There’s something quite agreeable about an empty escalator. Nobody immediately in front, nobody approaching from behind. For a few seconds, you don’t have to work out where anybody else wants to be.
We do a lot of that in public. Moving a bag, stepping aside, judging whether someone is about to turn. Usually it barely registers. Then somebody stops abruptly and we become experts on pavement etiquette.
An empty space removes those small negotiations. I don’t find this photograph especially lonely. Having a bit of room can be rather pleasant.
It also gives me a different sort of picture to work with. A person would immediately become the subject, even a small figure in the distance. Without one, there’s time to notice the place itself. The things designed to move us through it become the reason to stop and look.
This was made with the Fujifilm X-Pro2, with a treatment based on Acros and further editing in Lightroom. The strong black and white suits the picture because much of its interest comes from where the light falls. Colour would offer other things to follow; here, the brightness of an edge is enough.
The contrast is fairly firm. There’s still detail in the metal, but some areas are allowed to become very dark. I like having that choice in an edit. Lightroom makes it easy to reveal more, and the temptation is to keep going simply because something is there to be recovered.
More visible detail doesn’t always give me more to look at. In this frame, the darker areas help separate the reflections and repeated lights. Open everything up and those differences become less distinct.
The symmetry does plenty of the work already. It doesn’t need much explanation, and I wouldn’t want the processing to become more noticeable than the space. The small variations in the reflections keep it from looking quite as orderly as it first appears.
What I enjoy, though, is how uneventful it is. There’s no encounter to interpret and no expression to attach a story to. An escalator is briefly available without anyone using it to get past anyone else.
For once, nobody’s in the way. I’m sure I’d find that less convenient if I’d been waiting for someone to enter the frame.