The Photographer

Debs - This is me

I’ve been a baker since basically middle school. I enjoyed all things creative: from painting, drawing, photographing (waited ‘till I was 34 to realise I might have ADHD…)

After finishing high school I became a baker and pastry chef, career that continued and grew when moving to London from Italy in 2014 and starting to work in restaurants around town.

From there, I decided to leave the shifts, the sweaty lunch and dinner rush, to make it on my own with my husband, and we launched Buzzing Bee Baked Things from our flat in Wandsworth Town.

Buzzing Bee was a huge success throughout and after the pandemic, and it’s in this space that I started to really study photography, as I needed good photos for my website (buzzingbeebakery.com). I studied the theory from books, the practical from online courses and trial and error, and I finally found a way to express the love of photography I’ve always had in me, thanks to the love for good food.

But that wasn’t enough. The camera became an extension of my hand, and once allowed to go out after restrictions had lifted, I started practicing street photography, long exposures, landscape, aerial (yes I also got a drone in the meantime, a little thing I call Phileas).

My old passion came back and became a bit of an obsession: other than a good new camera, I also got lenses slowly one by one, filters, tripods, and I even dusted my old Minolta film camera from 1994 I bought a few years before at an antiques store in Williamsburg NY, and bought new film.

Photography has been my escape and my way to relax and decompress. Storytelling through a snapshot is my way to keep my mental health in check: it gives me energy, keeps my creativity up and makes me step away from the everyday for a second. As an introvert, it has helped me open myself up, find new friends, taught me to say yes to new experiences. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

I’m now taking a sabbatical from the kitchens to focus on photography, travel, adventures, storytelling and living life to the full.