Contrast plays an important role in an image, it plays an even bigger role in life.

I was wondering how I see things the way I do. I mean I wasn’t interested in looking at animals and flowers before, why the sudden change in the way I see them now?

When I first started my photography journey, I was just capturing locations and scenes. I wanted to be able to keep the memories of the places I have been to. Photographing the fauna and flora of our world came later. As I did more of it, it became a form of self-expression—an expression of what is beautiful in my world, which is also a reflection of who I am within. It is almost something that happens on a subconscious level.

What’s more important than the act of doing photography is in the actual seeing itself. You can be a person who is in love with the camera or a person who is in love with the world. There is a saying that everyone is a photographer today. If you call anyone owning a camera a photographer, then I would have to agree. People that actually take photos from their heart are visionaries that are few and far between, these are the real artists of our time. They are saying something through photography that you can feel and not just showing something aesthetically pleasing.

These works that are crafted from the “heart” is not something technical that can be learned, it is more of a result from the contrasting experiences that happens of one’s own accord.

During the darkest moments of my life, I could not see. I was young and I hated life. I wanted to end it because I felt alone and miserable. The hardest thing was to see these ups and downs that form the contrasting patterns in life. Everyone just wants the ups but they forget that the ups are there because they have tide through the downs.

Now I am able to discern the light because of the darkness. It is precisely because of the shadows that light is born. If everything is bright, you wouldn’t be able to tell the light apart. You might even take it for granted. The shadows make that shaft of light visible and it is only possible because of the contrast.

If I did not hate life before, I wouldn’t have learned to appreciate it now. I wouldn’t be curious enough to discover the magic of living. I would have missed all the miracles of the flowers, of the magnificence in the living creatures that dwell among us, hidden in the shadows of my mind.

The discovery of this light is what inspires me to see. The camera then becomes the tool that allows me to share that vision. I cannot show you the light exactly the way I see it, that is why everyone sees the same image differently. How you see is how you live. If you can see what I am telling you through my images, it is not because of me—it is because you have experienced that same contrast deeply in your own life.