The cubicles inside an office at the end of the day. The golden light through the window suggests that it is the evening, when everyone has gone home. A place where people work every day of their lives, yet never give a second thought to. Despite this, the office holds a little bit of each worker's personality and life, tucked away in the corners of each cubicle. The hand sanitizer peeking out the bottom is a throwback to the pandemic. The coffee represents the morning grind. The mug reveals that someone in the office is a father. These small hidden things in the office are a piece of each worker, left behind after they have gone home.
A pond with a fountain in the middle is a common sight throughout many parks in America. Many people walk past it without a second thought. However, when the park is still and empty, the endless splashing of the water and the way the light hits the falling droplets makes the banks of the pond a peaceful place where one can stand and relax away from the bustle of the city.
A student on their way to class is a common sight on college campuses around the world. Everyone walks past each other without a second thought to the person next to them. Yet unbeknownst to those nearby, some of these students will become the next great leaders of the world. Here, a student walks across the front of a lecture hall. In the foreground stands a monument dedicated to the great leaders of America. The student walks forwards, each step taking him closer to his class and his future. The great leaders of America, celebrated in the foreground, took this same journey long ago. The image represents this journey to adulthood, though it is unseen by many due to its gradual nature.
We all dress up our homes and offices with furnishings in order to represent the function of a specific space. Yet most of the time when we walk past the furnishings, we only see but not understand them, giving them no second thought. Here, the chair and small coffee table suggests that the depicted area is supposed to be a sort of lounge for people to sit in and relax. Located by the entrance of the building, many walk by this chair and table without even thinking about them. Yet their existence defines the function and mood of the room, a little oasis of relaxation tucked under the stairs.
Sharp and focused, a bundle of pink flowers stand in the foreground. Many such flowers grow all over the city in different places, whether that is out of the sidewalk, by the road or sidewalk, or even out the bottom of a building. Despite their different locations, the similarity about them all is that people pass them without giving them a second thought. Because of this, their beauty goes unappreciated and unseen. This image doesn't represent an abstract concept, but rather, the simple beauty that goes unnoticed in our everyday lives.
At the bottom of the image, people can be seen walking by a church as they go about their daily lives. This church represents the many buildings that we walk by without giving a second thought to. Yet if we stop and look up, we can see the smooth yet textured surface of the building and see how the light hits and bounces off of its faces. The ornate designs at the top of the tower are of great beauty, yet because buildings these days are so tall, we miss these beautiful details if we don't look up.
People tend to avoid the dark. Even at night, they still gravitate towards lit areas like stores and clubs. True darkness is rarely seen by people in their day to day lives. Yet the darkness also holds beauty. The lack of light reduces objects to mere outlines and silhouettes. As such, vision becomes purely geometrical, the beauty lying in the simplicity of the scene. The picture exemplifies this simplicity. The wood texture fades to a sea of black and the colors of the vase disappear leaving only its outline. The darkness is the epitome of "the beauty of simplicity" as the lack of light reduces things to their most basic features.
