11. Sunday #6
Ren walked her to a place where she could stand just out of frame while he took the photo. Her job was to graze the landscape for a few seconds with the small flashlight to allow him to set an exposure that could capture the bright stars, the grass, and the scattered rocks at once.
“I’ve got a remote trigger.” He held up the button to show her. “I’m going to go over there and paint the path with my flashlight while you hit the rocks and grasses.”
Finally, Ren called out and opened his camera shutter with a remote button.
“We have twenty seconds!” he called.
This meant the camera shutter would be open for twenty seconds, an exposure short enough so they shouldn’t get star trails.
While it was open, Ren and Sarah gently sent their flashlight beams over the portions of the shot that they wanted lit.
Ren could run through the shot without the camera ‘seeing him’ if he was moving fast enough.
He did so, tracing the contours of the walkway itself with a soft light.
When the shutter closed, he called Sarah over to look at the results.
The shot was as stunning as she’d anticipated, although some of the grasses and a portion of the path were a little too bright. The grasses had been moving in the breeze, which gave them a hazy, undefined air, like the path was a walkway through some mystical fairyland.
“What if I focused more light on the rocks?” she suggested.
“I think just send the light across the grasses for less time,” he offered.
So they tried the shot again. And again. And again.
On a professional level, she enjoyed the process of trying to get the optimal shot. It was a familiar experience: the tiny tweaks that led to different outcomes, the art of storytelling baked into the act of photography.
But on a personal level, she couldn’t help but feel like they were two kids running around playing with flashlights in the dark.
They were trying different things, experimenting, not quite sure what would work best. Ren tripped once during a shot, and the photo captured the light of his flashlight tumbling to the ground and a dim outline of his body as he sprawled face forward.
“That one’s a keeper,” she told him.
“I’ll put it on my website.”
She posed once for him as a silhouetted figure, silent and backlit along the path.
Then they moved the tripod to try a different angle, then walked a little further down the path to find a new shot. At a little after eleven p.m., she answered a question with a yawn.
“It’s been a long day,” Ren said. “Let’s get you back to the hotel.”
“I’ll have to get used to the late schedule.”
“You went to bed early even back in school.”
“Unlike you, who insisted that your best ideas came at two in the morning.”
“Anything to justify my procrastination.” He unlocked her car door first, holding it open for her. “Consider it your professional responsibility to get out of bed late tomorrow. Most of the workshop participants won’t arrive until well after lunch.”
“If I must sleep in for the good of the workshop, then I will manage to do it somehow.”
As they drove back, Ren put music back on and she looked out at the night sky, leaning her head against the glass.
Everything seemed to be moving slowly, like she was on a ship crossing the ocean at night.
Her heart felt full. It felt like they had never stopped being friends, which was a dangerously intoxicating feeling.
Ren dropped her off at the hotel but didn’t come inside, telling her that he’d be back in a couple of hours but needed to check out some of his planned shooting locations. This also meant that she would be able to get ready for bed with total privacy, and she wondered if he’d done that on purpose.
A half hour later, she lay in the dark in one of the beds in the green silk pajamas with printed tigers on them that Anya had given her for Christmas.
She loved them, but she had never anticipated anyone seeing them on this trip, and they were exactly the kind of quirky-girl-in-an-indie-film clothing that Ren liked to tease her about.
It felt strange to know that Ren would eventually be in the bed next to hers.
He was here. She was with him on an adventure.
She felt a little giddy. She and Ren had run around in the dark together, waving flashlights, running through fields.
And she was doing photography again. And he was going to be here when she woke up.
She had never slept in the same room with him before.
She stirred from sleep when he finally came in. There was a faint light in the sky through the windows, which meant that he had stayed out until almost dawn. For a long moment, she listened as he moved around the room using his headlamp for light, getting ready for bed.
“Ren,” she whispered, “if you need to, you can turn on the lights.”
“No need.”
She heard him settle into bed a few minutes later. He shifted and sighed before his breath became slow and even.
He was right there. She had him, but she wouldn’t get to keep him.