My story
Every story has a long version. This is mine.
01 / BEFORE I KNEW THE WAY
Before the world told me who I should be.
Like a lot of people, I spent more time daydreaming and feeling anxious than moving, long before I found the courage to chase what I actually wanted. I was born in the Czech Republic with a small view of the world. That changed fast when my family dropped everything and moved across the planet to Hawaii.
I hated it. The change in culture and place was brutal at that age. I cried for the simple life we had left behind. It felt like everything familiar had been stripped away at once.
What I could not see yet was that Hawaii would change the direction of my whole life. At 12 I started surfing. It put me in the middle of nature at its most untamed, and it taught me to keep moving when the water got rough instead of freezing in it.
In the quiet moments out on the water, I wanted to play and make things. At 14 I picked up my first camera, a GoPro, and started documenting the ocean. It connected me to other people creating in nature. It was beautiful, and it was the first time making something felt like mine.
The turning point
I gave up on surf photography.
For a while I mistook the practical path for the right one.
02 / THE ONE-WAY TICKET
I knew I needed a way out. So I made one.
At 18 I quit surf photography because I was convinced it would never pay. I chased money instead, moved through relationships that did not serve me, and lost the sense of fulfilment I actually wanted. I knew there was more, but the version of success I had been handed had other plans. My inner child still wanted to play, express, and document the world.
At 21 I hit the most anxious and stuck period of my life. It also handed me my biggest lesson: living to please other people and meet their expectations was never going to leave me satisfied.
I was in Vancouver with a partner I could not picture a future with, far from friends and family, completely alone with my own thoughts and ambitions. When the anxiety started to suffocate me, I knew I had to change something. So I did.
I bought a one-way ticket to New Zealand.
I chose myself.After experiencing that kind of freedom for the first time, going back to the life I had left was no longer an option. In the years that followed I made plenty of mistakes and found a few wins that kept me moving.
Through trial and error I grew an audience of millions across platforms, told stories that actually mattered to me, and inspired other people to live as fuller versions of themselves. Best of all, I worked out how to earn a living doing work I love.
Still becoming
In nature is where I feel at home.
When I feel lost, I go back to the dream I had as a kid and remember who I was before the world told me who I should be. Nature is where I can express myself and live freely. It is where the story keeps taking me.
That is also why the work lands. Brands can buy production anywhere. What they cannot buy is someone who would have made the thing anyway.