Urban Detail
I have always been fascinated by structures in the built environment - the forms and the elements, the patterns and the angles, the way light plays off the structure, the way the structure creates shadows and silhouettes - by the design, whether intentional and permanent, or accidental and transitory.
I have always been seeing common elements in a built environment, seeing the old and familiar in a way that is new and exciting, seeing a design element of an undefined whole, seeing the element itself as a whole and not as part of the whole.
We are familiar with beauty in the design of the built environment – in the design of a whole building or of a whole skyline.
We look at a building and see the beauty of the whole. But a building is composed of many individual component parts, each with its own design. Rarely do we look at the design of these parts by themselves, much less do we ever actually see the beauty in the design of each part.
In Urban Detail, I explore these parts or components, searching the details, looking for and seeing the art and beauty in the detail of each.
I seek to see things differently - to see the unfamiliar in the familiar.
Bio
Tom Carmichael was born in New York City, the child of a native New Yorker and native Texan, and was raised in New York and Dallas. He was exposed to the joys and diversity of travel early in life. He left New York City to attend college in St. Louis Missouri.Tom's education, training and experience was as a civil engineer, with a keen interest in the all design aspects. He discovered his passion for photography in his high school days, and has nurtured and expanded it throughout his career.
Tom's photography is greatly influenced by elements of his technical engineering background, by his keen interest in design and architecture, and by his extensive worldwide travels.
His fine art photographs have been exhibited in a gallery in Barcelona, Spain, and several galleries in Los Angeles, California, and are also held in collections of several private collectors in Southern California. In addition, his photographs have been featured in various newspapers, magazines, and carried by wire service.
One of Tom’s photographs was selected for the juried The Rock N Roll exhibition at MPLS Photo a Center in 2015. Another of his photographs was a finalist in 2014 Emerging Focus – Barcelona juried competition.
He had one of his photographs selected in American Photographic Artists’ (APA) 2013 Off the Clock juried competition, and two of his photographs selected in the APA 2014 Off the Clock juried competition. The 2014 photographs were exhibited in 2015 at PhotoLA.
He is a member of American Photographic Artists.
Tom lives and works in Los Angeles, CA and Dallas, TX.
