Where It All Began...

I got my first camera when I was six years old. I used to take photos of wildlife, of water ponds, of whatever I could find outside — I didn't know what a macro lens was back then, and I didn't have the right gear for any of it, so I'd just get as close as I possibly could, or shoot through the reeds at the edge of the water. All I really wanted was to capture the beautiful world around us that we so easily walk past without ever really seeing.

Life carried on, and somewhere along the way, photography got quietly lost. For a while, I thought I'd become a lawyer. I never did. I went into computing instead — I was naturally good at coding, and it was such a different path from anything I'd imagined for myself as a child.

Becoming a Mother

Fifteen years later, I got married, and had my daughter.

To be honest, that first experience of childbirth wasn't the one I imagined. I was young, and it never crossed my mind that anything could go wrong — so when it did, I wasn't prepared for it. I ended up being put to sleep for an emergency caesarean. When I woke, hazy and disoriented, I remember thinking my daughter's eyes were blue like my husband's — even though his are brown — before drifting straight back to sleep. I had missed the most significant moment of the entire nine months, and it affected me deeply.

It wasn't until later, once I'd properly come through and held my daughter in my arms for the first time, that everything changed. I changed. I became a mother in that moment — this beautiful little human who had grown inside me was finally here, and suddenly everything about how I saw the world was different. Your thoughts change. Your whole life reorganises itself around this one, gentle new person.

I was still so young then. Ten years passed — impossibly fast — before my daughter, now grown into the most beautiful little girl, began asking for a brother. When my son came along, I made sure to do things differently. I'd realised how much I'd missed with my daughter — nine hours a day, five days a week, gone, and never able to get that time back. So when my son was old enough for daycare, I finally gave myself permission to build a future shaped entirely around my children — and, it turned out, around photography too.

The Spark

The spark came from somewhere I didn't expect. My best friend went to a professional photographer for images of herself after having her baby, and I went along with her. Standing inside that studio, I felt alive again — this quiet, unmistakable warmth and excitement, this feeling of *this is me*. I stood there mentally posing, adjusting the lighting, changing the props, all in my head, unable to stop myself.

So I made the choice to go back to university, to study arts and photography.

Two years in, I had my third child, and I paused. But I never went back to an office again. While he was young, I studied part-time, working through media and design at night while he slept.

Then I received some devastating news from my family back in the UK, and I came home. My boys were still young, so I waited — until they were old enough for school — before I even considered working full-time again. And when I finally did, I had a completely clear path in front of me: I wanted to be a photographer.

Finding My Path

I'd seen that Bounty UK photographed newborn babies inside hospitals, just hours old. There were no roles advertised, but I sent through my university portfolio anyway, along with exactly what I dreamed of doing.