The Pivot: From Photography to Cooking

Food was always in the frame.

Long before it became a service, or a practice I spoke about publicly, it existed in the little pocket of my life, between shoots, after long days, late at night, or early mornings when everything was quiet at home and when I used it as a love language for past relationships. I cooked for friends, for crews, for myself, for family, for lovers. It wasn’t just content. It wasn’t just a strategy. It was grounding. It was my show of love.

Photography taught me how to use my eyes, how to see. Cooking taught me how to stay, how to feel.

For years, I understood my work through the language of image; through light, composition, timing. I learned how a subtle shift could change the entire feeling of a photograph. How patience mattered more than anything. How preparation created freedom. What I didn’t realize at the time was that I was learning the same lessons in the kitchen.

Heat is lighting.

Plating is composition.

Timing is everything.

Seasoning is editing. 

The tools are definitely very different, but the discipline and practicality was the same.

This way of working shows up in the habits that now shape my cooking practice.

What changed wasn’t specifically my identity, It was where my attention went when I needed to feel present again. Photography is facing the audience by nature. It wants you to interpret, direct, capture. Cooking is facing inwards. It requires you to listen to the ingredients, to time, to people, to yourself. Over time, food moved from something I did around the work to something that was the work.

The pivot wasn’t a leap. It was a reveal.

I didn’t necessarily leave photography behind. I carried it with me. Every meal I cooked is informed by years of studying form, balance, contrast, and mood. Every menu is built with the same intentionality as a shoot, what goes on, what’s removed, what's needed. But food allowed me to slow down in a way images no longer did. It gave me a place where care was the point, not the byproduct.

The Pass exists because of that shift, that pivot.

The Pass is a journal of practice. A record of how food intersects with memory, experience, creativity, and care. A place for meals that are meant to be shared, for ideas that take time, for work that values presence over performance. 

I didn’t pivot away from who I was.

I pivoted toward what was always feeding me. (Pun intended :D)

The Pass exists as a place to document this process with honesty, slowly and with care.

This is where I feel the most grounded..

Welcome to The Pass.