My name is Veronika but I go by the name SYKV in the online space. I’m a photographer and urban explorer from the Czech Republic, currently living in Toronto, Canada. I started shooting professionally about 6 years ago focusing on food photography but shortly after I moved to Toronto, I got into urban exploration. It was something I started doing out of curiosity but it quickly became a huge part of my life and something that impacted my mental health in a very positive way. Photographing these adventures helps me freeze those moments in time and have the memories forever. A big focus of mine in photography is close ups of modern architecture. All the windows, symmetry, lines, and reflections never fail to amaze me.
I’m an urban explorer originally from the Czech Republic, currently living in Toronto where I focus a lot on close-ups of the buildings that are all around us in the city. Being from Europe, I’ve always been fascinated by modern architecture – all the symmetry, lines, reflections, and countless windows. It’s amazing to be able to shoot those photos from roofs because it gives you endless angles and variations. That being said, there are so many other hidden gems and photo opportunities in the city you might not immediately think of for this type of work. The Eglinton West subway station might not look like much from the outside, but it has very interesting architecture, and lots of different windows letting in beautiful streams of light at certain times of day. I chose this photo because all the geometry, reflections, textures, and colours combine everything I focus on in my work in a single shot. For my close-ups, I always photograph everything from the outside looking in so it was fun, and an interesting challenge to do it the other way around while still staying true to my style. I captured the photo vertically but decided to flip it horizontally because most of my work is shot that way and I think it gives the photo a more abstract feel which I really like. My goal was to capture details of the station you might not normally notice, and I’m really happy with how the image turned out.