I took a certificate program that had me spending a couple of evenings and a weekend day from September to December learning about business intelligence and analytics.
The course was mostly for work, but I was surprised at how much more interested I found that I was in analytics and data. I would be reading a(n unrelated) book when a datapoint would be mentioned and I would immediately start wondering how they had collected the data, if they visualized it, and how I would do the same. I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising that one of the parts I enjoy most about this aspect of my work is the creation of visualizations that tell the data’s story, but it was.
During the weekend class we would have an hour-long lunch break and I found myself wandering the halls of the sprawling campus. Since the concept of using visuals to tell a story was fresh on my mind, I decided to make a bit of a project of my explorations.
To be honest, I don’t know that I have a narrative with a lot of the shots that I collected, especially since most of them lean toward architecture and still life, but I think I see a common thread in what I captured.
I wasn’t the only person on campus of course but, it being the weekend, there were obviously far fewer people around. You would most often happen upon a lone student, probably cramming for exams, or maybe just lost in thought, or sometimes dozing quietly in a corner. I found a kind of sad comfort in seeing these people on their own in such large spaces. Loneliness and fragility surrounded by concrete, glass, and steel.
