Roller balance
- 📍 Location: Pont-Neuf, Paris, France
- 📅 Date: 2021
Two figures learning to rollerskate on the lower quay, framed by the black underside of a bridge, with the Pont-Neuf and the river opening beyond them. The arch takes the top and both sides of the picture; the pair are small, lit, and slightly unsteady.
The arch is used as a viewfinder. I moved until its edges made a clean rectangle around the bright quay, then waited. What I wanted was not a sports photograph but the posture of somebody who is not yet good at something, arms out, weight wrong, and that posture lasts about a second at a time.
The exposure again favours the outside, so the vault is black and the quay is pale, and the skaters read as two dark marks on a light ground. The Seine occupies the right third and stays almost featureless.
The quays below the Pont-Neuf are flat, paved and free of traffic, which is why every learner in the neighbourhood ends up here, on skates, on a board or on a bicycle with the saddle too low.
I wanted a photograph about trying, made from the shadows, with a four-hundred-year-old bridge as the backdrop to somebody’s second attempt.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
