When I first started shooting my Riverside at One Hundred Fifty series, I was trying to do it around sunset.  I was hoping for light, pink skies.  There was logic to this, but, at this point, I can’t remember what it was.  It didn’t take me long to realize that I didn’t want pink skies, I wanted purple or navy blue skies.

I shot The Chew Chew with pink skies and was decently happy with the results.  The photo ended up looking like painter Edward Hopper’s “Early Sunday Morning” painting too, so that was cool.  It was a perfectly cromulent photo.  But I did think it was missing something.  As I was trying to put my finger on what it was, my assistant collapsed on set.  The paramedics were called (providing some really interesting outtakes) and after about 20 minutes everything went back to normal; my assistant was taken to the hospital and checked out and released so quickly that she was home before the shoot ended.

This turned out to be a blessing in disguise though because after the fire trucks and ambulance left, I took one–one!–more photo with the sky a lovely navy blue and that was the image I ended up going with in my series.

With the onset of evening, shadows and darkness came out and added mystery and adventure to the scene along with beautiful contrasting colors and atmosphere.  Just like that, I started shooting about 45 minutes later in the day than I had originally planned.  And it was all because my shoot at the Chew Chew was delayed by my assistant collapsing.  If she hadn’t, there’s no telling what direction the series would have gone in!

When I look at this photo, the first thing I always see is that the lights at Aunt Diana’s are off.  Thank you, Patty!  One of the interesting quirks of this block is that the lights of Aunt Diana’s are substantially brighter when it’s closed than the lights of the Chew Chew are when it’s open.  I saw this a few days before the shoot and realized that I had to get Aunt Diana’s to turn off their lights, otherwise the photo wouldn’t work.  There would be a giant blob of light to the right of the image that would overwhelm things.  Patty generously agreed to do so and helped this image take shape in a way no one would ever know about unless specifically pointed out.  So thank you, Patty!