Born in Saint Petersburg, FL to Polish parents who’d just immigrated to the States, I was devoted to the arts from a very young age. From my passions for music and dance and painting as a child, to focusing on acting and becoming obsessed with photography as a teen - it’s felt like I’ve covered it all, and still adore every aspect of the arts and creativity. After graduating college in Virginia at age 20 with a degree in international politics, I moved to NYC to pursue a career in film and theater instead. I spent a decade in the city, with a million highs and lows and every emotion in between. When I lost my desire to continue my acting career, I found great fulfillment in writing and honing my photography skills and purchased my first big girl camera in 2015, a Canon 60D.
Hi! I’m Paulina, a lifelong seeker of magic and light.
My biggest dream had always been to travel the world, and I’d been lucky enough to do plenty of it in my childhood, with many trips to visit family in Poland and Europe. I developed a taste for the thrill of solo travel by age 16 and took myself on adventures as often as I could throughout my time living in New York, but a trip here and there wasn’t the answer to the longing of my soul - I wanted to be out there exploring full time. By 2018, the Airbnb business I’d had for several years as a side hustle became a stable enough income to quit my office job and leave the city, spending nearly two years traipsing around the globe and documenting it all. At the very beginning of my round the world trip at a bustling electronics store in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo, I upgraded to my dream camera - the Canon 5D miv. I’ve been shooting with it ever since. Throughout my travels, many of my choices on where to go next were based on my spiritual seeking; from studying yoga and ayurveda in India to journeying with plant medicine throughout South America and temple hopping all over Asia. I was having the time of my life.
My travels were dramatically cut short in spring of 2020 when the world shut down and I very quickly lost everything I’d worked so hard to build - my business, my lifestyle, my freedom. Having no idea what was going to happen with the state of the world, I left Thailand and came home to St. Pete, Florida to wait out the storm. After some time and going through major shedding and healing, including letting go of my beautiful Brooklyn apartment, I found my people - the spiritual community I’d actually been seeking my entire life, right under my nose in my hometown this whole time. Full of beauty and music and art and love, I regained my footing and began to feel like myself again. Soon I took my camera out after several months of not touching it, doing some shoots for fun with friends - and realizing how much magic there is still to be made between me, my camera, and those on the other side of my lens. It was finally time to launch a portrait photography business; an idea I’d been toying with since before I’d even left on my travels. And here we are! I’m so incandescently in love with this life I’ve rebuilt here in Florida and so grateful to be pursuing my favorite kind of art daily, with massive faith and trust in Spirit guiding me every single step of the way - while still loving my now shorter travel trips, especially when they come with an opportunity to shoot and make magic.