The Other Half of My Music

The Other Half of My Music

I fell in love with photography before I even understood what aperture meant. All I knew was that depth of field felt magical. The background melted away, the subject popped forward, and suddenly the world looked cinematic. That one feeling pulled me in.

Back in yeshivah, there was this random camera floating around the dorms — a Nikon D3200. I borrowed it once, then twice, then basically every day. Eventually I bought it off the owner, Yona Leib, for $300. That camera became my entire universe. I shot anything I could: friends, streets, outfits, moments. Fashion came next, and things really started to move when I began collaborating with artists.

My idol at the time was Danny Diamond. I was obsessed with his work and desperately wanted to shoot like him. Even though I couldn’t reach him, his style pushed me forward and shaped the way I approached color, skin, and storytelling. The wild part came later — after I got deeper into editing, color grading, and building custom LUTs for photographers, Danny Diamond ended up using one of my LUTs in his own videos. That moment felt surreal: the person I looked up to was now using something I created.

Upgrading to a Sony A7III changed everything. I grabbed a couple of incredible lenses and suddenly my work exploded in sharpness, clarity, and emotion. Around that same time, my friend Simcha Kaplan got into photography and editing too. He shot some amazing portraits of me that pushed me toward my favorite niche — self-portraits. I loved the challenge of being both photographer and subject, using my phone as a remote, running back and forth to frame, pose, breathe, and capture something honest.

Eventually, I became a Getty Images contributor. Some of my food photography started showing up all over the internet in ways I never expected. But the photos I create for myself — especially my portraits — have become the visual half of my music. Every release needs its own universe. Photography lets me build that world: the color palettes, the mood, the emotion, the atmosphere that lives alongside the sound.

Music production is where I process everything emotionally — the chords, the synths, the reverb tails. Photography is where I translate those feelings into images. They feed each other. They make each other stronger.

For my upcoming album, Storm Before the Storm, I even submitted one of my own self-portraits to Getty Images. It felt like the perfect full-circle moment: the kid who borrowed a camera in yeshivah now creating the visuals for the music he makes.

My photography and my music are different languages, but they tell the same story. Together, they let me say everything I never could in words.