Next Time, Maybe…

I made this image in one of those narrow alleys in central Brussels, where restaurants compete not just with food but with neon, colour, and attention. It’s visual overload by design. Menus on easels, signs screaming prices, waiters halfway between invitation and insistence. But what caught me wasn’t the display—it was the woman walking straight through, uninterested, unmoved. She wasn’t choosing where to eat. She was choosing not to.

The photo hinges on that gesture. Her hands are in motion, her shoulders hunched from the cold, her gaze slightly lowered. She becomes the counterpoint to the street’s whole premise. All this effort around her, and none of it lands. That’s the “next time, maybe.”

Technically, it was a tricky exposure. The light sources were mixed—warm tungsten, cold LEDs, bright signage all bleeding into each other. I exposed to protect the highlights, letting the shadows keep their noise. The result is gritty but controlled. Colour needed minimal correction—I wanted the chaos of tones to stay as they were: messy, loud, unapologetic.

The composition folds inward, with awnings and signage narrowing the frame toward a vanishing point. She walks dead centre, held there by geometry. The image is busy, but she’s calm, and that’s what steadies the photograph.

It’s not a street photo about place. It’s about refusal. Every restaurant pitched a story, and she walked through all of them like pages she didn’t want to read.