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# The Little Things We See
- URL: https://www.stillhere.photo/the-little-things-we-see/
- Published: 2026-10-26T13:57:14.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-26T13:57:14.000Z
- Author: Laura Stanley

*Vurzie Kim on photographing friends, approaching strangers, and finding something worth holding onto.*

There are little things about the people we love that we could recognize anywhere. The way they fix their hair, look away when they’re shy, or how their smile changes just before they laugh. We learn their expressions without meaning to. We come to recognize when they’re holding back, and when they're letting go. 

Why don’t we tell them more often? Let them know how familiar they’ve become to us, how much we notice.

There’s something meaningful about discovering that someone has been paying attention. That a small thing you do, without thinking, has become familiar to someone else. It can make us feel understood. Feel seen.

How much of that attention can a photograph hold? Sometimes I look at a portrait and feel a familiarity I can’t quite explain. A stranger’s expression reminds me of someone I love, or something I recognize in myself. I wonder what the photographer noticed, and whether the person in the picture would recognize it, too.

I found myself returning to these questions as I spent time with Vurzie Kim’s photographs. Her pictures made me linger over people I had never met, in places I had never been. I wanted to know what had drawn her to them, and how her way of seeing them could make them feel familiar to me.

I first came across her work on Pexels, through [a photograph she made at the Chong Dovetail Festival in Kaduna, Nigeria](https://www.pexels.com/photo/chong-dovetail-festival-27647446/?ref=stillhere.photo). It led me to more of her work and eventually to a conversation. Curious about what catches her attention, I began by asking her to describe where she was as she wrote to me.

It was late afternoon. She was in her room at home in Kaduna, Nigeria, curtains down and lights off, listening to rain hit the ground outside. The sound felt “a tad therapeutic,” she told me. With nothing else occupying her mind, she felt light, relaxed, and grateful.

As she described how photography began for her, she kept returning to the way ordinary things made her feel—and her wish to hold onto them.

Cameras had been a familiar part of her childhood. Her father loved taking pictures, printing them, and making albums. Her own interest grew later, as she began to appreciate the people and things around her, and wanted a way to hold onto them.

“I became desperate to keep certain moments to myself,” she wrote. “A beautiful flower blooming, the sun setting, a friend laughing from deep within their stomach, someone doing something random that somehow felt like it carried a lot of meaning.”

With her mobile phone, she began making a visual journal of the things she didn’t want to forget.

> “I think the more I did this, the more I began to notice things I might have otherwise overlooked.”

I recognize that feeling. Once you begin photographing people, you start to anticipate the little things: a glance towards someone across the room, a hand reaching to fix a strand of hair. You become interested in what might happen next.

For Vurzie, that growing interest in people also asked her to do something that didn’t come naturally: approach them. She describes herself as an introvert. At events, she would usually sit and watch, taking everything in. But when she saw someone she wanted to photograph, she had a reason to introduce herself.

“If I found someone interesting, whether it was their face, their eyes, the way they dressed, or anything else that caught my attention, I had to learn to have an actual conversation with them before bringing out my camera.”

I’m interested in what happens in those first few minutes. Something about a person has already caught your attention. Then they speak, laugh, ask you a question. You begin to notice things you couldn’t have seen from across the room. The photograph you first imagined might change as the person becomes a little more familiar.

For Vurzie, learning to have those conversations became part of learning to photograph people.

“Photography helped me understand and improve my communication skills,” she says, “not just by teaching me to talk to people, but by teaching me how to connect with the people I photograph before I even take a picture of them.”

There is something reassuring about someone taking the time to get to know you before lifting a camera. I wonder whether that feeling of being seen can become part of the photograph. Perhaps it’s there in the way a person looks back at the photographer, or the expression that comes when they begin to feel at ease. We don’t hear the conversation or see the time they spent together, but something of that connection might reach us anyway.

During a photowalk in Zaria City, Kaduna, Vurzie met [a young man who made traditional hats](https://www.pexels.com/photo/portrait-of-a-young-man-in-traditional-hat-38165904/?ref=stillhere.photo). He was wearing one of his own and was, she remembers, very comfortable in front of the camera. She photographed him through the hats he had displayed for sale.

“It created this nice flare-like effect that I really liked.”

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d4/32/d4326045-82ae-4228-abf3-8453546e02e1/content/images/2026/10/pexels-vurzie-kim-325095862-38165904.jpg)

A traditional hat maker wears one of his own designs, photographed through the hats he displayed for sale during a photowalk in Zaria, Kaduna, Nigeria.

The choice brings his work into the portrait. Something he made becomes part of how we see him. We learn a little about his passion through the things Vurzie chose to include in the frame.

At the Durbar Festival in Zaria, [another man caught her attention](https://www.pexels.com/photo/traditional-nigerian-attire-portrait-in-zaria-35421241/?ref=stillhere.photo). He was a Dogari, a palace guard, preparing to ride through the city with the Emir of Zazzau. The procession is part of a festival honouring the Emir, with horsemen, traditional dress, and music.

“It wasn't entirely his attire that drew me in, but his face,” she says. “In my mind, I was seeing a beautiful sculpture of a person dressed in royalty, and I wanted to make a photograph that captured that.”

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d4/32/d4326045-82ae-4228-abf3-8453546e02e1/content/images/2026/10/pexels-vurzie-kim-325095862-35421241.jpg)

A Dogari, or palace guard, during preparations for a horseback procession with the Emir of Zazzau at the Durbar Festival, a celebration featuring horsemen, traditional dress, and music. Zaria, Kaduna, Nigeria.

“I find eyes fascinating because they make me wonder about the stories that live there,” she says. “I am very curious about people.”

That curiosity feels familiar, too. Sometimes we look at someone and want to know what has brought them to this moment. We might recognize an expression without knowing what prompted it. A photograph holds it long enough for us to consider, and sometimes to find something of ourselves there.

With her friends, that attention grows out of knowing them. They were among the first people she photographed, along with her siblings. Making pictures gave her another reason to notice the small things about people already familiar to her.

[![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d4/32/d4326045-82ae-4228-abf3-8453546e02e1/content/images/2026/10/pexels-vurzie-kim-325095862-13889896.jpg)](https://www.pexels.com/photo/overlapped-photos-of-a-boy-in-black-and-white-13889896/?ref=stillhere.photo)

Exploring double exposure with a mobile phone and props assembled from what Vurzie had at hand. Kaduna, Nigeria.

> “I genuinely love watching my friends in their element,” she told me. “It made me pay more attention to their delicateness, to the little things they do when they aren't thinking about being photographed. And somewhere in that process, a photograph is made.”

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d4/32/d4326045-82ae-4228-abf3-8453546e02e1/content/images/2026/10/pexels-vurzie-kim-325095862-14096686.jpg)

Made with a Redmi Note 8, this photograph belongs to a series Vurzie created spontaneously, building the set with help from her siblings. Kaduna, Nigeria.

I keep coming back to that last sentence. Somewhere in the time spent together, she sees something she wants to keep. I don’t know her friends, but I know the feeling of watching someone I love and wanting to remember them just like this.

Perhaps some of the familiarity I feel in her pictures comes from that affection. The people are strangers to me; the impulse to photograph them is something I feel deeply.

It’s part of why I still make photographs. There are things about people I want to remember that I would struggle to describe. An expression can bring someone back to me more quickly than an account of what we did that day. Looking at a picture, I remember what it felt like to be around them.

When I asked what she hopes people take from her work, Vurzie described that same feeling of being brought back.

“I like the idea of a photograph reminding you of something you had forgotten, or making you think about a person, a place, or a feeling you haven't thought about in a while.”

When I asked about the festival photograph that first brought me to her work, she took me back to the crowd. Cultural dancers were performing with fire as the sun was setting. A man’s attire seemed to blend with the colours and the warm light. People had paused to watch, and Vurzie was standing behind them, observing.

“I remember looking at the scene and thinking, hmm, this would make a really stunning photograph. So I took it.”

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d4/32/d4326045-82ae-4228-abf3-8453546e02e1/content/images/2026/10/pexels-vurzie-kim-325095862-27647446-2.jpg)

Spectators watch a fire display by cultural dancers at sunset during the Chong Dovetail Festival, an annual December celebration of Southern Kaduna’s ethnic heritage, music, and traditions. Kaduna, Nigeria.

It feels fitting that the picture which led me to her began with people stopping to look at something together. Vurzie noticed them, and through her photograph, I did too.

“I think the best photographs are the ones that stay somewhere in your mind,” she says. “You might see them today and then find yourself thinking about them again days later. I would love for my work to do that.”

Her photographs leave me thinking about the people whose expressions I know by heart. The smile I can see coming, the way the tuck their hair, the glance that tells me there’s more they want to say. I wonder if they know how much I notice, and how much I treasure things they probably never think about.

A photograph can be a way of telling them. Here is something I noticed about you. Something I wanted to remember. Perhaps, looking at an ordinary moment in their own life, someone might see how much they matter in ours.

And for Vurzie, “Photography is the thing that makes my heart full. It gives me a reason to keep paying attention.”

*I’m glad you’re still here.*