I never imagined becoming a photographer, nor traveling to Africa. My journey into photography began because of a tragic and unpredictable event in 2013.

My father was a wildlife photographer. He was a free spirit. He traveled alone to remote places, to Kamchatka. He climbed mountains, even eight-thousanders. He loved the mountains and adored brown bears. He was a cultured man, viscerally connected to nature: he knew how to read dangers, survive without food for days, manage anywhere.

When I was little, his absences—somewhere in the middle of nowhere—didn’t exactly thrill me. His stories would just slip past me. I wasn’t ready to understand them.

In March 2013, my father lost his life while skiing in the mountains of Kazakhstan, near Almaty.

From that point, everything changed direction. To keep him with me, I took his camera: a Canon EOS 6D, heavy, worn, and with lenses. At first, it was just an object, a relic. Then it began to speak to me. In the following years, I traveled. Little by little. With that camera in my hands. I played with it, made mistakes, learned. I looked at my photos next to his: the comparison was harsh. I had no formal training, didn’t know rules, timings, exposures. But in every place I reached, he was there.

In 2017, I started trusting myself. And I realized something: nature yes, but not landscapes. I wanted movement. Animals. The heartbeat, the tension, the moment before something happens. In South Korea, in January 2017, I bought my first Tamron telephoto lens. The camera body was still his. Somehow, we were shooting together. In 2018, Africa arrived.