The gods of light and weather in the American Northeast are an unpredictable lot. Prayers and sacrifices don’t really work with them. In August, they exercise their most sadistic side and blanket the entire seaboard in a hot humid haze that is the bane of photographers, and of pretty much anybody who needs to leave their air-conditioned apartment. But sometimes they surprise you with a generous gift. For instance, one Friday afternoon two New York photographers go to New Jersey to shoot the sunset, which they heard is spectacular from the upper-floor rooms at the W Hotel in Hoboken; once there they find no sun to speak of, a blanket of that grey haze, and the dullest of skies; but, just as they are ready to pack it in and forget shooting for the day, there’s a lightning bolt on the Hudson River. And after that, black clouds rolling in from the west, and a beeping storm warning on the Weather Channel. Score! It looks like it may be one of those gifts from the fickle gods, and out come the cameras again, pointing toward Manhattan.

6:59 pm, 16th floor, looking East at Midtown.

7:12, and it’s getting way more interesting.  

Closer, and darker. The river has turned to ink. 

Closer still, with sunstars from the floodlights.

7:16. In a Spielberg movie, this would be the scene where the alien spaceships come out of the clouds.

9:43. For the record, the aliens didn’t come. We went to dinner in the rain, came back, and found that Manhattan had surfaced again out of the blackness, shining as ever.   

The next morning, there it was again, the cursed haze. They told you in Photography 101 that backlighting is always bad, didn’t they? Well, yes, it almost always is. But sometimes, like in this photo, it isn’t. And thank you, gods, for those fifteen minutes last night. In exchange for your magnanimity, we will never talk trash about Jersey again: Hoboken, and its strange light, turned out to be a blessing.   

(All shot with a Nikon D700, Nikkor 24-120 f/4 lens)