People will often behave incongruously while waiting for a traffic light to change. Using a 400mm focal length, I caught this woman tossing her hair while impatiently waiting to cross Lexington Avenue. Perhaps she is concerned about what the inclement weather will do to it, or maybe she just needs to work off some nervous energy. Three others surround her, huddling under adjacent umbrellas as the rain begins to intensify. I was delighted by the presence of the blurred light from a passing car – it energizes the scene, as do the red and blue primary colors on two of the umbrellas.

As the storm intensifies, pedestrians pick up the pace as they struggle to get to where they must go. Selecting a small lens opening in Aperture priority, I forced a slow shutter speed of 1/6th of a second and panned the camera, blurring the scene to give a sense of urgency to the image. One of these women has lost her grip on her umbrella -- she is struggling to keep up.

I saw this woman patiently waiting out the storm, huddling under an awning on the other side of Lexington Avenue. Using a long 400mm telephoto focal length, I made this image to capitalize on the muted primary colors around her. A folding, red-framed, windowed wall at the end of the awning rises up through the center of the image. The blue-framed bus shelter, diagonally across the intersection from my own vantage point, gives us a sense of place. Her orange blouse complements the bank of red, yellow and blue flowers at right, while a pedestrian wearing only black and white contrastingly walks past under a black umbrella at left.

Their plastic ponchos made translucent by the headlights of waiting traffic, two men cross 34th Street in a deluge of rain. I spot metered on the lights of a car, which turns day into night, and intensifies the translucence.

Cyclists seem to take bad weather in stride. This one relies on a rain jacket and helmet to keep himself dry. He seems relatively unconcerned with the raindrops pelting the glistening street below him. The long line of traffic stretching along 34th Street provides the illumination.

Two cyclists spin towards me along 34th Street through blinding sheets of rain. The softly focused man in the foreground is wrapped within a flapping poncho, in stark contrast to the fellow just behind him who seems to be out for the exercise. He wears a short-sleeved shirt and short pants as he casually rides into the teeth of a storm.

I contrast two figures here, headed in opposing directions and taking different approaches to rain gear. The man heading towards us envelops himself in a sheet of plastic that covers his entire upper body. The woman at right never sees him. She patiently waits for her light to change, shielding herself from the pelting rain under a dainty pink umbrella.

Some use umbrellas; others prefer to run between the raindrops. Such is the case here, as a young man sprints headlong across rain swept 34th Street. The white bars here seem to chart his watery path from curb to curb, each bar a step closer to home.

A jammed-packed city bus pulled up in front of the shelter I was using to keep my camera dry. As the bus accepted grateful new passengers, I noticed this man, sitting next to a window as if in a trance. He seemed incongruously oblivious to the havoc the rainstorm was creating around him. I positioned my frame so that a rivulet of water slices through his face, creating a cascade of symbolic tears on a person who never looks our way.