Before anything gets edited, you have to see what you’re actually working with.

My creative life started with music.

I grew up surrounded by it. My dad’s side of the family is incredibly musically inclined, with people who play multiple instruments, and when I was little, all I wanted was to play the flute.

In Grade 7, I was told no. I got piano instead, and I was not happy about it. By Grade 8, I finally got my flute—but that meant when I entered Grade 9, I had only been playing for a year while most of the students around me had started in Grade 5.

I was already walking in years behind everyone else.

Hard Drive: 2007–2009

Music • The Flute • The Beginning

What’s working? What isn’t? What needs more attention?

Eventually, my teacher told me I was probably too far behind to catch up. There was no way I was going to improve enough. Maybe art was more my speed.

Respectfully, in my head:

F**k you.

I did not actually say that. I was polite.

But internally? This means war.

I practiced for hours every night. My mom got me tutoring. I worked ridiculously hard because I genuinely loved what I was doing.

And somehow, despite failing basically every music history test and every theory test, my playing became strong enough to carry me through four years of music.

Turns out, sometimes the entire image does not have to be perfect for there to be something worth working with.

Hard Drive: 2009–2010

Practice • Persistence • Proving Myself Wrong

Sometimes you don’t need to become someone different. You just need one small adjustment that changes what you can see.

Music allowed me to travel to Europe twice.

The first trip changed something.

I brought a little point-and-shoot camera, and suddenly I was looking at everything differently.

The architecture. The landscapes. The ceilings. The streets. The tiny details that someone had intentionally put into places most people probably walked right past.

I kept thinking:

Everything here is so beautiful. I need to document it.

The funny part is, I had already been documenting things my whole life.

I just hadn’t realized yet that there was a passion underneath it.

Hard Drive: 2009–2011

Europe • Travel • Point-and-Shoot • Seeing Differently

Sometimes the subject was there the entire time. You just needed to change the frame.

When I came home, I wanted into the photography class.

And once again:

No.

I did not have the right art recommendation.

Which was particularly funny considering a previous teacher had literally told me that maybe art was more my speed.

Serendipity has a sense of humour.

I kept pushing until the photography teacher finally told me to bring her a portfolio.

So I did.

She looked through it and told me:

“You’ve got an eye.”

And she let me in.

Hard Drive: 2010–2013

Portfolio • Photography Class • You’ve Got an Eye

You don’t always need to change the whole image. Sometimes you find the areas that need something different.

Photography class taught me a lot.

It also taught me something else about myself:

I really, really do not like being told there is only one correct way to create something.

My teacher would show us how something had to be done, and I would inevitably discover another way to get the same result.

I would proudly show her.

She was significantly less excited about this discovery than I was.

Her response was essentially:

Do it the way I taught you.

Mine was essentially:

But…why? It worked.

That curiosity—finding another route to the same destination—never really left me.

Hard Drive: 2011-2013

Experimentation • Breaking Rules • Finding My Own Process

Sometimes the original plan doesn’t survive the editing process.

I applied to photography college.

They said:

No, thank you.

So I went into media studies instead.

And that rejection accidentally introduced me to something I loved even more:

editing.

Eventually I moved into photography studies too, and the deeper I went into photography, the more I realized that I was completely fascinated by what happened after the shutter clicked.

Photography captured the image.

Editing showed me everything the image could become.

Hard Drive: 2014–2015

Media • Photography • Discovering Editing

Sometimes you open something and realize the file isn’t functioning the way it used to.

Then there was a period where everything fell apart.

Life became chaotic. My mental health collapsed. Something that happened during college became deeply connected to photography and editing for me, and suddenly something that had once felt creative did not feel safe anymore.

Eventually, I lost motivation for almost everything.

Photography stopped.

Editing stopped.

Creativity stopped.

It felt like parts of me had gone offline.

And there wasn’t a quick preset that could fix it.

Hard Drive: ARCHIVED

The Pause • Survival • Everything Goes Quiet

Restoration isn’t about pretending the damage never happened. It’s about seeing what can still be recovered.

I had to collapse before I could rebuild.

And eventually, spirituality entered my life in a completely different way.

I started becoming aware of my thoughts, my choices, my patterns and the reality I was creating around myself.

Things began shifting.

And somewhere inside that rebuilding came one incredibly simple thought:

Why don’t I edit?

My immediate response was:

I can’t.

Too much happened.

It belongs to that version of my life.

And then another part of me responded:

No. I’m going to do what I want to do. I’m going to do what I love.

That was the restoration.

Not erasing what happened.

Taking something back.

This is where we stop asking how to return to the original and start asking what we want to create now.

I did not come back to photography exactly the way I left it.

I came back differently.

The thing I kept being pulled toward was editing.

Taking what already exists and seeing possibility inside it.

Fixing things.

Restoring things.

Changing things.

Finding another way when the obvious way is not working.

Doing the tedious part someone else would rather hand off.

Taking an image someone has forgotten about and giving it another life.

And weirdly enough, when I look backward, it feels like I have been practicing that philosophy long before I ever called myself an editor.

The finished image is never identical to the RAW—and that’s kind of the point.

Music led to Europe.

Europe led to photography.

Photography led to editing.

Losing editing eventually led me back to myself.

And rebuilding myself brought me back to editing again.

So here we are.

Not the original RAW.

Not untouched.

Not necessarily what anyone predicted when that Grade 9 teacher told me I probably wasn’t going to make it.

But edited.

Restored.

Reframed.

And still creating.

Hard Drive: 2026 — CURRENT PROJECT

Editing • Restoration • Creating Again

Status: Still in progress.

I got the opportunity to edit an album cover for my uncle, who’s a musician, and it was one of those moments where I was like, oh my God, this is actually so cool. I’ve spent a lot of my life feeling like I’m just doing life and following whatever creative thing pulls me in, so being personally asked to create something for an actual album felt really special. I had so much fun with the edit, I loved how it turned out, and seeing it become part of something he officially released was such a full-circle moment. And let me tell you, the album is full of bangers—some more than others, because that’s just how music works—but definitely check him out.