I don’t have many black and white photos. For starters, I shoot everything in color. If an image ends up in black and white, it means one of two things happened: 1) The photo wasn’t working in color, or 2) something about the image jogs my memory of director Carol Reed’s film The Third Man and inspires me to go colorless.

If you haven’t seen The Third Man, I highly recommend that you do. It’s a good movie, but it features some of the finest black and white cinematography that the world has to offer. When I shot this alley between State and Dearborn late one night, it had just finished raining. With the puddles of water reflecting the city lights and the lines of the buildings all pointing in one direction, it instantly reminded me of just about every street scene in The Third Man. The colors were instantly removed and the high contrast black and white was brought in.

I sold a copy of this image to a beat cop who actually patrols this alley. “You made it look a lot better than it actually does,” he told me. “It doesn’t look like it smells at all in this photo.”