The new season of Doctor Who has just begun – and that’s got me thinking about time.

Evening. Winter. San Francisco.

See this image in the Gallery.

It’s interesting to look at the featured image for April (made on the roof of SMOMA a few weeks ago) with time in mind..

Naturally, a photograph freezes a moment in time, and most photographers are familiar with Cartier-Bresson’s aphorism, “the decisive moment”. In this image, however, the signs of time are less precise – evoking a general feeling rather than capturing split-second action.

The shadow is high on the wall, the light is warm and the tree branches are clearly without leaves. That doesn’t tell you everything, but those clues do work in your subconscious to give a sense of when the picture was taken and what it might have felt like to be there on that day – even though what you are looking at is – after all – just a picture of a blank wall!

(And in case you wondered, the person who’s shadow you can see is not the photographer …the original image was actually taken at an oblique angle and “corrected” in post-processing to appear face-on.)

Feedback and comments welcome, as always.