Between Play and Poise was photographed in Kumasi, Ghana — a place that always feels alive to me. I wanted to create something that felt honest, something that spoke about freedom and how we express ourselves in the spaces that shaped us. We started with something simple: him sitting against a yellow wall, wearing a cropped red shirt and green pants. The colors felt alive, and his posture carried both strength and ease. Later, he changed into a skirt and began to move, holding a bunch of balloons. The energy shifted completely, it became lighter, freer, more vulnerable. In those moments, the camera stopped feeling like a tool and started feeling like a witness. In Ghana, masculinity is often seen in a certain way, firm, composed, serious. I wanted to show the other side of it. The quiet, the tenderness, the joy. The clothes became part of that conversation. The cropped shirt, the skirt, the colors, they all spoke of freedom, of redefining what it means to be seen. Men are expected to move a certain way, speak a certain way, carry themselves with a kind of quiet authority. Softness isn’t often celebrated, it’s mistaken for weakness. But in reality, softness takes courage. It takes strength to let your guard down, to exist without performing what people expect from you This series became a conversation about that tension. What happens when you let color, movement, and play challenge the usual idea of what a man should look like? What happens when you allow joy to exist beside strength? The walls of Kumasi became more than a backdrop. The rough textures, the dust, the heat, they all added their own voice to the story. Shooting on film allowed those small imperfections to live in the images. I like that the photos aren’t perfect, they feel alive, like memories caught in motion. Between Play and Poise is about balance, the tension between standing still and letting go. It’s about being yourself even when the world wants to define you. It’s a story about joy as resistance, and beauty as truth. It’s about identity and connection. It’s about how men, especially in Ghana, can begin to redefine what masculinity means, not by abandoning strength, but by expanding it to include emotion, color, and softness.