New York is one of those cities that feels familiar even before you’ve been there. You’ve seen it in films, photographs, books, and dreams. But stepping out onto the streets with a camera in hand is something entirely different. The scale hits you immediately. The noise, the motion, the density of people and buildings. Everything seems to move faster, rise higher, and feel more intense.
When I planned my photography trip, my goal wasn’t to create a checklist of landmarks. What I really wanted to capture was the mood of the city — the atmosphere that makes New York feel like New York.
From the beginning, I knew the visual direction I wanted to explore. I’ve always been inspired by the work of Horst Hamann and his iconic vertical interpretations of the city.
His photographs emphasise something that you instantly notice when walking through Manhattan: the verticality of the landscape. The buildings don’t just surround you — they tower over you. Streets feel like canyons. Light drops into them like a spotlight.
So I leaned heavily into that idea. Most of the compositions were framed vertically, often looking up between buildings, letting the architecture stretch and converge toward the sky. I wanted the viewer to feel the same sensation you get standing on the pavement and tilting your head back.
One of the things that struck me about New York is how chaotic it feels, yet how strangely structured that chaos is.
There are taxis flowing like rivers. Steam rising from street vents. People crossing intersections in waves. Above it all, steel and glass climbing upward in every direction.
