Daily Photo – The Viper’s Nest

It was just after 8:00pm on an early winter’s night and the street was quiet, slick after the evening rain. Somewhere down South Road, a muffled hum of tyres approached, rising like a tide and receding just as fast. The local shops lit in glowing pastel of blues and purples, like some kind of retreat in a sea of black. It was cold. Not quite bone-deep cold, but enough that you kept your hands in your pockets and your shoulders hunched against it.

In the dark, the streetlights stretch like starbursts, the reflections glinting off wet asphalt, and the long streaks of red and white from passing cars that blur time in a single frame. Earlier in the day, it hadn’t seemed like much, just another row of low shops, a street lined with parked cars and bins tucked against fences. But now, with the city mostly tucked in for the night, it had a kind of eerie beauty. The kind that only reveals itself when no one’s really looking.

I could’ve been home. Warm. Dry. Probably halfway through a movie and a cup of tea. Instead, I was crouched on a street corner in Dunedin, camera balanced, breath fogging, waiting for headlights to draw silver and gold lines across the road. Waiting for the shutter to catch the passing of time.