Three’s Company

Public benches are theatres of the unscripted. I caught this trio suspended in a casual triangle—neither fully connected nor entirely apart. The geometry between them is tense, not hostile, but uncertain. They don’t pose; they orbit each other, and the moment belongs to that hesitation.

The photo hinges on spatial rhythm. The wide format stretches the composition just enough to isolate each figure, but the concrete shadows and the circular bench lock them into an unspoken narrative. The light slices the scene diagonally, a crisp late afternoon beam that exaggerates contrast and textures—the pavement, the blue pillar, even the worn telephone on the left. That phone, by the way, plays a subtle role. Outmoded and ignored, it echoes a disconnection that permeates the whole frame.

Technically, I pushed exposure slightly to preserve detail in the darker jacket and shaded face of the boy on the bench. This meant risking some clipping in the sunlit leaves, but the trade-off keeps the centre of gravity where it should be—on the humans, not the foliage. Colour grading was minimal. The stark palette—muted blacks, the blue of the concrete, the burnt rust of the fence—serves the composition well and doesn’t call attention to itself.

What I like most is how no one in the frame commands the image. You can’t tell who’s speaking, who’s listening, or if anyone is. Like many conversations at that age, it might be about nothing, or something big. The silence in the image is louder than any story I could overlay. It asks nothing and explains nothing. That’s enough.