It had been raining and the light of day was failing and I was exploring the upper Montmartre quarter of Paris when I came upon this quaint little scene in the touristy tangle of streets hard by Sacré-Coeur Basilica. 

  I stood across from Le Consulat, enamoured of the amber glow cast by the lamps and reflected by the glistening cobblestones. 

  “Gawd those colors!” I thought as I snapped off a few shots.

  Then I saw him strolling leisurely towards me from the narrow lane dividing the two cafés. It was perfect. He was carrying a blue umbrella against the light misty drizzle and the color blue just happens to be complementary to orange, or the atmospheric amber bathing the scene. 

  Now and then the photographic stars align. That’s the thing about photography: if I was a painter I could make all the necessary adjustments or transpositions in order to serve my expressive purposes; photography relies more on chance, or the serendipitous coming together of a number of factors for results. 

  And as the old sport adage goes: ‘the more you practice the luckier you get.’ 

  I freely admit I don’t practice photography nearly enough for those magical moments to occur on regular basis…

  But for me in Montmartre that gently rainy night in April several years ago they did…

  And I am still pleased with the result.