Gold on the Concrete

I was walking home from the grocery store this afternoon, my bag heavy with things I didn’t really need, when I had to stop in the middle of the sidewalk. The sun had dipped just low enough to hit the glass of the office buildings downtown. For a few seconds, the entire street was washed in this impossible, burning orange. It felt like the city was holding its breath, turning from something cold and gray into something precious. I stood there until the light shifted and the magic faded, feeling a bit silly for being so transfixed by a wall of windows. We spend so much of our lives rushing past these structures, seeing them only as obstacles or markers of where we need to be. We forget that even the most rigid, man-made things are subject to the mercy of the sky. Does the city look different to you when the sun starts to set, or are you usually too busy looking at your feet?

Leanne Lindsay has captured this exact feeling in her beautiful image titled When the Light Hits the Buildings. It turns a familiar urban view into something that feels like a quiet, golden secret. Does this scene remind you of a specific time of day you love?