Nittele Tower

This photograph was taken on the move, from the Tokyo Monorail, aimed at the glass façade of Nittele Tower. Shooting through layers — the monorail’s own window and the tower’s reflective panels — created a composition that is equal parts interior, exterior, and abstraction. The grid of the building’s structure acts as both frame and subject, compartmentalising the scene into individual vignettes where people, staircases, and architectural lines intersect.

The DA* 16-50 on the K-5 handled the mix of reflections and transparency better than I anticipated. Exposure was tricky: the overcast light outside diffused evenly, while the building’s interior lighting added warm pockets of contrast. I kept the balance slightly in favour of the highlights to preserve the glass’s luminous quality, even at the cost of letting some interior shadow detail fall away. It works here — the silhouettes and partial figures are more suggestive than descriptive, adding to the sense of observing without fully intruding.

Compositional precision was dictated by the speed of the monorail and the limitations of shooting handheld through another pane of glass. There’s a slight softness from the extra layer, but it suits the layered, dreamlike quality of the image. For me, the value lies in that tension between the rigid, architectural order of the façade and the fleeting, almost accidental way the scene was captured. It’s both a document of place and a fragment of motion.