Dhir’s Personal Journey

At 23, I've grieved a dream, lost someone irreplaceable, had my heart broken, and had to kill off an entire version of myself just to keep growing. This is that story.

Before photography, I wanted to be a footballer my whole life.

I grew up in a small town in Kenya, where weekends were either spent with one friend, or alone at home. YouTube, cartoons, FIFA, playing football by myself in the backyard, that was my life. And honestly, I was fine with it. I had one dream and everything pointed toward it.

I was also the only Indian kid in my school for years, 24 Kenyans and 1 Indian, me. I was living 2 different lives, both at home and school. And I was able to 'transform' myself to fit wherever I was. At the time I didn't think much of it, but that experience forced me to see the world differently, like really differently. It made me genuinely open minded in a way I couldn't have learned anywhere else. That's why I connect with locals so much better than most people who grew up like me. I literally grew up with them.

Then at 13, my family moved to Nairobi, and suddenly I was in a school with 24 Indians and 1 Kenyan, the complete opposite. It was such a different way of living. I felt culture shock within my actual culture But having experienced both sides gave me something I still carry today, a real sense of empathy. I understood people, different people. And that felt like a superpower.

After coming to the city though, I realized something uncomfortable.

I wasn't that good at football.

The competition in Nairobi was on another level. I was skinny and always have been, and when you're 16 you're supposed to be pretty good already if a pro career is coming. I had the option to apply to a football academy in the UK, not because I was scouted, it was more like a football education school. But honestly? I was afraid. If Nairobi already felt like too much, what was I going to do in England?

So I didn't go.

And even though I was being realistic with myself, it still stung, because that was the only thing I ever wanted to be, the only plan I had.

I came to peace with it, but I still felt completely lost, because now what? I thought about psychology for a few weeks, that didn't stick. Then came the summer of 2019, my family went to Vietnam for a vacation.

Now, I should mention, despite football being everything, I was always quietly interested in photography and personal branding. I had instagram 12 years ago. I'm 23 now. Do the math. My uncle also let me play with his camera when I was 13, and my dad got me a $200 camera in 2017. I'd occasionally take it out, nothing serious.

For Vietnam, I brought it.

I took random photos of everything, the beach, leaves, rocks. I was 16 with zero idea what manual mode was, no clue about RAW or JPEGs, just pointing the camera at things that looked interesting.

Then my cousin saw the pictures and told me to post them on Instagram.

So I did.

We spent way too long coming up with a username, one option was professionalnewb, the other was spotclickpost. I thought spotclickpost was kind of lame. I used it anyway. You can still find those first pictures on my profile if you scroll far enough down.

When I got back to Kenya, something strange happened.

All that football obsession, the focus, the hours, the compulsive drive to get better, it just redirected. Like my brain refused to let go of the intensity and needed somewhere new to put it, and photography became the obsession almost overnight.

I went to YouTube, studied the camera, learned everything I could. Then I realized we have incredible wildlife right here in Kenya, so why not try that? I went to the local orphanage with my camera, and my entire family reacted to the images like I was already an award winning photographer.

I was an empty book at that point, waiting to be written, and that reaction told me which direction to go.

I found a one night workshop led by a professional photographer, who is a friend now, and she opened my eyes a little. Then another one in January, he opened up my whole world of editing. After that, I felt ready to take on everything. I was 16 and absolutely psyched, not thinking about going pro, just genuinely obsessed with getting better.

I would study other photographers and try to understand why their images worked, replicate their styles, and that process over time helped me develop my own. I had a very cheap setup but I tried hard to match the quality of professionals, it didn't always work, but I was progressing fast. Especially with editing.

Then March came. Covid. Bummer.

Actually, not really, because it made local safaris incredibly cheap. I did Nairobi National Park a few times, then in August I finally did the Mara, with my dad, my brother, and my cousin. My dad supported me unconditionally through all of this, he even got me a bigger lens, a 150-600mm.

That trip showed me everything that was possible, and in September I did Amboseli National Park, more content, more practice, more growth. I was excited, I was feeling alive, I was becoming better and better.

Then October came.

My dad had a sudden heart attack, and he unfortunately passed within a week.

Life changed.

Our family was close, he was the pillar, and I genuinely don't think words can explain what that felt like.

It was excruciating, it took our hearts out of our chests, and I was heartbroken, but I found myself more focused on my mom and brother than on myself.

In the months that followed I questioned everything.

Life. Death. What any of it means, and that's when my spiritual journey began. I was 17, reading, sitting with the discomfort, trying to understand rather than escape, and that journey is what made me the person I am today.

Photography didn't stop, if anything, it went deeper. I think it became a way to process what I couldn't put into words, maybe it still is, I'm honestly not entirely sure. Some things are too close to fully see.

What I know is my mom kept supporting me, my friends did, my girlfriend at the time did, and I kept going into the field.

A year later I turned 18 and did something that felt a little absurd.

I cold emailed Sony and Adobe for a collaboration.

Both said yes.

I was probably one of the youngest photographers in the world to collaborate with those brands, and that changed something in my self belief, and made going professional feel real in a way it hadn't before.

Slowly I started building, more trips, sharing costs with friends, selling tours, Instagram grew, and I started guiding at 20.

Then 2024.

My girlfriend and I broke up. We'd been together for 8 years, since high school, and it ended all of a sudden. I know some people say I was young and the stakes were lower, but heartbreak is heartbreak, and 8 years is 8 years, and it broke my momentum badly. It took me a long time to come back from it.

I used everything I'd learned, spiritually and mentally, to process it properly, to actually feel it instead of running. It worked eventually, but it took longer than I expected.

As I started getting over this, I hit something I wasn't expecting.

I felt empty, not sad, not lost like before, just unfulfilled, like I was going through the motions of something that used to feel alive.

The truth was that I'd been carrying an identity that had expired. I was "the teenage sensation," the young prodigy with 100k followers at 18, and the validation I got at that age was insane. The numbers mattered to that kid, they boosted his confidence and made him want to become better, and he did. But a lot of it was riding on age. Being young was the wow factor, 44 million views on one reel, 150k followers, the world was fascinated by the novelty of it.

I'm 23 now. Nobody cares about your age at 23. Not especially if you want to start charging money for your expertise.

Priorities changed. Building a business mattered more than social media numbers.

That 18 year old version of me was gone, and I hadn't let him go yet.

So I let it die. Consciously.

I kid you not, I decided to sit on my bed, close my eyes, and visualised myself letting go of the 18 year old, with tears.

I was ready for something new, but did not know what. Just that the old plant has been removed, and a seed is planted.

I also finished university during all of this, business administration, didn't learn a whole lot if I'm being honest, but I got the degree, hoping never to use that paper lol.

Somewhere in that space of letting the old identity go, a new one started forming.

I've been thinking a lot lately about why I actually do this, and it's not the animals, it's not even the photography if I'm being completely honest.

Wildlife photography came to me as an opportunity and stuck because of my circumstances, it gave me somewhere to put my grief, it gave me nature and travel, it gave me people, locals, guests, collaborators, who changed how I see everything. It gave me entrepreneurship at 20, it taught me how to learn things from scratch, how systems work, how people work, how businesses run. Wildlife photography became a tool for me to navigate life.

The camera is just an object, the photography is just a means.

I somehow became good at it, through obsession, through grief, through circumstance. I'm still figuring out exactly how.

What I actually care about is this.

I want to be an example, of resilience, of what happens when you take the hardest things life throws at you and refuse to let them be the end of the story. An example of living a soft life with a hard mindset, of what self belief, real self belief, not the Instagram kind, actually produces over time.

My dad told me something once, at a wedding. He said: "People know you because you're my son, but one day people should know me because you're my son." Read that again.

I think about that a lot.

I want to be great. For him. And I want you, especially if you have ever lost someone, felt like your only dream died, or felt you had no idea who you were anymore, I want you to know the story isn't over.

It's just getting interesting.

You know what, I have big dreams. This is just the beginning.

This is definitely the most vulnerable I have ever been publicly.

Reply if anything landed.

Until next time,

Dhir