Pinhole, Higher Learning
Copyright© 2024 by Fanlon
Chapter 9
When I arrived at the fine arts building on campus, there was a note attached to a bulletin board just inside the glass doors that everyone hovered around. Seeing’s as how I was the youngest and smallest person in the class, I couldn’t just bull my way through the crowd. So, I relegated myself to wait my turn to what all the fuss was about. I hadn’t forgotten my camera today. I had, but Mom had grabbed it for me, and it was waiting on the passenger seat when I climbed in.
In the end, it was just a note saying we all needed to meet in the lecture hall. From there, we would be taken to the main studio where our Wednesday classes would be held for the rest of the semester.
We were all milling around waiting when Professor Zarnick announced in his heavily accented voice that if we were all here, we should follow him. He led us back across the main entry into the building and on to the other side. I noticed there were name plaques on doors as we passed. When I saw Professor Zarnick’s, it all clicked in my head that those rooms were the faculty offices. Good to know.
Past those, the doors were much further apart. Professor Zarnick went into the first one on the right, Classroom Studio B. He stood there holding the door as he watched us as we filed through. When he saw me at the end of the line, he smiled and nodded his head towards the door and followed me in.
Inside was a massive, white room. There weren’t any desks and chairs laid out in rows like I would have thought. What I saw instead were five different cameras set up on tripods, all of which were pointing towards a raised platform in the middle of the room. The platform was empty except for a plain metal chair sitting in the center.
The cameras were spaced in such a way that they all had room on either side but looking through the viewfinder, you wouldn’t see another camera positioned opposite of you. All you saw was the platform where I assumed models or the like would pose.
Professor Zarnick stood in the middle of the room and started going down the list of equipment that was already set up for the class to use. He explained the makes and models of the cameras as well as the various lighting apparatuses.
The assumption was all of us should already know how to use everything here. This wasn’t Intro to Photography or something. Unfortunately, I didn’t know anything and decided to use the advice my mom had given me on Monday, act like I knew what I was doing until I really did. Dad preferred the saying, “fake it ‘til you make it.”
I was left completely flat footed when Professor Zarnick was done with the basic descriptions of everything and told us to split up into teams. The groups we chose were going to be the ones we would be working with for the rest of the semester. With a class of twenty-five students and only five cameras, it should have been immediately obvious, but it wasn’t—not to me anyway.
Groups of five started splitting up and I noticed Jeff and his posse all high fiving as they surrounded one of the cameras. I stood there frozen.
“Hey, Davis, get over here.” I was shocked when I turned to see it was Jeff, the asshole who was waving at me.
“Hi, I’m Angela or Angie,” I heard a feminine voice say and I turned to see the girl from Monday standing right next to me. “Want to join us?”
She pointed to the three other students behind her—two girls who my dad would have labeled hippies from the way they dressed and a guy with pale white skin that was a sharp contrast to his mop of jet-black hair and black clothes. He was even wearing black eyeliner, and had one of those awful, long chains that hung from his belt loop, connected to what I assumed was his wallet in his back pocket.
“Davis, come on dude!” Jeff yelled.
I glanced in his direction for a second before turning back and nodding to Angie.
“Sure, sounds good,” I replied.
“Cool, come on. I’ll introduce you to the team.”
My team consisted of Angela, or Angie, as she preferred to be called; Jerry, in his all black; Samantha, the taller one who has a southern accent I could listen to all day; and Alyssa, the shortest of the bunch, but still taller than me. Samantha, Angie, and Alyssa had all seen my exhibit at the Sheldon Art Museum on opening night and were excited for me to be working with them this semester. The three girls were all smiles and didn’t treat me like some idiot high school kid. I liked them immediately.
Jerry started peppering me with nonstop questions the moment the introductions were done.
“What camera did you use to take those? I bet it was a Cannon, wasn’t it? I like to use my Cannon, but my Nikon has better lenses. Did you use any filters? How long did it take to set up the lighting? Did you try—”
I tried to start answering his questions, but he kept firing them off faster than I could respond. Thankfully, the girls came to my rescue.
“Give it a rest already, Jerry. He’s going to be with us for the next few months. I’m sure he will tell you any secrets or tricks he knows before the end of the year,” Samantha said, cutting off Jerry mid-sentence as the other two girls nodded their agreement.
The rest of the class was spent familiarizing ourselves with our equipment and our partners. I tried to listen to Jerry as much as I could. It was clear he and the three girls knew the basics already. I was already a shy person naturally, and I wasn’t ready to put it out there for everyone to know that I had no clue what I was doing.
Jerry kept fiddling with this and that, looking through the viewfinder and then fiddling some more before pointing something out to the rest of us. Then it was Samantha’s turn, followed by Angie’s, and then Alyssa’s. Jerry started chuckling when the camera was too high up for Alyssa to see through the viewfinder without hopping up and down.
“Don’t just stand there laughing at her,” Samantha snapped. She giggled when she lowered the tripod all the way down as far as it would go. Which meant it was at about waist height which got everyone snickering again.
“Really?” Alyssa rolled her eyes at the taller girl. “That wasn’t funny the first time you did it last semester and it still isn’t not funny now.”
“It is a little and you know it,” Angie replied, her cheeks still reddened from laughing a moment before.
Alyssa ignored the comment and quickly adjusted the tripod so it was at the appropriate height. With her adjusting it to suit her, it was perfect for me as well.
Just before we all left, Professor Zarnick announced our first assignment and told us it was due by the end of Friday.
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