Blur

That beautiful late afternoon time when the sun is dipping down and everything is sort of calm and a little bit dim - that's such a perfect, peaceful time. It's still light but the sky pales against streetlights and lit signs. The night life takes a tentative step into view, and maybe you're sleepy by now. Maybe the day's work is mostly done.

There's a sense of adventure to this transition, maybe it's because it's the ideal beginning to a night out somewhere. Especially on a hot summer day, like Friday the 28th of June, 2024. The day of an impeccable soufflé.

My soufflé.

I'm always struck by the ambience of the cars and streetlights as night comes. So many details on every street, but that light change is often the thing that makes me notice them. Everything feels different in the shadows, and in the rich, golden light of a setting sun.

I used to love taking this particular sort of blurry photo. I would sit at the front on the top deck of a double decker bus and take pictures as we drove along the street, getting all these streaks of patterned light, moving away from us too quickly. There seemed something strikingly beautiful about it, like that sense of movement, impossible to stop, was a better representation of the moment in time than any static shot could be. The streaking light conveys the time through that absence of stillness.

There's something magical in that.