This project was my first dive into the art of landscape photography. It was an experiment in finding points of interest in the mundane and generally ugly landscape of the cities and towns near my campus. My concept for this series was to photograph light in the darkness, going out past midnight, searching for areas that were still illuminated for my camera to capture.

While the photographing process was fairly simple, I took many creative liberties in editing. I wanted these images to look dirty and distressed. I added countless layers of scratches, dust, smudges, lens flares, and grain, strategically masking them to create a controlled chaos in the texture that added to the grungy feeling without becoming overwhelming. The images were color graded to look dingy and artificial, emphasizing browns and yellows, and creating strong blue glows from neon lights and street lamps. In the end, this collection highlights the nature of the place I live in, and finds a small sense of beauty in the industrial, the utilitarian, and the dilapidated.