To make expressive images using light and shadow to shape meaning, we need to change the way we look for our subject matter. Much of the time, photographers look for interesting or meaningful subject matter simply for its own sake. Instead, we need to look instead at how light can reveal and shadows can simultaneously hide our subject matter, creating its own rhythms, patterns, and flow to express meaning on its own. This image presents a good example of such an approach.

I was stunned at the beauty of the new TWA Hotel -- its great public spaces were once a spectacular air terminal of an airline that went bankrupt. I was having breakfast in what once was that terminal's arrivals hall. It had just been repurposed as the spectacular lobby of the only hotel within New York's JFK Airport.

As i sipped my morning coffee, my gaze happened to settle on the stairway leading from the hotel's lounge down into its lobby. It was a vast stairway, busy with people. Yet the final pair of landings were illuminated with lovely morning light and accompanying shadows. I noticed the gentle play of light and shadow on those final nine steps, as well as the way the sunlight defined the graceful handrails and concrete frame that surrounded them.

This image works best for me -- the flow of light and shadow here defines the act of movement itself and express the beauty and meaning of the architecture of the entire terminal, which is designed to emulate flight itself. Flight is movement, and these steps come to life as movement on their own at only a few moments each day -- when light and shadow simultaneously reveal the nature of the subject itself, as well as its meaning.