I’m a licensed and practicing architect. The majority of my current practice is residential architecture, but I’ve been involved with commercial work in the past, in addition to emergency response design (think fire stations). When I started taking photography seriously again during covid, I created a pseudonym in continuing my hobby so as to create a little separation. I think (thought?) of it, as a fresh start, and a way to get rid of any bias.

Growing up, my grandfather would visit from abroad (I’m an immigrant) and he always carried a film camera. Nothing fancy, just a generic automatic point-and-shoot style film camera to captures memories. Come to think of it, my parents took pictures when they were younger. Both of themselves, and our family growing up. I still have childhood photos from the 80s and 90s.

Then, while I was in high school, digital cameras started a new trend and I convinced my father that we needed one. Our first family digital camera was a Sony with maybe 3 megapixels? It took Sony’s then proprietary memory sticks that are forever burned into my memory.

But even still, I bought a disposable and took one of my grandpa’s film cameras when visiting other places while in high school. Digital cameras were hard to charge, hard to move data, and could only carry a handful of images.

Then in college, studying architecture, I had friends who actively took digital photos quite seriously. Thinking back, I’m really thankful for that kind of peer pressure to try it myself. My last year in school (a 5 year program, mind you) I took a film photography class that was offered through my architecture program. That really changed things for me, and I ended up buying a dedicated digital camera for myself.