How Instagrammer @snowflakesfairy Became a Photographer

Originally published on PassionPassport.com

“I’ve become a person who sees different perspectives,” Jessica Hariana-Lemaitre shares. “A street musician, busy streets, peak hours at train stations — they can all be beautiful subject matter if you look at them in a certain perspective.” 

Jessica is always on the lookout for beautiful, ordinary subjects in London, the city she now calls home.

While most photographers focus on the city’s major landmarks — Big Ben, Tower Bridge, among others — she hunts for corner coffee shops, bustling train stations, and the juxtaposition of old buildings beside new.

As an expat, Jessica knows firsthand how difficult it can be to live in another country. But she hopes that when people look at her photos, they see the everyday life of this diverse city.

“Everyone is here from different countries, but united in one community,” Jessica says of London. 

While originally from Jakarta, Indonesia, Jessica lived in Paris with her husband for four years before his career took them to London in 2015. Before they moved, she began taking photos of the French capital as way of bidding adieu to the home she’d come to know so well. She just wanted something to remind her of Paris, but that simple idea got her hooked on photography. Once she and her husband were settled in London, she switched from a point-and-shoot to a DSLR and started teaching herself.

London is so colorful — something that manifests itself in Jessica’s photography. She loves incorporating bright pops of color, bold details, and fresh angles and perspectives into her shots.

As her photographic abilities have expanded, so have her opportunities. 

“Photography makes me want to travel the world,” she says. “It encourages me to get out of my comfort zone. I couldn’t have imagined that I would get on a plane and explore a foreign country by myself if it wasn’t for my passion for photography.”

Jessica’s travels have taken her around the world — to Italy, Bali, Antigua, Spain, Istanbul, Finland, Denmark, and Belgium, and, of course, around London. She has a soft spot for Oxford Street, Notting Hill, and the bohemian parts of East London.

Old buildings, crowded streets, parents taking their kids to school, people making coffee stops on their way to work — they all make Jessica’s imagination spin. As a photographer, she sees stories everywhere.