Notes on light, the city, and what I see.
Most people fly over this city on their way to a resort. They see the rooftops from the plane window — dense, square, surrounded by ocean — and they think nothing of it.
Malé is one of the most densely populated places on earth. Everything is compressed. Buildings share walls. Streets are narrow enough that you can almost touch both sides. Motorbikes go everywhere — parked in swarms, carrying things that look impossible to carry, navigating gaps that don't seem wide enough.
That compression does something interesting with light. Shadows fall at specific angles between buildings. Greenery pushes through concrete in places it has no business being — and in the middle of all that density, a plant growing up a wall looks almost surreal. A leaf casting a shadow. Sunlight filtering through it and landing somewhere below.
That's the city I photograph. The one underneath the chaos. Not loud. Quiet in a particular way. The kind of quiet that exists inside noise, if you're looking for it.
I've been walking these streets for years. The same roads, the same walls. They don't look the same twice.
This journal is for what happens between the photos. The walks, the decisions, the light that worked and the light that didn't. Not explanations. Just notes from the city.
Standalone page →At some point this year my photos started feeling stale. I noticed it before I could explain it.
Looking back at the last stretch of posts, the framing had shifted. Flat, straight-on shots. An expat worker with their back to me as the first thing your eye landed on in the frame. It wasn't intentional. I hadn't been trying to make them the subject. But the framing kept doing that — centering them, making them the point. Which is almost the opposite of what I was after. I wanted the whole scene. I was getting the person.
That happens when you get too comfortable. You stop solving each frame as a new problem and start reaching for the version that worked last time. The city looks different every time. The photos stop looking different.
I deleted Instagram. It wasn't a dramatic decision — more of a quiet one. Walking had started to feel like scouting for the next post instead of just seeing what was there.
I started a Pinterest board for myself. No posting, just collecting. I called it "reset." Then I went back to walking.
What I actually notice around Malé when I'm not thinking about what to photograph: motorbikes parked in swarms, the shadow of a plant leaf on a painted wall, someone carrying something too large on a bike, compressed buildings where light comes through at a specific angle, broken glass on the ground, reflections in vehicle windows, Komorebi — sunlight filtering through leaves and landing on something below.
I had that list from the beginning of Infinara. I'd stopped looking for those things.
Infinara was never meant to be documentation. Documentation has a subject. Art has presence. I'd let those blur. Going back to the list reminded me of the difference.
Standalone page →I made a list once of what I actually notice when I walk around Malé without thinking about what to photograph.
Motorbikes parked in swarms, the way they pack into any available space, the patterns they make. The shadow of a plant leaf printed onto a painted wall. Someone carrying something that shouldn't fit on a bike, somehow fitting on a bike. The compressed faces of buildings, walls touching walls, windows barely a metre apart. An umbrella cutting through a busy street. Wall textures that have accumulated over twenty, thirty years. Paint on paint on concrete. Broken glass catching light on the ground. Reflections in vehicle windows, puddles, glass shop fronts. Komorebi, that Japanese word for sunlight filtering through leaves and landing below. It happens in Malé more than people think.
The list surprised me when I went back to it. Because almost none of the photos I'd been posting at the time were about any of those things. I had drifted from what I naturally see.
That drift is what stale photos feel like. Not that you've lost technical skill. You've lost contact with your own instincts. The walk becomes a scan for subjects instead of just a walk.
The list was a reset. A reminder of what I was looking at before I started thinking about what to look at.
Standalone page →Nile Rodgers said Daft Punk told him they wanted to make Random Access Memories as if the internet never existed.
I was watching the documentary and I wrote that down. Then I wrote underneath it: my photos are not taken for social media.
I've known this for a while. Writing it down made it clearer.
The problem with shooting for a platform is that you don't notice it happening. You start thinking about what works. What got a response last time. The framing that people paused on. And slowly you drift toward making that thing again. It stops being about what you see and starts being about what will read.
My photos are meant to be printed. That's been true since before I had a name for what I was doing. On a screen, details get lost. A reflection becomes a blur. Light that took a specific moment to happen turns flat. On paper it comes back. You have to slow down to look at it. You can't scroll past it.
I shoot with that in mind — that one day these will be on a wall or in someone's hands. Not in a feed, between two other images, competing for three seconds of attention.
That's not a statement against the internet. It's just where these photos actually live.
Vol. 01 is a collection of 24 photographs from Malé — made to be printed. Available in the shop.
Standalone page →In October 2024, I put together a small series. 18 photos of greenery in Malé.
The idea was simple. Malé is a concrete jungle. Dense, cramped, not much room for anything that isn't functional. But plants exist here in ways that feel almost defiant. They grow out of walls. They push through gaps between buildings. A single tree on a narrow street casts enough shadow to change the whole feeling of a block.
I wanted to show that. A version of Malé that looked almost like a fairy land, lush and green, against everything people expect from a city this dense.
I posted 18 photos and then stopped. Not because the project was done. It was because limiting myself to one subject started to feel wrong. There were too many other things happening around me. The greenery was one thread in the whole fabric, not the fabric itself.
But looking back at those 18, I think it's some of the most cohesive work I've made. Specific enough to have a point of view. Not trying to say everything at once.
That tension between going deep on one thing and staying open to everything is something I'm still figuring out.
Standalone page →In July 2024, I watched the Daft Punk documentary. I took notes episode by episode.
What I kept finding wasn't about music.
DJ Falcon described their sound as something that looks easy at first. Simple. But on a bigger canvas you start seeing all the details, all the emotion underneath. He called it attention to detail — every decision considered, every choice specific. That's what I want from a photo. Simple at first glance. More when you look closer.
The Todd Edwards story stayed with me. He hadn't worked with them for years. When they wanted him for Random Access Memories, they didn't reach out directly. They released the Tron Legacy soundtrack specifically to get his attention — knowing he'd notice. Then they waited. Months. And when he congratulated them, that's when the door opened. I kept thinking about the patience in that. The confidence to wait.
Pharrell talked about repetition. Going over the same thing again and again, until it could be perfect. He said that's where the value is — taking the time to iron it out. I don't take that as a call for perfectionism. I take it as not settling. Not keeping the frame you got just because you got it.
Paul Williams said Random Access Memories had no brief, no theme. When they all got together the first time, it was all about experimentation. I wrote in the margin: this is literally what Infinara is meant to be.
Everything they did was based on fascination and curiosity to learn. I wrote that down twice. Because it's the only honest reason to keep making anything. Not output. Not audience. Just the pull of wanting to understand something better.
Standalone page →In July 2024, I was reading The Creative Act by Rick Rubin. I had a notebook next to me.
A lot of books about creativity talk about output. How to make more, how to stay consistent, how to build an audience. This one kept coming back to awareness. To what you notice. To what you're paying attention to before you ever pick up a camera.
The idea that stuck most: being an artist isn't a job or a skill set. It's a way of moving through the world. The work is just evidence of that.
I kept thinking about my walks around Malé. The best photos have always come from a certain kind of attention. Not hunting for a shot, but being present enough that the shot finds you. The light does something. A shadow moves. You're already there.
That's the real work. Not the output, but the sensitivity. The hours spent looking at things that have nothing to do with what you're making. Everything feeds everything.
After reading it, I started paying closer attention to what I was watching, listening to, noticing. Daft Punk. Architecture. The texture of a specific wall. None of it is separate. It all ends up in the photos somehow.
Standalone page →I wrote something in my journal in August 2023 that I've thought about a lot since.
I was trying to figure out what Infinara was supposed to be. I'd been photographing seriously for a while, had a name for it, was starting to think about what to do with it. And I kept feeling like the obvious path, building a brand, growing an audience, creating content, following the playbook, felt wrong. Not wrong because it doesn't work. Wrong because it wasn't what this was.
What I wrote down was: you're not building a brand. You're building a culture.
A brand is outward-facing. It's designed. It has a target audience, a tone guide, a strategy. It wants something from you. A culture is something you belong to or you don't. Nobody designs it. It just accumulates. People feel it before they can name it.
Infinara was always supposed to be the second thing. A name for a way of seeing, not a product. Something that other people could feel part of. Not as customers. People who see the same things in the same way.
I don't know if it's there yet. But that's still the direction. The photos are honest. The journal is honest. The work builds slowly. That's the only way a culture actually forms, not through campaigns, but through consistency over time.
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