This past May I was given the opportunity to travel abroad to London for a class concentrated in the arts. As my final project, I chose to create a series of photographs that focused on smaller, more intimate details of places in London or close by. These details were less pronounced and took more time to discover than the full view of a place. A closer look through the lens therefore revealed the simple beauty of these details, and made the insignificant more significant. My goal through these photographs was to make visual discoveries and provide a new perspective of these places for myself as well as the viewer. 

I explored the following ten places: St. Dunstan-in-the-East, Tower Bridge, Leadenhall Market, King's Cross station, St. Paul's Cathedral, Royal Albert Hall, Leake Street graffiti tunnel, Millennium Bridge, South Bank, and Coventry Cathedral.

This idea to focus on intimate details in London came from my senior art exhibit this past year, in which I focused on intimate details in nature. The original inspiration was from American photographer Ansel Adams and his series that similarly focused on smaller details in nature.

My process throughout this project was to travel to each place and spend at least 45 minutes absorbing the environment and capturing as many images as possible. This happened over the span of 3 days and at the end of each day I would filter through the images and choose 4-5 that I thought were the best along with some initial editing. Once I had gone to all the places I then narrowed it down to 4 final images per place and performed final edits.

At the start of this project I was a bit skeptical that I would truly be able to find interesting and beautiful details at every place on my list. Even once I arrived at some of the places and still had this initial doubt and skepticism, I was amazed by the fact that when I really took the time to look more closely through a different perspective, those details would suddenly stand out.

These photographs are from only 2 of the places, Tower Bridge and St. Dunstan-in-the-East, so please feel free to visit my Behance page to view the rest of the series!
https://www.behance.net/courtneygmiller

You can also find me on Instagram
@co.gene

Courtney Miller

Freelance designer from Indiana, as well as passionate photographer and artist.

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