The Magical Street Photo That Made Sandra Cattaneo Adorno Fall in Love With Reflections
The Magical Street Photo That Made Sandra Cattaneo Adorno Fall in Love With Reflections
(This is the story behind the photograph—a glimpse into the moment, the process, and the vision that brought it to life.)
Magic happens when you stop trying to control the shot.
Most photographers wait for the right light or moment. But sometimes, the best moments appear when you least expect them. They happen in the corner of your eye, in a reflection, in a second you almost missed. Sandra Cattaneo Adorno knows this feeling well.
It wasn’t planned. It wasn’t posed. It came from a window on a busy pier and a shadow passing by. What happened in that moment led her down a new creative path. This is the story of how she found beauty, by not searching for it too hard.
One photo changed the way she saw everything.
Santa Monica, California, Early Summer, Late Afternoon
The sun was beginning to set over the Pacific Ocean, casting long golden lines across the Santa Monica Pier. It was one of those early summer days when the air felt soft and warm, and the sea breeze mixed with the sounds of laughter, footsteps, and carousel music. As the sky turned orange and pink, the lights of the pier came to life. Small, colorful bulbs blinked on one by one, painting the wooden boardwalk in magic.
Sandra walked slowly through the crowd with her camera in hand, not looking for anything in particular. She wasn’t chasing a moment. She was letting the moment come to her.
“As always when I am out with my camera, I wasn’t trying to capture something specific, but instead I let my eyes and my intuition guide me towards something beautiful.” - Sandra
The pier was busy. Families were eating ice cream, teenagers were laughing, and couples were taking selfies with the ocean behind them. But Sandra felt something unusual that day. The light was just right. The energy was alive.
“Everything seemed promising: the people, young and high-spirited, and the light, a combination of the sun setting and colourful artificial lights coming on.”
As she wandered, her eyes caught something strange and beautiful. It was a small stall with a glass window that reflected two different worlds at once.
“The top part of the glass was casting back the scene on the pier, with people walking under the outline of the characteristic street lamps, while its bottom part revealed the sea water moving gently and sparkling brightly in coloured light.”
Sandra stopped. She framed the reflection in her viewfinder and waited. The image felt like it was about to form itself. She just needed someone to step into it.
Then there was movement. A figure. A young woman’s shadow entered the frame.
“When I saw the shadow of this young woman moving across the frame, my heart filled with wonder and I clicked to take the picture.”
She held her camera still, hoping not to disturb the balance of the scene. The silhouette moved slowly, gracefully. Her first shots weren’t quite right. The figure blended too much into the background. But then something small and perfect happened.
“When she reached the middle of the frame, she lifted her head up and her hair started flowing in the wind. I held my breath and pressed on the shutter release button.”
Sandra didn’t speak to the woman. In fact, the woman probably never noticed the photograph was being taken.
“As I wasn’t pointing the camera directly at her, the young woman probably didn’t even notice I was photographing her, and she left the frame as gracefully as she had entered it.”
This moment meant something to Sandra. It felt like more than luck. It felt like magic.
“I felt excited and amazed at how chance could grant me such a wonderful opportunity. It is in moments like these that taking pictures seems to have a component of magic to it… a powerful feeling of being at one with the scene around me and to be participating in it on a deeper level.”
She used her usual gear, a Nikon D750 with a flexible zoom lens. Nothing fancy. Nothing overly planned. Just intuition and presence.
“The technical aspect of photography is something that interests me only moderately… For this image, the focal length was around 80mm.”
Later, looking back at the image, Sandra began to see how important reflections could be. Not just as tricks of light, but as tools for telling stories in a more dreamlike, poetic way.
“Since I took this image, I started looking out for them… It is almost as if photographs were an alternative reality, one that is abstracted, but also more poetic and dreamlike.”
That single picture would go on to shape the way she worked, eventually inspiring her book Scarti di Tempo, a reflection in every sense on the experience of time during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Now, the quiet silhouette of that young woman, unknown and maybe forgotten, will be shown on a wall in New York City.
“I am thrilled that this photograph is going to be shown at the Women Street Photographers Annual Exhibition in New York from April 14th to the 28th, 2025. It is exciting that the evanescent reflection of that young woman will finally take a more concrete shape as a print.”
