A studio built on perspective

One of the things I’m most grateful for is that when I was little, my family recorded so much of our lives.

Some of my favourite memories aren’t the ones I carry on my own, they’re the ones they thought to record. Birthdays, road trips, Christmas mornings, ordinary afternoons that probably didn’t feel important at the time. Somewhere along the way, those recordings became less frequent, and without realising it, I started wishing there were more of them. More moments I could return to. More pieces of life that had been preserved.

I think that’s why I’ve always been drawn to documenting things. Not because I was interested in cameras, but because I never wanted to forget how something felt. I wanted somewhere to keep the moments that would otherwise disappear with time.

For a long time, though, the stories I was interested in capturing were mostly my own. The places I travelled to, the people I met, the little details of whatever life looked like at the time. Creating was a form of self-expression before I ever thought of it as something I could do for someone else.

That started to change when I became curious about the stories beyond my own.

Casa Copal was the first time I got to explore that curiosity through someone else’s world. What began as a content exchange eventually became my first long-term client, and somewhere in that process I realized that what I loved wasn’t simply creating something beautiful. I loved connecting with the story, the people, the feeling behind a place or a brand, and figuring out how to translate all of it into something someone else could see and feel.

The more stories I got to be part of, the more I understood what I loved about this work. Every person, place, and brand carries a story of its own, even when they don’t always know how to put it into words yet. I loved taking the time to understand what made each one what it was, and finding a way to tell that story without losing what made it theirs in the first place.

In a way, it wasn’t so different from why I started documenting my own life. Only now, my curiosity had expanded beyond my own experiences. I was being invited into someone else’s world, trusted with their story, and given the opportunity to help them share it.

Looking back, I don’t think much has changed. I’m still trying to hold on to the things that matter. The difference is that now I get to help other people do the same.