23. Chapter Twenty-Four
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
EVIE
The photograph looked fine until I zoomed in, and then every bit of satisfaction I'd felt taking it disappeared.
I leaned closer to the laptop and dragged two fingers over the trackpad, enlarging the image until the green kingfisher's head filled most of the screen.
The feathers along its crown were sharp enough to count individually, the branch beneath its feet was painfully crisp, and the leaves behind it showed every tiny vein washed in the last gold light filtering through the canopy.
Its eye, however, was soft—not dramatically enough that someone scrolling past the photograph on a phone would notice, but enough that I noticed.
The focus had landed just behind its face, and once I saw it, there was no convincing myself otherwise.
“You have got to be kidding me.” I muttered at the screen, sinking back in the station chair before leaning forward again with one elbow braced beside the laptop, as if another angle might somehow make the focus shift where it belonged.
It didn't, and the next frame wasn't any better.
The bird was sharper, but it had turned just enough that a leaf cut across the lower half of its beak.
The photograph after that had nearly perfect composition and enough motion blur through the head to make it useless at full size, while two frames later the branch, leaves, and water were beautifully sharp and the actual bird looked like an afterthought.
By the time I reached the end of the sequence, I had my forehead propped in one hand while I glared at the thumbnails along the bottom of the screen.
“What did the bird do to you?” Mara asked from the other side of the room, amusement threading through her voice as she looked up from the field notes spread across her desk, a pen still caught loosely between her fingers.
“It knows what it did.” I answered Mara without looking away from the laptop, clicking backward through the sequence while irritation tightened between my shoulders and the small ceiling fan pushed warm air around the station without doing much to cool anything.
Mara's chair scraped against the floor, and a moment later she appeared beside me with one hand curled over the back of the neighboring chair.
She leaned toward the laptop and studied the image for several seconds, wearing the expression people usually got when they were trying to figure out why a perfectly attractive photograph had personally offended me.
“That looks good. Really good, actually.” Mara said as she leaned a little closer to the screen, squinting at the enlarged bird before giving me a puzzled glance.
“Look at the eye. The focus landed behind it, so the branch is sharper than the bird.” I told Mara as I pointed toward the kingfisher's face and enlarged the image another step, tracing the difference between the crisp bark and the softer feathers around its eye.
Mara studied it again, her brows drawing together before understanding finally crossed her face.
“Oh. Now I see it. That's annoying.” Mara said as she straightened and looked between the eye and the branch.
“Exactly. And the only one where the eye is completely sharp has a leaf through its face, because apparently the forest has decided to help with composition.” I answered Mara as I moved through the next few frames and stopped on the offending leaf.
“You have usable shots from that location already. Some very good ones.” Mara reminded me as she rested one hip against the desk and gestured toward the thumbnails, her tone practical rather than dismissive.
“I do, but not the series I thought I had.” I told Mara as I opened another image, this one taken the following morning, and zoomed in enough to confirm the problem I'd noticed earlier.
The dawn photographs were better technically, but even those had issues once I viewed them properly.
Several frames I'd been excited about in the field carried a thin wash of haze from condensation that hadn't been obvious on the camera screen.
One of the strongest compositions had lost too much contrast across the lower half of the frame, while another would need more correction than I wanted to throw at something I still had time to reshoot.
I could deliver the assignment without going back.
Nothing I had was terrible, and there were plenty of strong images in the folders already.
That almost made it more irritating. I knew I could get what I'd missed, and settling for technically acceptable because I didn't feel like making another trip wasn't how I worked.
Mara watched me switch between two photographs before releasing a sigh that told me she'd already figured out what I was going to say.
“You're going back out.” Mara said as she folded her arms, making it an observation rather than a question while amusement tugged faintly at her mouth.
“Yes. The better activity started late in the afternoon, before the light really dropped. If I get out there early enough, I can try that stretch again today and be back near the stream before sunrise tomorrow for the dawn shots.” I answered Mara as I checked the metadata from the original sequence, confirming the timing one more time while mentally calculating how quickly I could be packed and moving.
“You're planning another overnight.” Mara said as she glanced from the screen to me, one eyebrow lifting even though she didn't sound particularly surprised.
“I am. Same general area—upper stream and the ruins. Six o'clock check-in, morning check-in, and I'll be back here tomorrow before the time we already agreed on.” I confirmed for Mara as I closed the metadata window and reached for the drive beside the laptop.
“Fine. Same rules: if the route changes, tell me.
If you decide to stay somewhere outside the area you've given me, tell me.
If I don't hear from you when I'm supposed to, I start being annoying.” Mara replied as she pushed away from the desk, ticking off each condition on her fingers before giving me a pointed look.
“You're already annoying.” I told Mara as I closed the image viewer and started ejecting the drive, earning a narrowed look that didn't come close to hiding the smile threatening at the corner of her mouth.
“Then imagine how much worse I can get.” Mara replied with a pleasant smile that made the threat considerably more believable before she turned back toward her desk.
I snorted and packed the drive away. Getting ready took less time than it would have a week ago because I didn't need another elaborate inventory to know what belonged in my overnight bag, and I didn't need to talk myself through whether the plan made professional sense.
I had my field gear, water, food, radio, locator, blockers, emergency medication, and the equipment I needed for the reshoot.
Mara knew where I would be and when she expected to hear from me, which meant the boring but necessary parts were handled before I stepped outside.
Having to repeat an evening shoot should have annoyed me considerably more than it did, especially after I'd spent part of the morning cursing humidity and one badly placed leaf. The fact that I already knew exactly where I would sleep tonight probably had nothing to do with my improved mood.
I wasn't interested in proving myself wrong.
The upper stream was already slipping toward late-afternoon shadow by the time I reached my position.
Humidity pressed against my skin, insects whined near my ears, and the water moved brown-green between exposed roots and dark stone.
I set up where I'd worked before but shifted several feet farther downstream, giving myself a cleaner view through the vegetation without disturbing the branch the kingfisher had favored.
For nearly forty minutes, nothing happened.
I adjusted my position once, checked the light twice, wiped sweat from the side of my neck, and resisted the temptation to blame the bird personally for making me hike all the way back out there.
Then a flash of green crossed the stream, and I had the camera up before the kingfisher landed on the exposed branch.
You again, the kingfisher complained as its small feet closed around the bark, one bright eye turning toward me while its feathers settled against its body.
“Yes, me again.” I whispered to the kingfisher as I adjusted the camera against my face, keeping my movements controlled so I didn't send it immediately back into the trees. “Somebody didn't cooperate with my autofocus last time.”
I sat on the branch, the kingfisher informed me with obvious offense as it tilted its head toward the water. You made the clicking.
“And somehow this is still your fault.” I told the kingfisher under my breath, fighting a smile as I shifted my focus point over its eye. The bird gave a sharp chirp that I understood perfectly well as disagreement before its attention snapped toward movement beneath the water.
This time I didn't trust the screen simply because the first burst looked good.
I checked the eye at full magnification, adjusted my focus point, shifted my stance, and waited.
The kingfisher stayed longer than I expected, occasionally turning one eye toward me as though checking whether I appreciated how much effort it was putting into standing on a branch.
“Don't move.” I murmured to the kingfisher when the light caught the green along its back perfectly, easing my finger against the shutter.
I wasn't moving, the kingfisher replied with immediate irritation before turning its head at exactly the wrong moment. I took the photograph anyway and had to press my lips together to keep from laughing loudly enough to scare it.