Milan: Crossing

Suits and briefcases against colonnades. Wet tram tracks catching light. A man leaping the rails. Six frames of a city that doesn't slow down. Milan moves fast. The people in this set are all in transit — striding toward the camera with briefcases, talking on phones without breaking step, leaping across wet tram tracks, crossing at zebra crossings in packs. Nobody is lingering. The city's energy runs through every frame like a current, and the camera's job was to find the moments where that energy had shape. The set is split between color and monochrome. The color frames — a man in a grey suit against a colonnaded building, another striding through a sunlit square — hold the warmth and detail of Milan's stone architecture. The black and white frames strip the scene to motion and contrast: a woman extending her arms mid-stride, a man leaping tram tracks with his bag flying, legs crossing at a zebra in a pattern of dark shoes and light pavement. Motion blur is deliberate in most frames. It compresses time, turns a sharp figure into a smear that still reads as purposeful movement. The wet tram tracks and puddles add another layer — reflections that double the light and the motion of the city. Six frames from an afternoon of chasing pedestrians who didn't know they were being chased. The hit rate in street photography is always low, but Milan gives you more material per block than most cities. "I really chased the light on that square, trying to get the guy with the briefcase sharp as he walked right at me. Everyone was moving in Milan."