I used to be a photographer.

It’s been nearly four years since I touched my blog, and my camera for that matter. Oh yes, four years feels just as long as it sounds. I feel pret-ty bad about abandoning my camera, but life happens and sometimes we need to rearrange & re-prioritize; not just our dreams, but everything. What better way to bring myself back up than to show up and carefully curate some words that can illustrate why I love photography so much. Because it doesn’t matter how long its been, I can go back. I can feel what I felt years ago, all over again, rediscovering those moments long gone. I can do this with a just some words and a photo.

And while I have taken literally thousands upon thousands of photos in the last four years, they haven’t been with my pricey DSLR, they haven’t had retouches, and post-processing – they’ve been raw, candid and snapped with my phone. Does that lesson their value? Not at all, because you don’t need fancy equipment to create or save a moment. You don’t need to travel thousands of miles; you just need to be. Be where you are, in the moment, taking in the sights and sounds and waves of energy all around you. I used to think the complete opposite, but this break, and this year has been enlightening.

Some of the most honest and poetic moments in recent times have been captured by the phones of people around the world without even realizing the impact these images might carry now or far in the future, deliberate or not. The reasons we capture varies, to prove accountability, to savor, to memorialize, to prove, to remember, to give and gain knowledge, and so many more and that’s what makes photography so special. So I guess, I still am a photographer.