CLEVELAND — It's 6 a.m. and already Gabe Wasylko is out the door scouting a location at Edgewater Park in Cleveland.
"It's so important to have that moment that you can just be with yourself and enjoy the world, think and reflect on life," Wasylko said as he pulled his camera from his car. "Photography is that moment where I can just process things, think back, relax and meditate a little bit and be with this beautiful city. There's no better way to do it."
For Wasylko, he looks for beauty in moments -- even moments where he is trudging through a foot of snow on a cold and grey Cleveland day.
"You couldn't have picked a more picturesque day to follow me," he laughed. "This is Cleveland in a nutshell. But it's fun. There's beauty in everything."
It's beauty he sought to find in the midst of the dark days of the COVID pandemic.
His goal: Capturing one picture a day.
"I used that as a creative outlet to deal with the stresses of the pandemic. It's just kind of stuck."
He took those photos to social media to track his progress. There, his breathtaking photos of Cleveland stuck with followers and have been shared thousands of times.
"It just kind of moved into something that it's still kind of amazing to see," he said.
What may be even more amazing, Wasylko is not a formally trained photographer. Throughout his process, he has not only learned more about photography but has found a new appreciation for the city he loves.
"It's got a lot of character. It's unlike any other city I've ever seen before," he said.
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Editor's note: Video in the player above was originally published in an unrelated story on March 25, 2022.