In my third year of uni, we set out goals and projections of where we would like to be in the future; 6 months, 1 year, 5 years and 10 years were our goal posts. I knew I wanted to carry on with photography and pursue it as my career so I set out applying for various jobs based in London. In January this year I started working as a Junior E-commerce Photographer in East London.
Cool. One goal hit. Next one: to move into London.
My commute for the first few months was the best part of 2 hours...each way! I wanted to move in asap to save myself 5am alarms (well 4:45 cos I'm a snoozer) and to actually have a social life without having to set my bedtime for 9pm! Beginning of March I moved into a flat share in East London and axed my commute by over an hour. Sorted.
Obviously, the first few months of living in London haven't been what I imagined but my daily walks have turned into daily adventures; walking miles without realising, fully absorbed by what I see around me. This is where my project starts...
A Tourist in my Own City is simply me exploring where I now live, some of it familiar but seeing it anew. Exploring with the purpose of getting to know the place and my way around but also exploring with my camera has made for an interesting project. The first collection of images were taken on a cloudy and moody day on a walk around the Olympic Park and the neighbouring canals.
Now, I don't want to get all technical here but simply want to explain my process when it came to the editing of this collection. If there's anything I learnt throughout my degree, and specifically in my final year, is that colour matters and can alter the mood or meaning of an image. I created a series of images for my final major project and the one aspect of the edit that kept them together was filters and the colour. Therefore, with this first collection of images, I altered the hues of the shadows and highlights, overexposed the sky and desaturated the colours.
Anyway, enough with the technical talk, I haven't been taking my camera on all my walks but I want to continue this little project; see where I end up on my adventures and what I see there. It still seems bonkers that this is on my doorstep but, like one of my chosen quotes says, I am determined to make this my 'paradise' for now and enjoy exploring more!