence, fragility, and continuity. I also love prismatic color photos and abstract images and produce an equal amount of color work along side my black and white photos. Much of this work includes ICM (Intentional Camera Movement), macro, and classic abstract photographs that depart from representational frameworks. These images are constructed through attention to gesture, fragmentation, and visual tension. Color functions structurally rather than descriptively, allowing me to examine rhythm and interruption without narrative anchors. The abstract work provides a parallel inquiry into perception itself, exploring how images are felt as much as they are seen. In parallel with landscape and abstract work, I maintain an ongoing practice of cultural portraiture. My most recent series focuses on women portraying Catrinas in Tennessee, documenting how Mexican Day of the Dead traditions are embodied and adapted far from their geographic origins. This work is shaped by collaboration and a desire to preserve something deeply meaningful in a world increasingly determined to make us all the same. The portraits emphasize continuity, dignity, and individual presence while acknowledging the collective significance of cultural expression carried across distance and displacement. Working within cultural contexts requires sensitivity, openness to new ideas, and attentiveness. I approach portraiture with an awareness of my position as an observer, allowing the subjects’ agency to shape the photographic encounter. These images are less about performance than about presence, focusing on how identity is lived, carried, and sustained. My formal education in photography provided a technical and conceptual foundation, but my practice has been shaped equally by independent work, travel, and long-term engagement with subject matter. I do not work quickly. Projects evolve through return, repetition, and revision. Photography, for me, is not just about the final image; it is a way of life. I believe that when you go looking for beauty, beauty has a way of finding you, and you often find yourself in the process. Ultimately, my work is concerned with how meaning emerges over time. I am interested in what photographs can communicate when they refuse to fit the mold of classic photographic styles. Whether working with landscapes, animals, abstraction, or cultural portraiture, I seek images that hold complexity while asking the viewer to slow down, look carefully, and remain present. Across all of my photographs, I offer images that transcend barriers and ask the viewer to spend a little time in these worlds I present.