Damrak Leaning Houses Storm Countdown Timer

The sky over the Damrak that afternoon was doing something theatrical, all bruised purple and charcoal, with one bright tear in the clouds that lit the housefronts like a stage. This is the row everybody photographs, the tall narrow facades leaning forward over the water, each one a slightly different shade of brown and black and brick, each one with its own crooked windows and its own small history. I have seen this view a thousand times in other people's pictures and it still stops me in the street. What makes this frame is the processing, which I know is unfashionable, but it drags detail out of the shadows of those dark facades that the eye actually sees and the camera usually does not. A coffee shop sign glows red on the left, the kind of place tourists find and locals avoid. The water in the foreground was almost black and completely still, holding the buildings upside down. The smell of wet stone came up off the pavement, and somewhere a bicycle bell rang twice and then gave up. Then a gust came through and erased the reflection, and I put the camera away and went to find somewhere warm.