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Twenty years ago, Adek Berry received a special birthday present from her brother: a pocket camera. He wanted her to capture the beautiful views she saw in the mountains whenever she went on a trip with her hiking group.

New to photography, Adek experimented with all the camera’s features and taught herself how to use them. She was curious and wanted to learn as much as she could. She pored over every photography book she could find.

Today, Adek is an award-winning photojournalist with a decade under her belt working for newswire Agence France-Presse. Everywhere she goes she carries around a huge Nikon camera and lens, in case something “big” happens. “I don’t want to miss it,” she said.

Adek doesn’t want her photos to tell just a thousand words. With every shot, she’s aiming for a million.

“I want viewers to get the message I’m trying to tell them through the pictures,” she said.

In photojournalism, she added, that means capturing moments that may only happen once. “If you miss the moment then you’ve lost it,” she said. “You have to be alert, quick and know what to do at the same time.

“You have to look around you, and when you see something that catches your attention, shoot it, then use your intuition to think about what might happen in the next second.”

The 41-year-old has won a number of awards and accolades over the years, including from the National Press Photographers Association in 2007 and LIKE magazine, which named her the best photojournalist in 2010.

Last year, one of Adek’s photos of an Afghan woman was selected for Time magazine’s yearbook, “LightBox 365: A Year in Photographs.” But Adek said she still treasures the old photos she shot long before she entered photojournalism.

“I still keep the photos I took with my first camera,” she said. “When I look at them and the photos I’ve taken as a journalist, there is of course a big contrast. The older ones are all mountains and natural beauty, and the newer ones have messages and stories to tell, many of which are scenes from disasters and war zones. But I appreciate them all, regardless, as they are a good reminder of my journey to date.”

One unexpected detour in her path to becoming a photojournalist was when she studied dentistry at a private college in Jakarta. After one semester, she knew the profession wasn’t for her.

“It was totally the wrong choice,” she said. Ultimately, she ended up doing a degree in agriculture. But after graduating, she decided to follow her teenage dream of becoming a journalist. Adek worked as a reporter for political magazines Tiras and Tajuk before landing a job at AFP.

Among her fellow photojournalists, Adek has been dubbed a “disaster area specialist” for her frequent coverage of disaster zones.

“Coming from Indonesia, a country prone to disasters, which was especially the case from 2004 to 2008, I captured a lot of scenes from the affected areas, including the [Aceh] tsunami and [Mount] Merapi eruption,” she said.

“We have also had bombings, political upheaval and much more. It is sad, but these things happened and needed to be captured in photos.”

As a professional photojournalist, Adek said she had to be prepared to go anywhere, anytime.

“Sometimes it also happens that in one day I feel that I am in several different worlds,” she said. “One morning I went to cover a riot, and later that evening I took shots of Justin Bieber. Another time, I found myself covering a beauty pageant event an hour after I had finished covering a football match.”

One of her most memorable journeys, she said, came when she was embedded with the US Marines in southern Afghanistan in February and March last year. Seven months later, Adek returned to the country to cover the Marines’ Female Engagement Team.

“I like challenges because I can learn a lot of new things,” she said.

Still, Adek said, personal safety is always a concern.

“When I was assigned to Afghanistan, leaving my kids and husband here, I feared I wouldn’t make it back to Indonesia,” said Adek, who has two children. “In Afghanistan, land mines are everywhere you walk. When I had to wear a bulletproof helmet, no one could tell whether I was a woman.

“Then there was the fact that I wear a jilbab [Muslim headscarf] and that in Afghanistan, when you walk around with the US Marines, you are the enemy. Period.”

Another unforgettable journey for Adek was when she flew to Aceh after a devastating tsunami hit the province in 2004. At the time, she had to leave behind her youngest child, a daughter, who was only eight months old and still breast-feeding.

“When I returned home three weeks later, it felt to me like I was a total stranger to her,” she said. “While I was gone, she was fed baby formula. I felt sad and guilty when I left, but I knew this was only for a short period of time and I would be back soon.”

Adek is eager to share her experiences over the last decade both as a reporter and a photojournalist. She is frequently invited to speak at universities and tutor at photography communities.

“It would be a waste if I did not share,” she said. “I love to share my knowledge with people who are keen to learn.”

Adek has inspired not only people in Indonesia, but overseas as well.

“I have received a lot of messages from strangers overseas on Facebook telling me to never stop taking pictures,” she said. “They said they liked the photos I took.”

But Adek knows she will have to retire at some point, no matter how much she loves her job. Even so, she does not plan to ever really quit photojournalism.

“I want to continue working as a teacher so I will be able to continue sharing the knowledge I’ve gained,” she said.

Despite all her achievements, Adek feels she has a lot left to learn, and aims to work harder every day.

“Because tomorrow is another challenge,” she said.