Isolation in a busy city
The images here were shot over the course of a single day when I travelled down to London to meet up with a friend (https://www.youtube.com/@JustineFiles) in early April 2025. I didn’t go to shoot the images in this particular way, but as can happen with photography, something revealed itself to me through my images that maybe relates to some sort of internal feeling or emotion.
I love London as a city, I love taking pictures there and exploring its streets but I’ve never done this before with the sole aim of photography. Most of my previous shots have just been quick snaps of things I’ve seen whilst there with my family, or the usual touristy stuff.
Whenever I go to London though, I’m always aware of feeling like a bit of an outsider. Like I don’t quite belong. Thinking about this a bit more, I get similar feelings whenever I spend time in the city closest to where I live, Manchester.
I never get this feeling when I’m out in the countryside.
I think it’s something to do with proximity to people. When I’m out in nature, there is a general lack of people (unless you’re bold enough to head to Mam Tor for a weekend sunrise!) so it kind of feels normal to be alone. In cities though, that’s a whole different matter. People know each other, they group together, laugh, drink, eat. Cities feel like a place to share with others, so that feeling of isolation is somewhat amplified.
That’s what I captured.
Given what I normally shoot, I’m quite often looking to simplify scenes anyway and often wait until no people are present. To me, there’s something awkward yet comforting about looking at a place built for people, but seemingly sitting unused. For obvious reasons this was hard to do on this particular day in London, but I enjoyed finding these little frames that were either lacking life, or reflected the isolation that I often feel when I find myself in busy places.
All of the images shown here were shot on my Fujifilm X100VI, using a 1/8 mist filter. They are all SOOC jpegs, some of which have been cropped and a couple have had slight contrast boosts in post.
I used a ‘Summer Chrome’ recipe created by San Bilgi (https://www.osan-bilgi.com/summer-chrome). I find this recipe produces gorgeous colours on a bright day like this and I particularly like how it renders blue skies.
The last couple of shots were created using a ‘Cinestill 800T’ recipe created by Ritchie Roesch (https://fujixweekly.com/2020/10/06/fujifilm-x100v-film-simulation-recipe-cinestill-800t/)
Despite feeling isolated, I loved shooting in London and am really pleased with the number of images I’m happy with from that day. It might be novelty but it feels like a city with so much more photographic potential than Manchester, so it’s somewhere I’ll be back to sooner rather than later.