Asking a photographer “Is it ok if we leave you on the street while we duck into that store for a few minutes [while you sit here all alone on this busy street]?” is a bit like asking a musician if they wouldn’t mind taking a break on this piano bench for a bit. I was lucky enough to be the recipient of that question while wandering the streets of Prague and immediately found a place to set up camp [i.e., my camera]. Since it was a hot day, and there was a wonderful shaded cafe right on the edge of one of Prague’s cobblestone streets, I decided to set up my camp camera inside the cafe’s shaded patio and shoot while sipping a cappuccino. Grueling work, I tell ya. Grueling.

Within moments I saw a pattern emerge in the crowds walking past my enforced afternoon oasis: a huge percentage of people were holding hands as they walked down that busy street. From young to old, rich to poor, upper class to the less fortunate: they were all engaged in spending time together. In fact, there were very few couples that weren’t holding each other’s hand while exploring the beautiful city that is Prague.

I present to you some of my resulting images from that 20 minute stint in the sidewalk cafe (I took more than 30 pictures of unique hand-holders during this 15 window of time). Normally I would never, ever show you so many pictures from a single scene, as it’s normally overwhelming and even annoying. But in this case, the pure numbers are what make the scene so fascinating to me, so I’m breaking a rule of mine here. I hope you don’t mind!

Prague: City of Love!

Prague is a wonderful city, and certainly worthy of a longer post describing my travels there in greater detail, but I never really thought of it as a “city of love”. But I do now! Thank you very much to all the strolling pedestrians that day who made me smile as you passed me hand-in-hand.

Be sure to visit my entire album from those moments to see the complete collection of hand holders.