Streets at Sunset

It is about 6:45 in the afternoon. I just got out of my class in the College of Communications building, and the 1L/1M bus I was meant to be on passes our stop because it is too full. Shame. I turn the unfortunate circumstances around and make the extra 20 or so minutes I will be sitting at this spot productive, noticing the peculiar way the pebbles of the sidewalk here at Guadalupe and Dean Keeton interact with the sun.

Without paying too close attention, it would be easy to dismiss the sidewalk as a plain, if only slightly textured grey. This is actually not the case upon further inspection, because each pebble seems to be a different color sitting in the grey cement. I witness greyish greens, pinks, blues, and burgundies. The texture alternates between the rough, gritty cement grooves and the smooth, shiny pebbles. They are not particularly luminous stones, as they don't reflect their respective colors. They are also only so shiny because their specular spots disappear in the slightest shadow of a passing car or pedestrian. As for the hour and season (that of dusk and late summer), the sunlight seems to be golden or orange and so the sidewalk appears to have a slight hue of orange. A subtle shadow from the buildings across the street at the drag creeps in over the 15 minutes. It is almost impossible to notice, but I recall the tip of the shadow kissing the curb when I began my observation and at the end it seems to be kissing my feet. This shadow is not enough to rid the pebbles of their shine, but enough cars and passerbys make it more and more difficult to make out those glints. As the 15 minutes end, the shadow from the drag has changed the color quality of the street from a dirty orange to a more blue/purple/periwinkle grey. The once clearly differently hued pebbles now appear to be nearly identical in color.

An oddity I didn't pick up on until I just about finished my observation was the dramatic disparity between my eyes' perception of the sidewalk versus what my camera picked up. Of course the lens and aperture had an affect on this, but normally the video mode of my camera records light more accurately. This confused me until I remembered that the entire time I was staring at the sidewalk, I did so through the filter of my sunglass lenses, which are black but still skew the color towards a browner, more sepia color-tone. For the last couple of seconds of footage I hastily pull what was filtering light in my own eyes over the eye of my camera. Perhaps not entirely accurate, but certainly closer to what I actually saw.

Here is my video. Forgive the shakeyness of my camera. Although I hope to work in film, I make no claims at being a cinematographer.

Streets at Sunset from Lady Subrosa on Vimeo.