Footsteps at Night by Chipka
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Description
There is a kind of quiet that encompasses the city in late-night hours; it’s a dissipation. Of sound. Of light. Of anything and everything but the most brutal of textures and the most brilliant colors. From an altitude of ten stories or more, the whole night-gleaming city stretches out, like jewels spilled from some careless giant’s bag. From the height of a single man’s (or woman’s) gaze, things are different. There are no giants. No jewels. There may be rats: skittish and crazy things. City rats. They are, as often as not, as smart as the cats that hunt them. In that kind of quiet, the only difference between predator and prey is their position on one end (or the other) of the food chain. Only the smartest and most cunning survive, either by eating, or avoiding those that eat.
In that kind of quiet, there are sounds. Footsteps. The humming, buzzing drone of traffic here, there, and in some far, ill-defined distance. To the east, there is the whisper of wind and the lisping slap of waves against a concrete-buttressed shore. There are sighs and whispers: love sounds, sex sounds: but only those making them might ever hear them.
Your own footsteps are--commonly--all that you hear, even as you listen for the promise of a threat embedded in the sound of someone else. Approaching.
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As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting, and I hope you’re all having a great week. I keep thinking that things might settle down…and they do for a moment, but it would also seem that the end-of-year crazies (from 2011) refuse to die. Hopefully this means that good times from 2012 will refuse to die, as well, and 2013 won’t involve dental equipment and corporate shenanigans lurid enough to make even Machiavelli blush.
Comments (22)
treasureprints
Wonderfully moody image and narrative, Chip.:)
Faemike55
Very cool work, Chip great descriptions
NefariousDrO
Funny how our minds work. This shot actually made me think of Barad-Dur, the ancient subterranean city of the Dwarves in "The Lord of the Rings". There's a rough industrialism with the iron and rivets and lights, but there's also a strange kind of elegance in the columns and arching supports. Places like this are both scary and fascinating, especially in this kind of light that you so excel at capturing. Wow. I also can't help but imagine a post-human world where a civilization of rats inhabit the rusting relics of our cities with strange stories about the giants and tragic gods who'd built these monuments that for them were like Stonehenge is for us. Very cool shot.
KatesFriend
It's not the footsteps alone of which one should be wary, its the sound of breathing one that is the true warning sign. Most predators (or those who might pretend to be predators) make the air tense or rarefied as he/she prepares their bodies for the strike. Their craven desire or oxygen to feed their fast movements in the last moments of their prey's liberty. And indeed, in that moment the world is dark and cleared of all but the most intense colours - and emotions. The man in this photo seems like an alien visiting a world whose environment is compatible but not evolved for him. Indeed, the colours and textures of this place are normal only to the hulking, roaring metal creatures that are nonetheless so curiously orderly in their progressions through their world. I love night scene with vibrant coloured lights, I am quite a sucker for them.
RodS
This is a wonderful shot, Chip, and it is very Barad-Dur-ish. Excellent!
Glistens
I like the way the light seems to radiate from the center. Excellent one.
whaleman
Framing what looks like a nice little shopping area with steel girders has a way of transforming the scene into very harsh realities of footfalls and dangers! Well done.
auntietk
The El looks otherworldly in this light. A creature stretched out, ready to move ... at some point ... despite the fact that it has not done so before. It will pick up those delicate legs, first one and then another and then many of them in chord-like progressions, and it will pick its way elegantly back into the lake from whence it came. One day, my friend, you will wake up and it will just be ... gone.
kgb224
Talking about dentists. My 2 daughters will be going for a check up at a dentist this afternoon. Stunning capture my friend. God Bless.
wysiwig
I love your night shots of the city. They always make me think of Raymond Chandler. I used to wander the streets of Hollywood and Downtown Los Angeles at night. The dark seems more intense than the daylight when things are, oddly, duller. Great, steady hands, unless you are using a tripod.
durleybeachbum
I like what Clayton has to say...I have had that feeling in the past before we had decent street lights, and I walked the dogs at night. Nowadays you can hear the 'personal' music from your would-be assailant's headphones at 50 yards.
jeanebean
Nice moody shot and narrative .
helanker
Another very beautiful street shot. I love these warm colors. Excellent.
sandra46
WONDERFUL NIGHT SCENE
anmes
Very atmospheric
bmac62
Note to self...get out more at night with camera in hand. Like this image a lot. The 'L' has a way of changing a neighborhood...into a darker place and your words set the atmosphere of what it is like to be walking in such a neighborhood after dark. I am reading a book about Chicago in the 1880s-1890s...1000 trains a day were coming and going from Chicago...all at grade level. Hundreds of pedestrians were killed and/or maimed every year...the 'L' helped to begin to turn these grissly stats around. But your photo and postwork are super...this could be New York as well as Chicago.
Sea_Dog
Well done. As always your words and images blend together into a moving experience.
MrsRatbag
Hmmm, re Tara's comment, I like the thought of the El getting up and walking away, leaving its posts and pillars behind...this is gorgeous, Chip. I noticed the quiet in our neighborhood after the snowfall; no road sounds, none of that background white noise that you never notice until it's NOT there. That's one of my favourite things about snow...
nikolais
love the match between the image and your perfect story... can't remember if I've ever read a better short account of night inthe city. most appealing, Chip!
flavia49
wonderful work
CoreyBlack
Ah, yes, the Howard/Red Line tracks over Broadway near Wilson Avenue in delightfully mugger happy Uptown. I believe the correct word for that area is "Seedy". Not a truly bad neighborhood, mind you, but a bit of a way from a good one. One of the few areas on the North Side these days that has any of the grit and color of "Old Chicago". Not an area I'd want to linger alone in late at night without at least a can of mace, but certainly photogenic. You've done a wonderful job here of capturing that gritty urban vibe and the fact that you've done it at night gives it a very moody Film Noir countenance. The predatory nature of the text only adds to the feeling and matches it perfectly. Great work! Love Tara's idea of the L getting up and wandering into the lake. THERE's A STORY! I see Bill appears to be reading Eric Larson's "Devil in the White City." I highly recommend that book to every one, as well as this picture!
danapommet
I like the dispersement, of all the different types and colors, of light! I also like the long shadow that may very well be the source of the footsteps!