The rain had just stopped, leaving the asphalt of glowing like a dark mirror. High above the taxi cabs, Elias perched on a narrow maintenance ledge, his camera mounted on a tripod that felt far too light for the wind gusts sweeping off the East River.

At , he found it: in a single window of a brownstone in Chelsea, a woman was blowing out the candles on a birthday cake, her face illuminated by a tiny, orange glow.

His sensor was set to capture a staggering resolution. At that scale, the city ceased to be a silhouette and became a million tiny, intersecting lives. He pressed the shutter, the mechanical click swallowed by the hum of the city below. Later, in his studio, Elias zoomed into the digital file.