Should I Buy It? (Best Taken With an 85mm)

…but actually with a 23mm (35mm equivalent, cropped.)

It’s not just a shopping street. It’s a stage.

Look closer: this frame holds a silent performance — a subtle interplay of desire, decision, and doubt. Three women stand just outside the warmth of the boutique, their eyes fixed on mannequins who, ironically, seem far more confident than the living observers. The mannequin inside strikes a bold pose, clad in red and certainty. The women outside? Bundled in coats, their body language somewhere between ambivalence and negotiation.

On the far left, another kind of window. A glowing child’s fantasy, plastered with Disney’s “Frozen” — a reminder of simpler times, when wanting something didn’t require justification. Between that innocent longing and the calculated consumerism on the right, stand these three figures: women caught in the liminal space between need and want.

Should I buy it or not?

It’s not really about the coat or the bag. It rarely is. It’s about the reflection of identity in a glass pane. The performance of consumption. The tug of war between aspiration and restraint. The mannequin isn’t just a display — it’s a mirror that doesn’t move. The real movement, the real drama, is outside.

This is what street photography offers at its best: not spectacle, but quiet confrontation. The viewer becomes the voyeur, the philosopher, the participant.

And as the rain glazes the pavement with its reflective sheen, one has to wonder — is the woman with the shopping bag going back inside? Or walking away?