Washington, DC-based photographer Emma K. Alexandra may consider herself an amateur, but we've been admiring her dynamic and authentic photography for a while—and it's clear her work holds its own alongside the pros. Her thoughtful images capture the raw beauty of everyday life. Emma told us she wasn’t always into photography and attempted to pick it up a few times before it finally stuck. She explained, “Back in the day I got into videography by making 6 second drone videos on Vine (rip). That got me out hiking and exploring Upstate NY, where I lived at the time, and eventually I figured I should pick up a regular camera. I got a Sony a6000, didn’t put a lot of effort into learning it, and I gave up on photography soon after.” 

Even though Emma had a pause in her photography journey, she returned in 2021 with determination. She started her next attempt at picking up the hobby this time with a Sigma DP2 Quattro in hand.  Emma said, “I love that camera. It’s so simple and captures beautiful photos when it’s in its element. Eventually, I felt limited by it, got a Fujifilm X-T1 and the rest is history. I think I’m here to stay now!” 

Styles and scenery 

When asked about her preferences in photographic styles, Emma doesn’t fully consider her work to fit in one box. “ I always struggle with this one since I don’t really stick to one genre, though lately I’ve been warming up to calling most of my work street photography. Outside of the photography world, I think folks tend to have a very specific definition of street photography in their head, usually involving some rogue photographer with a giant flash running up to an unwitting subject and getting in their face. That stereotype kept me away from the term for a long time. However, I’ve come around to include cityscapes, architecture, photos of places without people, and even some abstracts, in my definition of street photography. When I do take photos of people, I tend to try to keep them anonymous. Of course, I’m very lucky to be able to travel to some beautiful locations and some of my photography falls purely into landscape.”

There’s plenty to photograph in her bustling locale of Washington, D.C so we wanted to know what else inspires Emma to shoot in certain locations. She said,”I truly believe that there is an excellent photo to be captured at every location. So far, that has held true. I’ve captured photos I love just outside my home, in the alleys of industrial parks, on bike trips, along highways, and in national parks. They all have their unique beauty to me. It helps too that I’m a generalist. I don’t really see myself as exclusively a street photographer, landscape photographer, or architecture photographer. It gives me a wide pool of people to learn from, lots of places to get inspiration from, and tons of ways to approach a location.”

Photos for the greater good through Creative Commons

Emma often applies a Creative Commons license to her photos and we asked her why she was drawn to using those particular licenses. She explained, “I do software engineering professionally, but when I do some programming on my own time I try to open source my work under licenses that allow others to use and modify my code freely, like the MIT license. I bring a similar philosophy to my photography. I do photography as a hobby, not professionally. So, my only goals are to have fun and to get my photography to people who enjoy it.” 

She explained further, “The Creative Commons license I choose allows me to provide my photography free of charge to like minded people who want to use my work in their own non-commercial projects as long as they give me attribution. If someone wants to use my work commercially, they can reach out and we can work out a deal, though I also use some groups here on Flickr to provide my photography free of charge to some local DC publications that I enjoy reading. Plus, thanks to the license, I’ve seen my photography pop up in places I never could have imagined, typically small not-for-profit newsrooms that I’m happy to support.”

“I’m pleased with my licensing set up, but I totally get they might not be for everyone. There are a lot of options with Creative Commons. I’d encourage every photographer to take a look at the different variations of the license to see if there are terms they’re comfortable offering their photography under.”

Contributing to the body of publicly available works can help all kinds of wonderful people in unexpected ways.

Gear must haves

We always want to know more about the gear Flickr members are using and Emma shared her top choices with us. 

Cameras and lenses come and go but a few things have stayed the same and become essential. 

My bike – Pretty much all of my photography is taken from, next to, or thanks to my bike. The old trusty Gazelle has gotten me to so many cool places. It’s what lets me get out there to take photos and explore new places. Most importantly, it lets me stop, hop off, and snap a pic just about anywhere.

Lightroom – I have a love-hate relationship with Lightroom. It’s the best editor out there, I feel super comfortable using it, and my workflow relies on it. But, it’s also full of bugs and pricey. It can be frustrating at times, but it has some amazing features and produces great results.

Google Maps – I have a pretty good memory for places, I can remember where a photo was taken pretty precisely, and I put in the effort to make sure my photos are tagged with location information like the neighborhood, county, city and state they were taken in. Google Maps lets me do that! I wish GPS was built into more cameras, but it seems pretty rare these days (only one modern camera has GPS, I think – the Nikon Z9). Solutions that require you to tether your phone just aren’t reliable in my experience. Location is such a valuable piece of information for a photo, it should be easier to attach!

Sanity Saver – I love photography but I really hate the process of posting posts. It’s tedious, there are a billion different platforms, and each one has their own posting system. So, using Flickr’s Developer API, I built an application that takes a photo and queues it up for posting. It definitely keeps me sane and lets me do more photography and less social media stuff.

A Ferris Wheel Favorite

We have our favorites of Emma’s photos here on Flickr but we asked her to share one of her own faves with us. “This was my first time traveling to Philadelphia and one of my favorite photos of last year. I explored the city while my girlfriend was at the tattoo convention. We got really lucky, it was super foggy the entire time we were there. I didn’t really have a plan for where we were gonna explore, my usual tactic is to pick a random direction and start walking (or riding). That night, it worked out well.“

The what and the why behind the photo 

“After picking our random direction, we ended up in Penn’s Landing and there was a big winter festival set up. When I saw the ferris wheel in the fog, I knew it would be an awesome subject. As we were walking around, I saw this scene in front of me and knew that was the moment. It only lasted a few seconds and I managed to fire off 2 photos before this person walked away. It was all just total chance and acting in the moment. Not so much being in the right place at the right time but being ready and getting very lucky. When I looked at the back of my camera, I just knew the photo had turned out amazing. I was electric for the rest of the night! “

How it was done

“As for editing, I usually start with the basics. I shoot a lot of my photos as black and white in camera. I find that it helps focus on composition and lets me think about colors later. This photo was obviously gonna end up in color, so I swapped to Fujifilm’s Classic Chrome color profile as a base. Then, more basic corrections like rotating a bit and adjusting the geometry. It turns out shooting from down low makes getting a straight photo very difficult! Next, I really wanted to accentuate the soft and glowy look the fog naturally gave the photo. That means punchy colors and reducing the clarity a bit.

I’m always fiddling with colors cause they really make the photo for me. In this photo, almost every slider in the Lightroom color mixer is adjusted at least a little bit to dial in the look, plus some color grading to provide color transitions from highlights to shadows. Wrapping up, I cleaned up some distracting elements like small rocks in the foreground. To pull it all together, I used some small radial gradients to darken sections of the photo I want to be ignored, like the details of the anonymous person’s clothing, and highlighting places to draw the eye to like the ferris wheel and ticket booth lights. Then finally, give the photo tags, location, a title and export it! “

More about Emma!

We asked Emma what else she enjoyed besides snapping fabulous photos. “While I do software engineering professionally, I also consider it a hobby, and I build very different things than I do at work. I also love riding my bike, I’ve been getting into gravel cycling and I’m looking forward to some bikepacking this summer!” With the photos out there for all to enjoy, when asked about the message she’d like to share with others through her work Emma said, “Get out there! Go places to enjoy them, go places a million people have gone, go places no one else has gone, and take photos. It doesn’t matter what the place is, take photos, and you’ll find your own way to put your own style and personality on it.”

As for her time sharing her work to Flickr Emma said, “The people on Flickr are awesome. It’s truly a community focused on photography, which is super rare! You can find folks who upload sunrise pics from their morning run every single day, to landscape masterpieces and every single person uploading them are super nice.  A huge thing for me is providing my photos to local, independent news sources. They often need relevant (or at least pretty), local photos but don’t have the capability of hiring a photographer to go out and capture events for them. Through Flickr groups, I can allow them to use my photos. It always makes me happy to see my photos on those sites, and to support local projects.”

If you’d like to follow along with Emma’s adventures through the city on her bike, you can visit Emma’s Flickr site and if you want to see what other projects she’s been up to, give her site a visit.

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