The green light reaches the sidewalk before I can see where it comes from. It catches the lower edge of a parked bicycle and stops at a seam in the paving. Across the street, a lamp turns a doorway orange. In the photograph I take from the corner, these two areas seem much closer together than they do while I’m standing between them. A few steps of dark pavement are enough to keep them apart in person.
I know this block well in daylight. The shop windows have different proportions, and there is a pale building at the end that usually attracts my attention. Tonight, its facade has almost disappeared. The green patch has become the most definite thing in the scene, although it occupies very little space. I take another picture with less of the building in it and find that the bicycle has become difficult to identify. I move back.
Photographing here after dark gives me a different set of edges to work with. The borders between buildings still matter, but the places where one kind of light ends and another begins are easier to see. A person entering the doorway briefly carries both colors on their coat. By the time I lift the camera again, the door is shut. I keep the photograph with the bicycle and wait to see what else passes.
