> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://darkroom.happychases.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Rooftops after rain - URL: https://darkroom.happychases.com/rooftops-after-rain/ - Published: 2026-04-06T09:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-04-06T09:00:00.000Z - Description: A wet week, a borrowed key to a top-floor flat and a city seen from its chimneys. Studio manager June Park on an accidental project made entirely from one window. - Author: June Park - Tags: Street, Journal, #Import 2026-11-03 19:44 I don't usually make photographs for Darkroom. My job is to look after them: the archive, the print editions, the packing and posting, the spreadsheets, Theo's diary and occasionally Theo. But last spring, something happened that turned into a small project, and Theo insisted I write about it. A friend was away for a fortnight and asked me to water her plants. Her flat is on the top floor of a tall Victorian building in the old town, and from the kitchen window you can see across an enormous jumble of rooftops: slate, lead, chimney pots, skylights, aerials, the occasional determined weed growing out of a gutter. It rained almost every day she was away. ## The window On the first afternoon, I watered the plants, made a cup of tea and stood at the window while the rain stopped. Within minutes, the clouds broke and a low, pale light came sideways across the roofs. Every wet slate lit up at once. The whole view turned silver. I only had my phone with me, so I took a few pictures with that. The next day, I brought a proper camera. By the end of the fortnight, I had come back twelve times and taken more than four hundred photographs from the same window. ![Chimney pots silhouetted against bright clouds after a rain shower](https://picsum.photos/seed/darkroom-rooftops-chimneys/1600/1067) Day 3\. Chimney pots against the breaking cloud. ## One viewpoint What surprised me was how much a single, fixed viewpoint could hold. I couldn't move. I couldn't change my angle by more than a step or two. All I could change was the time, the lens and what I chose to look at. And it turned out that was plenty. The roofs looked completely different depending on the weather and the hour: dull and flat under heavy cloud, glittering after rain, warm and orange at sunset, blue and quiet at dusk. Pigeons and gulls came and went. Someone across the way had a small rooftop garden that changed every day as the tulips opened. > Sometimes the best way to see a place is to stop moving and let it change in front of you. ## Details As the days went on, I started noticing details I'd missed. A tiny window in an attic with a teddy bear on the sill. A weather vane shaped like a fish. A chimney sweep's ladder left lying across one roof for days. A man who came out onto a flat roof every evening at seven, smoked one cigarette and went back inside. I photographed most of them with a short telephoto lens, which compressed the distance and stacked the roofs together like stage scenery. Theo says this was "very sensible." I've decided to take that as a compliment. ![rooftops vane](https://picsum.photos/seed/darkroom-rooftops-vane/1067/1600) ![rooftops garden](https://picsum.photos/seed/darkroom-rooftops-garden/1600/1067) ![rooftops dusk](https://picsum.photos/seed/darkroom-rooftops-dusk/1600/1067) The weather vane, the rooftop garden and dusk on the last evening. ## Equipment, such as it was People sometimes assume good photographs require expensive equipment. This project was made mostly with an old camera body Theo no longer uses, a single short telephoto lens and a kitchen chair pushed up against the window. I balanced the camera on a folded tea towel on the windowsill for the longer exposures, because I'd forgotten the tripod. I shot in colour, which surprised Theo, since most of the studio's work is black and white. But the roofs after rain had such a particular palette — the blue-grey of wet slate, the rust of old chimney pots, the green of moss and weeds — that black and white felt like throwing half the picture away. ## A notebook by the window On the second day, I started keeping notes on a pad by the window: the time, the weather, what I'd photographed and what I'd missed. By the end, the pad was full. Reading it back now, it reads almost like a diary of the sky over one small corner of the city. Theo says that's the beginning of every good series. ## What I learned I've spent years around photographers and photographs, but I'd never really made a project of my own. What this fortnight taught me is something Theo says all the time and I'd never quite believed: that you don't need to go anywhere special. You need to go somewhere repeatedly, and pay attention. It also taught me to respect the patience his work demands. Standing at a window for an hour, waiting for a cloud to move, is harder than it sounds. Most days, nothing remarkable happened. A few days, everything did. ## The last evening On the final evening before my friend came home, the rain stopped just before sunset and the sky cleared completely for the first time in two weeks. The roofs turned gold, then pink, then a deep, cold blue. The man on the flat roof came out at seven, as always, and smoked his cigarette. For the first time, he looked across and raised a hand. I waved back. I didn't photograph it. It felt like the right way to finish. ## What happened next When my friend came home, I gave her a small book of twenty photographs taken from her own kitchen window. She cried, which I wasn't expecting. She said she'd lived there for eight years and had never really looked out of it. Theo has asked whether we can release a small print edition from the project. We're thinking about it. If we do, subscribers will hear about it first.