Doubling the world around us, exactly how it is, is impossible (at least for now). It’s easy enough to replicate the physical looks of a place or a person or a special moment, simply by picking up a paintbrush and drawing what you see. But re-creating the mood, the emotion of the people who are feeling is hard, because not everyone feels the same about certain things and situations. Not one has the same exact kind of emotion. My definition of happy is very different from my neighbor’s-it might be similar, but I’ll never find out because emotions are just like color, inexpressible by words. Since it’s so challenging to understand the state of mind of the other 7 billion people on Earth, I’ve settled to the next best thing: capturing moments and how I feel with the help of photography.

The earliest memory I have of me taking a picture is when I was four. At that time, cameras were valuable objects in my family. I seldom touched one, never held one. Pictures fascinated me, I loved them. Since cameras were the machines that made the photos, and in my six-year old mind, that made them the best invention, ever. My parents knew how much I wanted a camera so they bought me one on my fourth birthday. It was a shiny, black one, modern during its time. For a while it just sat on my bookshelf in my room where I kept all of my stuffed animals. On vacations I would take it along, but I never took a single picture. In the rare cases in which I did, the pictures went down the drain with a single click.

Then, finally, my opportunity came! My family and friends were on a trip to Taos, New Mexico to ski during spring break. As always, my black camera was tucked in my dad’s jacket. He went to the slope to ski and left the camera in my possession. My brother William and I stayed near to the log cabin. He just trudged along with my mom while I slide down tiny mounds of snow. The snow was a little too slippery for William and he kept falling every once in a while, but he never cried. His expression was still blissfully happy and I thought that was very funny. My mom suggested taking a picture and that time, I was the photographer, capturing Bill’s smile.

Now, whenever I travel, I always bring a camera with me. After being to some many places with diverse cultures, landscape, weather, and people, it’s hard for me to remember what Madrid or Phuket looked like, let alone how I felt while there. But every once in a while, I flip through my photo albums. All of the photographs mean something to me, I can recognize when and where each one was taken. Only the ones I took communicate the thoughts that went through my head. Only those let me relive my past.