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Where The Light Is
One evening in Vienna. I decided to head out onto the street once more. Day or night, the streets of Vienna are beautiful anyway. There is something to see everywhere, from old buildings to horses with carriages riding down the street, to all kinds of striking characters. But in the evening, a city always brings that little bit extra. When the lights are on and the atmosphere settles over the city, something magical happens.
Somewhere near the city center, I noticed people standing on a raised square next to an intersection, overlooking the crowd. A great spot for a photographer to shoot from a bird's-eye view. To look at the city from a different side. Not in the middle of it all, but zoomed out. Watching from above.
I walked up the steps and made a lap around the square to see which perspectives were interesting. I found a spot among some people who were also enjoying the evening, and I looked down. Cars drove past, people strolled calmly with their dogs. With their loved ones, hand in hand. Cyclists passed by.
But a number of people were standing still. They were waiting at a small food stall that was still open. You would almost think it was the only one still open, given the long queue that was waiting to buy dinner, or maybe just a small evening snack.
There was not much surrounding light in that spot. The only light came from the food stall itself and lit up mainly the first people in the queue. The glow faded toward the back of the line, like a kind of natural fade-out.
The photo I took shows that. Most of the light comes from the food stall, but around it, it gets darker and darker. Where you would normally add a vignette to darken the edges of a photo, these were already dark in a natural way.
Everything happens near the centre of the frame, just a bit to the right. What happens outside it is a mystery. It's something that only plays out in your mind, something you imagine yourself.
But what does happen, you can see in the photo. Right where the light is.
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