Looking Through the Lens By Ryan Sylander Online at: http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/ryansylander/www/ http://storiesonline.net/auth/Ryan_Sylander http://www.ewpub.org/scripts2/libraryframes.php?auth=6347 Chapter 15 “So what the hell is going on?” Lara asked me. “Huh?” I asked absently, watching Heather walk away down the beach. “Yesterday you were on your way to meet Julie and talk, and set things straight before you went any further. Then I wake up this morning and Heather is here eating breakfast instead.” “Yeah, funny how things go, isn’t it?” I said. Heather turned out of sight. “So…?” Lara prodded impatiently. “Well, things didn’t go so well with Julie.” I recounted the conversation, and how Heather had arrived at the most inopportune moment. “You have all the luck, Matt,” Lara said sarcastically, patting my shoulder. “Well, maybe it’s for the best. I’m through with Julie. I don’t know why I even got back together with her,” I lamented. “Because of that look she gives you. She’s a siren, like in that book we had to read for English. I’ve fallen for it too.” “Yeah, well, so have a bunch of other people. I found out she used to go out with Heather’s boyfriend Bill, too. Fifteen, and she’s already been with you, me, Brian, Bill, John, and who knows who else.” “Well, if it’s any consolation, I don’t think she did much with Bill. Supposedly John was her first lover.” “Supposedly I was too. Or so I thought. I was just watching her last night, when she gave me that look, as you put it, and I wondered if she had given all her other boyfriends the same look. If she had given you the same look. Then I realized how blind I was being. I mean, yeah, giving up the sex is going to be hard, but at that moment I didn’t even know why we wanted to be together, other than for that.” “Well, I’m glad you’re feeling alright about it. I’m sorry that Julie screwed with you though.” “Oh, I don’t think she screwed with me,” I said sadly. “I’m not mad at her, but I’m also not caught in her spell anymore. I do feel a little bad for dumping her now, since her Dad is back in town. I really hope things work out for her with that. I’d stay friends, but if she just keeps trying to get me back, I’m going to have to keep my distance. I forgot to say, but she came by the house when we were eating this morning.” “When?” “When we were talking. I saw her up on the road, and then she must have seen Heather, because she turned and left.” “Mm. So what about Heather then? How did she end up here?” “Well, we’ve been fishing together, you know, and this morning I just asked her over.” “But isn’t she with Bill?” Lara asked. “Yeah. It was just breakfast,” I said dismissively. “Just breakfast. Right. You could have started the grill with the looks you two were exchanging.” “What? Lara, we’re just friends. I really like her, yes. She is special. Different. When I look at Julie, I see pretty hair, big eyes, nice legs, nice smile. When I look at Heather, I see playfulness, strength, intelligence. And her eyes are incredible, but in their life.” “She’s not bad looking at all, though,” Lara said. “Well, no, no she’s not, but you see, it doesn’t matter.” “I think she’s really cool, too. I can see why you like her.” “She seems to like you too,” I said. “So what are you going to do then?” “I just want to spend time with her. I’m not expecting anything more. Bill sounds like he’s a decent guy, so although I appreciate the fact that he knows I fish with Heather and doesn’t care, that also makes him harder to, uh… I mean it’s not as easy to try and… break them up. Not that I’m trying to do that or anything,” I added quickly. Lara nodded. “So what do you see when you look at me?” Lara asked shyly. I looked at her, wondering if she was sincere, or if she was trying to roust up trouble again. “My loving sister,” I answered enigmatically. ----- Julie called once, but I was swimming with Lara. My Mom said she didn’t want to leave a message. “Matt, not trying to pry, but what’s going on with Julie? She sounded upset.” I looked at Melissa for moment, wondering how much to explain. “I broke up with Julie last night.” “Oh, I’m sorry. Are you alright?” “Yeah, it’s for the best, I shouldn’t have gotten back together with her in the first place.” Melissa nodded. “By the way, if Heather comes over again, we’re just friends,” I said cryptically. “Okay.” Melissa gave me that look, like when I had said Julie and I were just friends the week before. “I like hanging out with her,” I added, “but she has a boyfriend, so don’t say anything that might make her feel uncomfortable.” “Have I ever?” she asked. “No,” I admitted. “But still, she’s just a friend.” Melissa smiled. “She seems nice, though you hid her away this morning.” “Hey, I offered fish, you all rejected it.” “I know, I was just teasing. Invite her for dinner sometime.” “Maybe. We’ll see.” ----- Heather had to work early the next two days, and it was hard not seeing her. I was tempted to go to Martin’s and invite her for dinner, but I didn’t want to press my luck with Bill. Julie didn’t call back again, and I decided to not call her either. I didn’t have the energy to use on her at the moment. In the interim, I learned some more about my camera. After developing the pictures, I knew I still had much to figure out. Three pictures of Lara came out nice, and a few postcard-like ocean pictures were acceptable (though bland), but the rest were trash. Admittedly, some were errors, where I’d forgotten to change the aperture or shutter speed to match what the handheld light meter said. But others were just bad composition, or Lara was too dark, or any number of disappointing problems. Melissa had a few good critiques when she looked through them with me. First, she pointed at Lara in one picture. She was posing in front of the kitchen sink. “Here’s something your father taught me. After he pointed it out, I noticed how many people do this, when I look at their pictures. See how you have Lara’s head right in the middle of the picture?” “Yeah.” “Well, above it all you have is the kitchen counters and ceiling. No offense to Beth, but that’s not very interesting. The interest is the person in this case. So here, I would have aimed lower. Get more of her body in, or move closer to get her larger in the frame. Basically the top half of your frame is wasted.” She was right. I could imagine the difference if I had filled the frame with more of Lara and less wood. “Sometimes the background is important,” Melissa went on. “Like this picture here, you still have her head in the center, but now there’s a sunset in the back. Never mind that she’s too dark, for now. But still, you have her head in front of the sunset, so if you had gotten down lower, on your knees, you could have more of her in the frame, but still keep the same horizon level.” “Yeah, I can see what your saying.” “Remember, these are all just possibilities. Photography is at least as much art as it is technique.” “Why did she come out so dark? I remember using the light meter for these.” “Well, that light meter picks up everything in front of it. So when you pointed it at Lara, you were mostly getting sunset light. Lara had her back to it, so she wasn’t as bright. Look at the sunset, see, it looks right. That’s what the light meter picked up. But to get Lara exposed right, you would need to meter her.” “How?” “Well, with the one we brought, you can’t. You can get close to Lara, block out the sunset with her body, but that’s not really the best way to do it. Your father had a spot meter, it might still be in the box. We can dig it up when we get home. But also, in a pinch, you can just compensate by eye. If you see that she is darker than the background, you need to open up your aperture a few stops. How much is something you’ll figure out with time.” “But then won’t the sunset be really bright?” Melissa smiled. “Good question. Yes, for sure it will be brighter. That is probably better than Lara being too dark though. If you want to avoid that, then you need to brighten up Lara, either by using a flash, or reflecting some light on her.” “Reflecting light on her?” “With a sheet, or some photographers use a card or an umbrella.” “Great, more stuff. This is complex.” “No one said taking great pictures was easy. You have it better than your dad, since film is more forgiving now.” “What do you mean?” “Some film is very sensitive to exposure, so if you are off by more than a stop, the picture is off too. Nowadays, they can push the film more, as they call it, and you don’t have to worry about being as exact. If you are moderately close, the picture should turn out. That doesn’t mean you don’t have to think about everything you do, though.” I sat and digested Melissa’s words. “Thanks, hopefully this will get easier.” “It will. If you have any questions, don’t feel too shy to ask,” she said. “I won’t.” Despite the challenge of working with the manual camera, there was a primal satisfaction that came with it. I wondered what tips Heather might have, and decided to bring the camera to the pier the next morning. ----- What a difference Heather could make. The two days that she had been working the early shift, I had gotten up late and was generally lethargic the whole morning. Ten a.m. felt like four in the morning when I finally rolled out of bed. Hans had read the whole paper and was probably teaching his third lesson by then. Fishing morning came, and I was up at six, eating breakfast and out the door before the paper was even on the stoop. I worried for a while that Heather had to work again, since she was not there when I arrived. But after twenty minutes, I saw her walking down the pier. “Brought my camera!” she announced as she approached. “Me too!” I exclaimed, wondering at the coincidence. “Cool, I want to try it. I use my dad’s old one, it’s a little more electronic than yours. There’s nothing like a real manual camera, when you press the shutter.” I knew exactly what she meant. She dropped her fishing gear and pulled out the camera from her bag. “It’s a Canon. My dad stopped using it when he got a point-and-shoot. His new one’s a piece of crap, but he said he was tired of lugging around this big camera. So I co- opted it.” We sat cross-legged facing each other, looking at each other’s cameras. “Sounds familiar. My dad left us a box of all kinds of really nice cameras, and my Mom’s just use a little plastic pocket camera now.” “What a shame. Did you say all kinds of really nice cameras?” “Yeah, two boxes of them, and I haven’t even been through them. He was into antiques, and cameras, so he had a decent collection.” “That’s something I’d want to see! I love the way these old cameras are made, so precise, so solid. There a connection there that you just don’t feel with these new cameras. Even the SLR’s today, most of them are light and feel like toys.” “Mm. You know, they are hard to use, but satisfying in some deep way.” “Yeah. That’s art, Matt. Beauty through technique.” “Heh, I haven’t figured out either of those yet. I developed my pictures, and what I thought were going to be great shots were just plain crap. Too dark, out of focus, you name it. Here, look.” I passed a stack of pictures to Heather, which she thumbed through. “These are better than my first set. Do you have a meter?” “Yeah.” “That’s cool. I went out without one the first time and everything looked like it was shot during a total eclipse.” I laughed. “So did you learn a lot in that class you took? I’m thinking about taking photography at my school this year, if I can do it.” “Yeah, it was cool, my teacher knows a lot. She showed me some of her photos, that’s her passion in art. She’s really good, had lots of original stuff.” “Here’s a question,” I said, scooting to sit next to her. “You see in this picture, the picture is kind of washed out because of the daylight, but everything is still in focus. You can see the boat out there pretty crisply. Then here,” I said, flipping to another picture, “here the horizon is blurry, but Lara is in focus. Is that because it was too dark?” Heather considered for a moment. “No, it’s probably your aperture. That’s what determines your depth of field.” “What’s that?” “That just means how much of your picture is in focus. See, like this first beach picture, what did you focus on?” “Well, I would have focused on Lara.” “Right, but the horizon is still in focus too. So everything from ten feet, or however far she was, to infinity is in focus. Then here, in this sunset picture, you also focused on Lara, so she’s still sharp, but look at the sand. Already ten feet behind her the sand is getting a little blurry. As you go off to infinity, the horizon is not in focus. So the first picture has larger depth of field.” “And that’s determined by the aperture?” “Yeah. So when you metered this bright beach scene, you probably had to use a fast shutter and small aperture, like 500 and 22?” “Uh, I guess.” “Well, I’m pretty sure than in full sun you would have gotten that read from the meter, or close to it. So when your aperture is small, like 22, you will have larger depth of field.” “So for the sunset picture,” I said, “I probably would have used a larger aperture because the light was much less.” “Bingo. And then your depth of field is less. Here, look, that’s what these numbers mean.” She pointed to the lens mounted on her Canon. “The 22’s on each side of the focus line tell you what range of distances will be in focus. So if you focus at five feet, like that, and your aperture is 22, then everything between about two feet and infinity will be in focus. But if your aperture is set to four, then only what’s between the fours will be in focus, which is about four feet to seven feet.” “So that’s what those numbers are for,” I said. “That’s crazy though, just by changing the aperture you change the focus that much?” It was hard to believe. “Yeah. Do some test shots. Set up the same shot,” she said, standing up, “and shoot it with different apertures. Here, sit on your tackle box and face down the planks.” “What should I set the aperture to?” “Um, where’s your meter?” she said. “In the front pocket.” She took it out and held it in front of her. “Hmm. First, focus on my bucket,” she said, placing her bucket about ten feet in front of me. “Okay, now set your aperture to 22, and your speed to 60. Don’t shake your hand, take a few shots.” I snapped two pictures at those settings. “Cool, now set your aperture to 5.6, and shutter to 1000. Oh, wait,” she said. She walked over and flipped her bucket upside down. “I did a bunch of tests once,” she explained, “and I didn’t change the setup between settings, and I had no idea which was which.” I nodded and took a few more with those settings. “Now, when you develop the roll, look at the difference between the two pictures.” “What will it be?” “Guess.” I thought for a moment. “So I think the one with the bucket upright will have more planks in focus further down the pier.” “Right! And closer planks will be in focus, too.” “Heather, that’s really amazing.” “It’s just optics.” “Well, it’s still cool. That’s what’s neat about these cameras. You can’t do that with my Moms’ camera. It takes all pictures the same.” “I know. There’s a lot more you can do too. Slow shutter speeds, multiple exposures, cool things with lighting. My teacher always said, though, that the subject is what matters. The rest is just details. She likens it to a book. The subject you’re photographing is the plot. If that’s not good, then you don’t have much of a book. Then if the plot is good, the details are what make the book great, as opposed to average.” “That’s where these techniques come in handy,” I said. “Yeah. Here, let me see your camera.” “Okay.” I passed her my camera. “Lean against the rail. Turn left. No, my left. Yeah, good.” She metered, stood back about six feet, and set the controls. Click. Then she changed the settings, and focused again. Click. “Check those out when you develop them,” she said, handing the camera back to me. “What did you do?” “The same thing you did, just with a more interesting subject,” she said, grinning. “Cool. Thanks for the tips.” “No problem. Now,” she announced, stretching to the air, “I’m ready to kick your ass at fishing today. I’m feeling the luck. Are you?” “Of course I am.” “What was it, ten-five me?” I just gave her a look, letting her know that her days of getting away with that were gone. ----- Heather had been right; she was feeling it. And I wasn’t, as usual. I called an end to the day’s competition when it was nineteen-eleven in her favor. Admittedly I was distracted, thinking about the new camera techniques Heather had described, and asking her questions about it, only paying attention to fishing when she would pull in another fish. The competition wasn’t very intense that day though, as we both enjoyed talking about our newly discovered common hobby. “So what’s your schedule like the next few days?” I asked. “I’ll be here tomorrow, then I have a couple of early shifts again.” “Want to fry these up at my house again?” I asked, indicating the buckets. Heather smiled warmly. “I’d love to, but I have to be at work in a little while.” “Oh, that’s cool,” I said, trying to hide the disappointment I felt. “I do need to eat, though, you want to get a bagel in town with me?” My heart leapt as quickly as it had sunk a few seconds earlier. “Yeah, that would be great!” We packed our stuff (more than usual with the cameras), and trudged off down the pier. “I really liked talking photography with you,” she said. “No one else at my school is really into it.” “Really? I don’t know anything about it. You’re the one doing all the explaining,” I said. “Nah, I don’t know much either. Everything I told you is in your camera manual, I’m sure.” “I don’t think I even have it.” “Oh. Your library should have a few decent books on camera technique, then.” “Yeah, I was thinking that too.” We set our buckets and boxes outside the bakery, and went in. “This place has free samples, and they make great bread. You have to try some,” she said. She led me to a tray holding whole slices of bread, flanked by a grapefruit sized hunk of butter on a dish. “Go for it,” she said. I chose what looked like a rye slice, and smoothed some butter over it. It was delicious. I wondered if I could just eat from the sample tray and skip buying a bagel, but that seemed rather uncouth. Heather chose a slice of white bread, and then knifed the butter. She slowly and deliberately raked the slab, pulled some off and then spread it on her slice haphazardly. The whole movement looked rather odd. “It’s eight-thirty,” she said. I looked at my watch in confusion. “Are you late for work?” “No, I was just saying. Is it?” she asked me, watching me as she chewed. “Mm, this bread is the best.” I looked again. “Close, it’s eight-forty. Why?” “I can tell by how soft the butter is.” “What?” “The butter. They put it out at six every morning when they open, and it’s always really hard. During the course of the day, it softens up, and whenever I come in, I can always tell what time it is from how soft it is.” I looked at her with a mix of a grin and a frown. “Okay,” I said, “next time I’ve lost my watch and I’m walking through town, I can stop in and see what time it is by playing with this butter.” “Matt, don’t be ridiculous,” Heather retorted playfully. “If you ever really need to know the time, there’s a clock right there over the register,” she said, pointing. There was indeed a clock. “So what’s the point then?” I asked, laughing. “There is no point, except that it’s a cool way to tell time. Not everything in life has a use, but some useless things are still beautiful.” “Like telling time with a block of butter,” I said softly, the absurdity of it fading and being replaced by… by something I couldn’t describe. I looked at Heather, and she returned my look with a smile that made me warm. “What?” she said. “Nothing,” I said, grinning from ear to ear, I was sure. ----- “You know, you suck at fishing,” Heather said, lifting another fish from the water. “Yeah, so you’ve said many times.” It didn’t bother me anymore. “Twenty-six to fifteen, I think.” “You’d think you would have caught every pan fish in the ocean by now.” “Nah. If you got better, then together we might do that. Until then…” “Then the game would end. One of these days I’m going to go on a run, and then you can take all your slick comments and eat them for lunch instead.” “I’m waiting, please go ahead,” she said nonchalantly. I stuck out my tongue at her, and she reflected with hers back at me. “So are you working today?” I asked. “Yeah, in a little while.” “Too bad. I’m going to go fry up these fish.” “Mm. You have enough for a light snack.” She peered over the edge of my bucket and sniggered. “For a small cat, maybe.” “Oh shut up. What about coming for dinner?” Heather broke into a smile, but didn’t look at me. “ ‘Oh shut up, what about coming for dinner…’ ” she echoed. “Matt, you really need to work on your pickup lines.” I felt my face heating up. “It wasn’t a pickup line, I’m just inviting you over for dinner. So the wording wasn’t the smoothest, sorry.” “The wording was pathetic,” she laughed. “But the thought is nice,” she said in a softer voice. “I can’t tonight, but tomorrow I could.” “Really? I mean, if it’s not cool, I understand.” Again I left unasked the obvious questions about Bill. That was her decision to make. “It’s fine. Where, what time?” “Uh, how about six at my aunt’s house?” “Are we eating there?” “I guess, yeah, we can eat and then hang out. Or whatever, nothing fancy,” I said, starting to wonder if she was expecting me to take her out. “That sounds great,” Heather said earnestly. I breathed a little sigh of relief. “Cool.” I was on pins and needles the rest of the time fishing with her. Heather was coming for dinner! Heather was coming for dinner!