When my mother graduated from college her parents gave her a black and silver Canon AE-1 film camera. From my earliest memories this camera appeared on beach trips, at botanical gardens, birthday parties, museums, and zoos. It was always an arms length away while cooking pancakes for breakfast, and whenever my sisters and I ran around dressed up as knights or elves or the Norse and Greek gods we were obsessed with.

My mother was an artist, aware of light and composition and the moment that she was capturing, but her art was strictly personal. She paid attention to our story, and told it moment by moment because she was in love with this story. She loved us and she wanted to remember.

Years later, living in New York City and realizing that the tech companies I had spent years building seemed to do nothing but make the world more overwhelming and less human, I found my own Canon AE-1. I began using film to photograph my friends and the things we did and the trips we went on and found myself suddenly in a world of moments that only became more and more beautiful.

Now after hour upon hour of shooting and taking on photography professionally I find myself still amazed by photos that have been taken out of love. I will be in a friend’s guest bedroom and suddenly come face to face with a photo so vivid and so personal feeling that it distills something true and beautiful about the friend or one of the friend’s children. I’ll ask who took the photo and the answer will always be something like “Our kid’s swim instructor” or “Our friend” or “Our mom.” A total amateur. These photos will never be perfectly composed or lit, but despite that they transport me instantly to the moment they were taken.

For a second I wonder if that person should be the photographer and I should go practice my butterfly stroke in order to provide for myself with a real skill. But then I remember that that swim instructor, that friend, or that grandma has the hardest thing for a photographer to have: They are close to that person, and they are part of the story. With that in mind I always double down on my ambition to take pictures as well as a swim instructor who loves someone.