You know, for the longest time, I didn’t really get urban landscapes. Seemed like everyone was just taking photos of the same tall buildings or super busy streets. Or they’d try to make everything look super dramatic and, honestly, a bit fake. I guess I just found cities… well, a bit much. Just a lot of noise and concrete, and I couldn’t really find my way into photographing them in a way that felt real to me.
So, I kind of avoided it. If I had my camera, I was looking for trees, mountains, you know, the quiet stuff. But then, life has a funny way of pushing you, right? I got this gig, a small local project, that kinda forced me to look at my own city differently. Wasn’t even a photo gig, more like gathering impressions for a community thing. And I thought, “Oh boy, this is gonna be a drag.”
But I had to do it. So, I just started walking. No big plan. Left my fancy camera at home most days, just used my phone, or sometimes just my eyes. My main goal became trying to actually see the place, not just glance at it. It sounds simple, I know, but it was a shift for me.
My “practice,” if you can call it that, was pretty straightforward.
- First, I’d just wander. Seriously, pick a direction and go. Getting a little lost was often the best part. That’s when you stumble on things you’d never find otherwise.
- Then, I started to pay attention to the small stuff. Like, the texture of an old brick wall, the way light came through a grubby window, weird reflections in puddles. Stuff I’d normally walk right past.
- I’d also watch people. Not in a creepy way! Just how they moved through the city, how they used the spaces. The old folks on benches, the couriers rushing, kids playing in a tiny patch of green.
I began to take notes, believe it or not. Sometimes just a few words on my phone, or a quick voice recording. “Cracked pavement, weeds growing through, looks kinda beautiful.” Or “Sound of distant traffic mixed with kids laughing.” That became my ‘record,’ my way of capturing the feel of a place beyond just a quick snapshot.
The photos I took were often secondary, especially at the start. They were more like visual notes. I wasn’t trying to get the perfect shot. I was trying to get the feeling. I remember this one afternoon, I was down by some old industrial area. It wasn’t pretty in the classic sense. Lots of rust, broken windows. But the way the late afternoon sun hit this one peeling blue door… man, it was something else. I must have spent a good half hour there, just looking, taking a few simple shots. Nobody else was around.
And that’s sort of how I got into urban landscapes. It wasn’t about finding the grand, sweeping views. It became about finding these little stories, these quiet moments hidden in the middle of all the chaos. It’s about the grit, the life, the unexpected bits of beauty you find when you slow down and actually look. I stopped worrying about making it look like a postcard and just started to document what felt interesting to me. It’s still a work in progress, always is, but it’s a lot more rewarding now than just trying to get another shot of a skyscraper.
