photography
A collection of my photographs with some demographic perspectives I carry while traveling.
Cloud Gate and Urban Population Growth
I lived in the city of Chicago for about two years and Millennium Park was always a go-to spot. This picture I took captures more than just Cloud Gate - it reflects Chicago's incredible demographic journey from a small trading post to America's third-largest city through waves of migration: European immigrants in the late 1800s, African Americans during the Great Migration (1916-1970), and more recent Latino and Asian populations. Looking at the skyscrapers reflected in the sculpture, I can see how the city handled all that population growth through vertical density, built on Chicago's role as a transportation hub that drew people from everywhere. Unlike other Rust Belt cities that emptied out during deindustrialization, Chicago managed to keep its people by reinventing itself - trading factory jobs for service work and creating beautiful spaces like this park.
Chicago, IL • Sep 2025 Fuji XT-20, f 35mm
Alpine Seasonal Migration
This alpine lake represents early Paleo-Indian permanent high-elevation settlement models, later shifting to dynamic seasonal patterns. The So-so-goi (Northwestern Shoshone) brought concentrated groups here during autumn fishing periods before dispersing to winter hunting grounds. This landscape demonstrates the evolution from static to seasonal population systems where the same space supported radically different densities depending on the time of year.
Rocky Mountains, CO • Aug 2025Fuji Disposable Camera
Metropolitan Population Density
This photo was taken when I was traveling in Tokyo, Japan, and you feel something different when you're surrounded by a massive crowd all trying to cross the road together. Shinjuku station handles 3.34 million people daily, making it the world's busiest train station, and this crosswalk captures just a fraction of that flow. Being part of this movement with Greater Tokyo's 37 million residents shows how extreme population concentration creates entirely new patterns of human behavior.
Tokyo, Japan • Jul 2025 iPhone 13
Aurora and Infant Mortality
I visited the Arctic area called Coldfoot, Alaska and captured this stunning dancing aurora. For Arctic communities that faced devastating infant and child mortality rates—where harsh winters, limited medical care, and difficult births claimed so many young lives—the aurora became something far more sacred than a natural phenomenon. Indigenous peoples believed these shimmering lights were the spirits of children who died at birth, forever playing together in the "highest level of heaven"—a joyous place "where there is no snow or storm, always bright, and there are many easily caught animals."
Coldfoot, AK • Mar 2017 Canon EOS 70D, f 85mm