For the past year, Politico Pro’s defense editor Philip Ewing has been documenting his Metro commutes with a camera.

His experience — as seen through the lenses of his FujiFilm X100s, Canon 7D, Leica D-Lux 6 and iPhone — is published on the blog The Metro Commuter, which turns a year-old today. Ewing writes:

The Metro has fascinated me since I was a kid, but I only began seriously photographing it about a year ago. I often put in very long hours on the job. Riding the Metro to and from the office often felt like the only thing I was doing in life other than working and sleeping. Looking for photographs during the trip, I thought, might be a way to make my scant “free” time pass slower and seem productive.

Some days the Metro felt — and still feels — like a prison. Other days, when the light is good, it can be beautiful. I’ve tried to make photographs that capture both extremes and as much as possible of the life in between.

In honor of the anniversary, Ewing shared five photos that “represent the range of experience for a lot of people in the system, good and bad,” with DCist. See them in the gallery above.