Lost and Found

Where my story really begins
My story doesn’t start with a camera.
It starts in Venezuela, in my family’s restaurant and later our bakery, where mornings smelled like warm bread and the world woke up slowly around us. I grew up watching my dad move through each day with a calm, steady presence. He taught me to notice people, to pay attention to the little things, to make others feel seen. Those early lessons, the quiet observing, the slowing down, the way he treated every person like they mattered, shaped me long before I ever picked up a camera.

The pieces of childhood I didn’t know I was missing
When my parents separated, most of our photo albums stayed with my mom. Life moved fast after that new places, new routines, eventually a move to the United States. I became a wife, a mother, a woman building a life far from where she started. But there was always a quiet ache, a wondering about the parts of my childhood I was too young to remember. I didn’t know what I looked like as a baby. I didn’t know which expressions my kids might have inherited from me. I didn’t know the stories behind the moments I lived and shared with my parents and siblings but couldn’t remember.

The day everything came back to me
When I was expecting my first child, that ache grew sharper. I wanted to know where I came from before I became someone’s mother. Then my dad traveled back to Venezuela, and something unexpected happened. He met with my mom, and she sent back seventeen photo albums, seventeen pieces of my life I didn’t know existed.

Finding myself in old photographs
I spent days turning those pages.
There I was, on the beach, on horses, in my little dresses, with my sisters, with my parents young and laughing. I saw love, joy, a happy family. I saw myself in my own kids as young little thing myself. I digitized every photo, so my sisters and I could each keep a copy. It felt like stitching myself back together.

The thread that led me to photography
My dad had once been a photographer; He enjoyed all the things from composition, shooting, developing film, though I never saw him hold a camera until my adult years. Still, something in me recognized that same pull. When my first child was born, we bought a digital camera because I didn’t want my children to grow up without their story. I wanted them to have what I didn’t: proof of their beginnings, their joy, their belonging.
And somewhere in that season, my husband became part of that thread in his own quiet way. Long before we met, he spent two years serving a mission for our church and documented everything through photographs and journaling. His love for preserving stories and noticing the blessings and miracles in the everyday then wove itself into mine. It felt like our lives had both been shaped by the desire to remember, even before they came together.

Together, we have documented our family in a way that brings us so much happiness. It is deeply rewarding to watch our kids from a really young age and now enjoy the family movies and all the photographs from over the years, seeing their own story.

Now documenting others became home
Years later, after raising kids, homeschooling, moving through seasons, life, photography became more than a hobby. It became a way of honoring memory. A way of holding onto the fleeting. A way of giving other families what those seventeen albums gave me, a place to return to, a reminder of who they are, a record of love.
And somewhere in the middle of all of that, our home filled with doggies, laughter, books, baking, and the kind of everyday moments that make a life. Those moments taught me what I now look for in others, the quiet, authentic, and love pieces of a story.

Lost and found
I didn’t plan this path.
But somewhere between the bakery mornings, the missing albums, the rediscovered memories, the camera in my hand, and the life I built with my family, I found the work that feels like home.
And if you’re here, maybe you know what it means to lose pieces of your story, and what it feels like to find them again.

warmly,
for the way it felt <3