Noilly Prattle: Prague by Night

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Prague by Night

Malostranske Namesti - our tram stop
outside the front door
of our building

Returning from the opera one night, the SO was commenting on the street lighting in the Lesser Town's Malostranske Namesti (Square) where our apartment is located. She had been asking me to take some nighttime pictures for her blog and I was interested in trying to use my camera in ambient light without shaking and without a tripod, so out I went.

our backdoor street
dome of St. Nicholas church
It was a rainy night as I started looking around the neighborhood for potential shots that might be interesting and might capture the warm mellow yellowness of the street lamps(not a cold blue-white fluorescent tube in sight). The cobblestone pavement was wet and shiny adding an extra bluesy dimension to the evening's activities. If blues can be golden then it would describe the feeling of our square on a rainy night. 

fast food for low-budget
weary world travelers
Rain falling softly and unobtrusively on my hair and the fur of my hooded jacket, umbrella unwanted and unneeded; all my senses focused on the nighttime scene of color, light and human activity; my greedy lenses trying impossibly to capture it all in digital images of a Sunday night in the rain in our old neighborhood of Malostranske Namesti.

Well, unfortunately, my poor skills (and maybe cheap camera) couldn't capture the mellow of the yellow street lamps. The camera tries to average the existing light and overexposes the strongest points of light so that they come out white. Still, the images speak for my abiding affection for this achingly lovely part of the old city of Prague, even if they don't capture the color I wanted.

sunrise to drive away the blues in the night
And, if you look real closely, you will get a glimpse of one of things I love most about this city. Can you guess what it is?

6 comments:

Ronnie said...

you, my friend, captured the colors perfectly…pat yourself on the back. And…perhaps it is the sunrise? Green with envy,
Ronnie

Noilly Prattle said...

Aha, your comments seem to be coming through. Thanks for the encouraging remarks, but the lamps really are yellow. Nope, not the sunrise. Guess again. You get three....

Ronnie said...

the moon????

Noilly Prattle said...

one more to go, you're way cold

Ronnie said...

ok, I am not going to blow my last guess….you need to give me a hint. You said…to look at that last photo carefully and one could see what you loved the most. Give with the hints (ps…you know, I do not get an e-mial telling me that you commented about my comments…have to go back and see…is that what you do?)

Noilly Prattle said...

see my comment to your comment on the "A Streetcar Named 22" post