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?