The Blueprint

Orlando is a city most people associate with theme parks and tourism, but in March 2009 I was there for something much simpler. My cousins lived there, and I went to visit. I brought my camera.

This was my first time in Orlando, and I spent part of the trip walking around Lake Eola in the heart of downtown. The downtown footprint was unlike anything I had seen up to that point. I had not really photographed cities at this scale before, and something about the way Orlando was laid out, the fountain at the center of the lake, the egrets standing in the shallows, the church steeple rising against a dramatic Florida sky, the tropical foliage framing every angle, clicked into place for me.

Without fully realizing it at the time, this trip became the blueprint for how I would approach city photography going forward. Lake Eola was where that started.