My name is Jeremy and I am a photographer residing in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
I became interested in photography when my Dad gave me his old digital point-and-shoot camera back in about 2009. It was the first time I ever took images of my own and I fell in love with it. I soon bought my own digital point-and-shoot and then saved up and bought myself a DSLR in 2012. Photography has been my primary hobby ever since.
I have always been drawn to the beauty of structures and advertising from bygone eras. I love the sense of nostalgia those things evoke. I like to carve out my own little piece of history by capturing old buildings, signs, and cars that won’t be around for much longer in photographs.
In recent years, I have found myself drawn to urban night photography. Roaming the streets of Calgary at night, on the prowl for anything that has “the look”. I don’t know exactly how to explain what “the look” is, but I know it as soon as I see it. Often, I’ll catch a glimpse of something, whether it’s an old car bathed in the rays of a nearby streetlight, the colourful glow of light radiating from a storefront, or the lonely light emitting from the windows of a modest dwelling. I’ll get that glimpse and immediately the wheels start turning in my head of the type of image I can create from that scene.
Calgary is quite a clean, modern city. Not modern in the same way that Dubai, for example, is modern. But contemporary in the way that old buildings and neighbourhoods are constantly torn down and rebuilt. There are really not many places left in this city that have a whole lot of age or character. As a photographer that very much enjoys photographing those types of scenes, that truth is both disappointing but also part of the fun, because it means you need to hunt around for it.
At the risk of not sounding deeply profound or arty…my eyes are always scanning my surroundings for shit that I think looks cool. The ordinary can often look extraordinary once the sun has gone down. I often find myself noticing a location during the daytime and immediately thinking, “I need to come back here at night” and I’ll make a note of it in my phone. This can be nothing more than a rusty old car or an aging service station, but if the light is right, it can make for a striking scene.
The play of light, shadows, and colour at nighttime can make for fascinating and beautiful images of what are relatively unremarkable scenes. These images are a handful of those scenes that captured my imagination.
