Twenty minutes of rain

I had been in Tokyo for four days and hadn't taken a single frame I cared about. Every photographer who has ever stood at the Shibuya scrambling has already taken your photograph for you.

Then it rained for twenty minutes — hard, and at a perfect angle — and the crosswalk turned into a piece of glass. The crowd moved across it slower than usual, hunched into themselves, and every umbrella did the same job a softbox does in a studio.

I shot for nine minutes. The rain stopped before my hands got cold. I've never been more grateful for bad weather.