MY GIFT AND A CURSE
I remember the day like it was yesterday, like literally yesterday. My last day at the 9-to-5 I’d endured for two long, excruciating years. A week earlier, I’d treated myself to a brand-new Fuji lens, the 1.2 56mm glass. I’d cradled it like a fragile treasure, twisting it onto my camera body with the care of a surgeon making the first incision.I was giddy man, you should’ve seen me. I had a kid’s birthday shoot lined up, indoors, where light plays hide-and-seek in all the worst ways. But this lens? This lens didn’t just promise clarity, it whispered about magic. Crisp, smooth, and sharp as a secret you can’t wait to tell the world. The creative world was suddenly right there, at the tip of my fingers. I’d made appointments, marked dates on my calendar, plotted ways to absolutely abuse that lens until it became an extension of my own eye. And then just like that it was gone. No slow fade, no dramatic warning. One moment it was part of me; the next, it was nothing but an ache in my chest and a phantom weight in my hands.
The last two months without a camera have stripped me down in ways I didn’t think were possible. They humbled me but they also carved a certainty into my bones, that this photography thing isn’t just something I do, it’s my lifeline in this lifetime and without it, I start to disappear, fading into the mundane world piece by piece, day by day. Tell me, how do you explain the kind of loss that isn’t about money or objects, but about losing the one thing that lets you see yourself clearly? Without my camera, I felt hollow. Like a shell drifting through this lifetime, unable to create, unable to catch the fleeting magic that used to flow so naturally through my hands. The hardest moments were the still ones, sitting there full of regret, simmering anger (most of it aimed squarely at myself), with no phone, no form of documentation, and no camera. Just me, my thoughts, and a weight I couldn’t put down. The past months have been a slow rebuilding. First a phone. Then the paperwork. Then work to keep the lights on. And now finally a camera. But the truth is, what I’ve really been clawing back all along is myself.
I’d been counting down to this day for months, but when it finally came, it didn’t feel like the fireworks moment I once imagined. I wasn’t buzzing with excitement but I was holding my breath. I had a backup plan, the finances lined up, and yet I couldn’t shake the quiet anxiety that something might go wrong, that maybe this chapter wasn’t ready to start. The truth is, the last few months had stripped me of a certain innocence I once carried into my craft. Loss has a way of sanding down your edges, leaving you sharper in some places, emptier in others. So when I held the camera in my hands, it wasn’t just joy I felt. It was the weight of everything I’d been through to get here, the frustration, the stillness, the long days of wondering if I’d ever feel like myself again. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy. I’m grateful. And in some quiet way, I feel complete. But more than anything, I feel a sense of arrival. Like I’ve stepped onto the exact square I was always meant to stand on. The camera isn’t just a tool but a compass pointing me back to myself.
Every gift carries a shadow, and photography is no different. The gift is in the seeing and noticing the way light folds over a stranger’s face, in catching a fleeting gesture the world would otherwise forget. It’s in the privilege of holding stillness inside a frame while everything else keeps moving. But the curse? For me, it’s the obsession. This thing has lodged itself so deeply into me that I can’t think of much else. Every day, every idle moment, my mind circles back to it. It’s not just what I do but the only thing that fully holds my attention. Sometimes I wonder if that’s dangerous, to be so tethered to one thing. Looking back, even before I lost my gear, I was already losing myself. Slowly, quietly, beneath the surface, drowning in vices and habits I didn’t want to admit were mine. The theft, the loss didn’t just strip me of things, it exposed me. And now, standing here with this camera in my hands again, I feel like I’ve been pulled from the water.
This feels like a beginning. Not the naive kind where you expect the road to be easy, but the honest kind where you know the cost, you know the stakes, and you choose it anyway. Photography is both my gift and my curse, but I’ve made peace with that. Because in the end, it’s also my way back to myself.
