I think I started photographing long before I knew I was a photographer.

I was about twelve when I noticed the afternoon light falling across my room. I wanted to keep the way it looked, so I took my mum's old phone and tried to recreate what I saw. I stood sideways, shaped the light across my hand so it looked like fire, and took the picture.

It was made with a very pixelated phone and absolutely no idea what I was doing.

But I remember being happy because the photograph looked the way I had imagined it.

Years later, photography found its way into my life again - first with a little Olympus, then with a second-hand Canon my godmother gave me while I was studying in Crete.

By then, I had just started dancing tango.

I began taking the camera everywhere. Through friends, streets, travels and eventually milongas, photography slowly became part of my life.

Sometimes I photographed simply because something caught my eye. Other times, people began asking me to photograph something for them — a place, a performance, a couple, a moment they wanted to keep.

Without really planning it, I was finding my way into different kinds of photography, learning to see each subject a little differently.

Someone once saw me with my new camera and said:

“We have a new photographer in the community.”

I suppose they were right.

For years, I photographed simply because I loved it. I learned by doing, by watching, by trying again. Photography took me to places, introduced me to people, and became a way of being present.

Then life changed. I left Crete, moved countries, lost my tango community around me, and eventually put the camera down.

Not because I had stopped loving photography.

I just hadn't found my way back to it yet.

Then I went to Japan.

Something clicked.

I came home with a Fujifilm and, somehow, a renewed desire to look at the world through a camera again. I found my way back to the dance floor too - and back to photographing it.

That became the beginning of a new chapter.

With the Fujifilm in my hands, photography started to feel less like something I had once done and more like something that had always been waiting for me.

I began looking differently.

Not only for the big moments, but for the small ones in between - the fleeting gestures, the quiet expressions, the strange light, the movement of a body, the connection between two people.

Tango naturally became a big part of that. Years of dancing had taught me to notice rhythm, pauses, tension, distance and connection. Photography gave me another way to see them.

But the camera doesn't only come with me to the dance floor.

I'm drawn to movement and atmosphere, to the stories people tell without words, and to the little details that might otherwise go unnoticed.

Sometimes, I know exactly what I'm looking for. Other times, a change in light, an unexpected gesture or a different perspective takes me somewhere I hadn't planned to go.

I like that photography leaves room for both.

I'm interested in the moments I can observe, but also in the images I can imagine and bring to life. There's always something new to try, something I haven't learned yet, another way of seeing.

Sometimes I see a moment and smile before I even take the photograph.

That's what I'm trying to keep: the moments that make me stop and look twice, and the curiosity to discover what else might be there.

That is Miruka.