Words and Light

The weather gods hate me.

The chance of snow was 30 percent this evening, and while I was at work, several people were tweeting about flurries in Columbia. I was excited to take snow photos once I got out of work, but whatever snow had been falling was reduced to a very light mist when I left the building. Undeterred, I took a gander around downtown anyway.

Once, while staying at my roommate Chelsea’s house in St. Louis for a few days, her father pointed out the wet pavement in a movie we were watching. I asked him what he meant. He explained that art directors tend to wet the pavement before a nighttime shoot — regardless of whether the weather is supposed to be clear — for aesthetic purposes.

To this day, every time I see wet pavement during a nighttime scene in a movie or in real life, I remember what Chelsea’s dad said.

So tonight, I set about looking for wet pavement.

Wet pavement in an alley in downtown Columbia. The door is the employees' back entrance to Sycamore Restaurant.

I was crouching down and snapping some photos in this alley for a few minutes before a car drove up halfway. (You can still see its headlights in the righthand side of the photo.) I stayed put and noticed a figure approaching. All I could hope was that the person would enter the big orange-lit door — and, sure enough, she did.

Quickly, I refocused the lens and snapped the photo right when she was framed in the rectangle of light.

Here’s my runner-up for the day:

The Tiger Hotel entrance, shown from the stairwell of the parking garage on Eighth and Cherry Streets.

As I wrote in my previous post, I’m hoping not to have to resort to nighttime photography for every day of this 30-day challenge.

That said, I have reached several conclusions:

1. The weather gods have it in for me. I’ll always be at work when the sun is shining, when the sun is setting and when it’s snowing. The weather will always be cloudy and miserable when I have a few daylight hours free, and the snow will cease when I get out of work.
2. I will not let the weather gods stop me from making pictures, whether for the 30-day challenge or otherwise.
3. I don’t think I will have a theme for the 30-day challenge.

It’s not just that I can’t think of a theme. I simply don’t think restricting myself and my photography to a theme while I’m tethered to such a booked weekly schedule is practical or would result in good pictures.

That said, I think challenging myself to a similar daily-photo project this summer in Atlanta would be an excellent undertaking.