I borrowed a friend's camera in Bali… and it changed everything

I didn't own a camera when I made this film.

I was in Uluwatu, staying at Mayiki Boutique Hotel; a small place tucked into the cliffs above Nyang Nyang Beach. Most people who visit Bali never find it, like the rest of the island forgot it was there.

A friend had lent me their camera. I had no brief, no plan, nowhere to be. So I just started shooting.

I set everything up alone. Moved furniture, waited for the light to shift, sat by the pool long enough that it stopped feeling like I was working. At some point something changed. It stopped feeling like figuring it out and started feeling like something I already knew. Like a language I'd forgotten I spoke.

That feeling is the part I kept coming back to.

I went home and bought my own camera. Took on my first real projects. And slowly, the work became what it is now, short films for hotels and retreats and brands that have a story worth telling but haven't found the right way to tell it yet.

Mayiki wasn't a perfect film. It was one of my first. But it was the moment I stopped wondering whether this was something I could do and just started doing it.

Some things only make sense looking back. This was one of them.

- Ells