Pinhole, Higher Learning
Copyright© 2024 by Fanlon
Chapter 10
I did not like Friday’s lab at the university! It started out great, but as the hours passed, it got worse and worse. Angie, Jerry, Alyssa, and Samantha were all waiting for me when I got there and all five of us started the day with smiles on our faces.
Jerry, impatient to get started, led the way to Studio B.
“This should be fun,” Angie announced as the four of us followed a few steps behind Jerry.
“Try not to drop the case of filters this time, Sam,” Alyssa teased.
“Hey!” Samantha looked utterly mortified.
“What happened?” I could help myself from asking.
“It was nothing, I just dropped the case of filters on the first day last semester.”
“It wasn’t nothing, not even close,” Angie told me. “She broke all twelve of them. Professor Peterson’s grad assistant was furious.”
“I thought he was going to force you to drop the class,” Alyssa said.
“I know. Luckily, Professor Peterson went easy on me.” Samantha smiled.
“Easy?” Alyssa snapped. “He made you pay for them before you were allowed to touch anything else, ever again.”
The needling and teasing with regards to the first semester’s disaster abruptly cut off when the five of us walked into the large studio. Professor Zarnick was sitting at a large table at the back of the room, looking busy with whatever he was working on. He never did look up, which I found strange, seeing as how he was the professor for this class.
Instead, there was someone else standing by the platform in the center of the room. It was a woman who couldn’t have been much older than the students in the class, aside from me anyway. She watched as we entered but didn’t say anything. No one from my team found that strange, so I followed their lead and didn’t mention it.
Taking in the rest of the studio, the five of us weren’t the first ones here. Three other teams were already working at their stations, one of them being Jeff and his crew. Jeff looked up when he heard us enter the room. Our eyes met and he gave me a subtle nod and I returned it. Neither one of us smiled as if we were old buddies, but not unfriendly either. I found myself feeling confident and as if I belonged right where I was, in this advanced college level photography class.
The new person standing by the platform turned out to be Professor Zarnick’s grad student. Her name was Laurie O’Rourke. She was the one who was going to be helping with this class for the rest of the semester. Professor Zarnick would handle the Monday and Wednesday classes while Laurie took care of Fridays. Laurie was beautiful and incredibly sexy. It wasn’t in how she dressed, not at all, or even the way she did her hair and makeup. She was one of those blessed women who were naturally sexy whether she was wearing a little black dress or a burlap sack.
I wasn’t the only one to notice. All the guys in the class were mere moments away from drowning in the puddles of drool we were all creating. Hell, even a few of the women looked a little flushed as well. I couldn’t blame them either. I was secretly hoping she was the one we were all going to take pictures of, or not so secretly based on the way Alyssa and Samantha were smirking at me.
“Your assignment is to take a picture of someone on your team,” Laurie announced and there were more than a few groans. I assumed they weren’t all for the same reasons I had, though a lot probably were. “It doesn’t have to be perfect,” she continued. “But it needs to be good. There is a basket in the back of the room, on Professor Zarnick’s table, for you to put your film in. Once your whole team is done, you’re free to go.”
The five of us all looked at each other. I had absolutely zero desire to have my picture taken, none whatsoever. Jerry looked to be of like mind and we both smiled when our panicked eyes met.
The girls, on the other hand, were all staring right at me with hopeful looks on their faces. Right then, I knew I was in trouble and things started to go downhill. It was like watching a car crash that you knew was coming from a mile away but couldn’t take your eyes away from it.
The thing that no one seemed to realize was that I had no idea how to take pictures with one of these modern cameras. Sure, I could do it, but I didn’t have the faintest clue how to replicate what I did with my pinhole cameras with the one issued to our group for class. Now I had three of my fellow teammates who were chomping at the bit at the chance for me to take their portraits.
“Why don’t we just have everyone take a picture of the person to the left,” Jerry suggested when no one else seemed willing to speak.
That made sense to me, so I nodded my agreement. Now I didn’t have to pick who I was going to photograph and risk the chance of disappointing someone because I didn’t choose them—simple, perfect, easy.
That’s when I realized it was Jerry who was standing on my left. He winked at me and gave me a barely perceptible nod and I grinned. The girls, once they figured it out, all huffed and pouted but no one really complained. Disaster averted.
With no questions as to who was taking pictures of whom, all we had to do was wait our turn to sit, stand, or whatever position we wanted to take on the platform. We didn’t have to wait long. I hung back, not wanting to go first. I wanted to watch and see how each member of my team adjusted and operated the camera on the tripod.
Samantha was the initial guinea pig to get up on the platform when the previous team finished. Angie was the first behind the camera. There was no direction from Angie on how Samantha should pose, they left it up to each other to make the choices they wanted.
Samantha sat on a wooden stool, facing head on toward the camera, knees up and together, her hands on her lap. That’s not going to look good at all. Maybe for a yearbook picture or something but not a good portrait. I didn’t say anything, in favor of watching what Angie did with the camera. She didn’t change anything. She pressed the shutter button down, there was a short mechanical whirring sound and then a click. That was it—no flash, no adjusting the lens, nothing.
I stayed where I was, not quite hovering over the camera, but close enough that I could pay attention to what each person was doing when they used it. Samantha and Angie smiled at each other as Samantha climbed down from the platform and Angie took her place.
Alyssa was next behind the camera. She had to lower the tripod, but she made the change quickly and gracefully. She looked through the viewfinder and adjusted the angle of the camera slightly so that the image of Angie would be centered, I assumed.
“Ready?” Alyssa asked. Angie nodded and a bright smile suddenly bloomed across her face.
Angie was slightly turned in her pose—not at a severe angle, closer to head on, but not quite. That’s a bit better, but still not great. Alyssa turned the knob on the right to shift into manual focus and went back to looking through the viewfinder as she adjusted the lens. There was a click, and she was finished.
“All done,” Alyssa announced and Angie got down from her spot before Alyssa proceeded to take her place.
Jerry was up next. He winked at me and then got on his knees behind the camera.
“Oh, knock it off,” Alyssa grumbled, but a flush crept up in her cheeks.
Both Angie and Samantha giggled at the short joke Jerry had acted out. Jerry, just to rub it in further, sighed dramatically as he raised the tripod up to its highest possible position. If Alyssa’s eyes were daggers, Jerry would need to be rushed to the hospital immediately.
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