Gripping onto the edges of the device, Ashley Jiang (12) carefully raises the camera body to her eye. Pressing her cheek onto the surface of her Canon EOS Rebel T3i, she squints and peeks through the viewfinder with her right eye. Agile fingers shift down to fiddle with the ridges of the focus dial as she gently adds pressure to the shutter button. Her nose crinkles up as she positions her shot perfectly. Target on lock? Click.

For Ashley, America was not her first home. Although first born in California, Ashley moved to China at just a few months old, defining herself with the people she surrounded herself with rather than those of her birthplace.

“I grew up as a Chinese,” she said. “And even though I went to international school and learned to speak English there, as soon as I stepped outside of the class, I was surrounded by people in the Chinese community.”

At the age of eight, however, Ashley moved to the United States. Brought outside of the familiar community of Shanghai that she grew up in, Ashley found herself in an unknown world.

“Moving from China to California, I had to learn to be American,” she said. “As a kid, my parents took me to America for summer vacation a lot, so it wasn’t very different to begin with—I thought we were just going on another vacation to America. But once I realized that I was thousands of miles away from what I called home, half-way across the world, I felt like I was in an unfamiliar and alien place. Living here felt very different for me, and it was hard to adapt.”

Determined to find her own personal talent, however, Ashley’s discovery of photography brought more than just a means of creativity. Her fascination with cameras elicited a form of comfort and reassurance in an unaccustomed place.

“I used to be the one who was bold, outgoing, brave, always wanted to be the first person in line,” she said. “I always spoke in class, but eventually I became that person who sat in the back row. Photography was a means of escape for me. Other than a way of practicing my creativity, I found comfort in it. It was a way of becoming more aware of the world and what’s happening around me.”

Devoting much of her free time to improving her photography, Ashley’s efforts grew notable by those around her as her passion developed.

“She spent a lot of time checking good photo works online, and even bought albums of world renowned photographers,” Ashley’s father Barclay Jiang said. “Her photography skills began to take off really fast. Every single photo she shows to me has unique characteristic to it, as if her photos have a story to tell.”

Breaking outside of her reserved exterior, Ashley exhibits a contrasting personality that exudes confidence as a photographer.

“She used to kind of just stay on the sidelines taking photos,” close friend Jackie Gao (12) said. “But now she’s a lot braver and would go as close as she can to take photos. She’s always carrying her camera around. It’s like her best friend.”

Despite being lost in a foreign place, Ashley found herself through photography by simply looking and clicking the shutter. Photography allowed her to manifest her own perceptions of the world, and it also pushed her to discover herself.

“When I take photos, I see the world from my viewfinder,” she said. “From something as small as a pebble in the street, a concrete idea, to something abstract, like happiness, I capture photos and it’s like my own signature. In a broader sense, photography taught me to view the world from my eye. It gave me a sense of perspective, and also helped me learn more about myself.”