My Story and Style

The Arizona summer heat often drove me indoors and toward the TV. One summer, when I was twelve, my mom brought home Oprah Winfrey’s 20th Anniversary Collection—six discs and 17 hours of interviews. I watched every minute. Some stories were light and uplifting; others were raw with pain. I still remember many of them. 

To this day, Oprah remains a figure of inspiration for me. She’s not afraid to ask simple yet direct questions, and she approaches each conversation with compassion, searching for a “thread of light” that connects her, her guest, and the audience. To me, this is what storytelling is all about—listening for that shared crackle of humanity between yourself, the person in front of you, and our culture at large.

My storytelling medium of choice is documentary filmmaking. Why? I believe the thoughts of one of my film subjects, a painter named Noah, will help me explain.

“What artistic style inspires you?” I asked him.

“Impressionism,” he responded.

At the end of the 19th century, a group of French renegade artists known as the Impressionists emerged. They shocked viewers at the time by painting en plein air—outdoors—and directly in front of their subject, experimenting with loose brushwork and the effects of natural light. 

Noah elaborated: “Imagine you’re looking at a painting of a beach by an Impressionist. The sand looks pink. At first, you might think the artist used their imagination, adding vibrant colors that weren't there, perhaps to make the scene feel more alive. But the colors were there—it was just the way the light happened to hit the sand at that time.”

In short, the Impressionists painted how they saw the world in a fleeting moment, depicting scenes from everyday life. Their work was counter-cultural in an era when artists, in their studios, produced idealized works of perfection—painting history, mythology, and the lives of great men in meticulous detail.

As Noah spoke, I realized the artistic approach of the Impressionists was similar to my own. They captured reality in a moment—and yet, their work ended up more beautiful than I imagined.

My purpose in documentary filmmaking is to enter into the depths of humanity with great care. I don’t want to look away from the mess or edit the lives of my subjects in pursuit of idealization. I differ from the Impressionists in that I may add light or color to a scene to enhance its cinematic look, but I’m similar in that I never alter the truth about the person. I believe that, whether capturing moments of joy or pain, beauty is found in reality—and sometimes, it’s more luminous than we expect.