Humans being humans
A personal diary of travel and scale. Capturing tiny human figures as they live, move, and spend their time within massive urban architecture and wide natural landscapes.
Looking back at my photos from different trips over the years, I noticed a recurring pattern. No matter where I was in the world, I found myself constantly stepping back, pulling the camera away from the immediate scene to capture people as tiny figures inside a much larger frame.
Because of my background, I naturally pay attention to space, geometry, and how things are built. But when I look at these images, the giant concrete structures or the wide natural horizons are just the background. The real core of every shot is simply watching us do what we do best: being human, living our lives, and spending our time.
When you look at a city from a distance, the daily rush turns into a quiet, almost accidental rhythm. We build these massive, overwhelming spaces—gigantic modern transit hubs, symmetrical cathedral squares, and concrete avenues—yet we move through them as small, temporary silhouettes.
On a busy sidewalk in New York, a group of commuters walking together suddenly looks like the structural columns of a skyscraper. In front of a museum or under a giant public sculpture, the crowd slows down, completely unaware of how beautifully small they look against the shapes we design. We don’t dominate these urban spaces; we just inhabit the small cracks within them, walking, looking around, and navigating our way through the day.
That same instinct follows us when we leave the city behind and head out into nature. The straight lines of architecture turn into open water, mountains, and fields, but our scale doesn’t change.
We remain tiny dots on a massive canvas.
There is something deeply comforting about seeing how we fit into the wider world. Whether observing a group of people seeking warmth in volcanic thermal waters surrounded by cold landscapes, a lone canoeist on a quiet river, or travelers fading into the endless geometry of a purple lavender field, we look for human connections.
Even the sea becomes a place where time slows down. From a freezing beach in April where everyone stays fully dressed to a warm September afternoon where people just lay in the sun, we go to the edge of the water just to let the hours pass.
Ultimately, this series is not a structured assignment, but an ongoing personal observation. It is about the quiet beauty of being insignificant against a giant world. We walk, we gather, we wait, and we move on. And sometimes, even in the middle of a massive city park, that entire grand scale disappears completely, collapsing down to two people lying on the grass, lost in a single kiss, making the rest of the world fade away.
Editorial and curatorial inquiries
The complete series is available as a PDF portfolio for photo editors, curators, and publishers.
