Plaza at Dusk

Late light on Kyoto stone. A photographer kneeling into the crowd, a woman scrolling beside her dog, a monk in red robes and yellow sneakers walking away. Three frames from a plaza where tourists and locals and monks share the same sunlight. The photographer in the orange jacket is absorbed in the crowd he's shooting, crouched low with his camera up — a portrait of someone making portraits. The woman at the bistro table is the opposite energy: seated, phone in hand, her small tan dog standing alert on the chair beside her while she scrolls through something that has nothing to do with where she is. The monk is the closing image, and it earns that position. Red robes, straw hat, white backpack, yellow sneakers — walking away down a cobblestone street while the crowd flows behind him. It's a frame that combines the sacred and the mundane in a way that only street photography catches: the costume says one thing, the sneakers and backpack say another, and the truth is probably somewhere between the two. All color, all available light. The late afternoon gave the stone buildings a warm cast and the shadows some depth. Shallow depth of field and soft diffused light kept the backgrounds present but not competing. Three frames is a minimal set, but each one has enough going on to hold attention on its own. "That plaza was packed – I kept trying to get the light right on the buildings as people rushed by, and then there was that monk with the backpack, just disappearing around the corner."