Chapter 5

"Sore?" I asked.

"My legs and butt hurt a little bit," she said as she switched on her camera, "but it's not bad." After we'd finished with Blaze we'd spent the rest of the morning learning to ride in the paddock and then had lunch after she'd retrieved her things from the dryer. Finally we had embarked on our photography lesson.

"No, I meant sore at me for making you ride all the way across the valley."

"I should be." She scowled at the horse and then focused that look on me. "Are you sure Misty is the gentlest horse you have?"

I grinned. "It's because of the cross-valley ride over uneven ground, even if we didn't ride fast. If you'd ridden that distance around the level paddock, you wouldn't feel it quite as much. But if you'd ridden Buena Vista across to here, you probably wouldn't be able to walk now."

The scowl turned accusing. "Buena Vista? Are you making fun of me?"

I laughed and shook my head. "No. Some horses are like riding a luxury automobile. That's old Misty. Some are like riding an old Army jeep with busted shocks and springs. That's Buena Vista, who's for breeding show horses, not dude ranch rides. That's why horses are like girls."

The gull-wing brows pulled together and she crossed her arms below her breasts, over the knot where she'd tied the tails of her trendy western-cut front-buttoning blue gingham blouse that was the latest rage in Dallas. "What's that supposed to mean? Is it, like, some sort of queer diss for girls?"

"Not at all," I said, taking her camera and looking at the controls. Moderate wide-angle capability, limited zoom, macro, autoflash. "You see it every day at school. Some girls are merely eye candy, not much good for anything except decorating the arm of a football jock. Some girls are talented, capable of running the world, but too often could also serve as models for Halloween masks."

"Uh huh. And which am I, in your esteemed professional opinion?"

"You? Don't you know? You're in that lucky minority that is both beautiful and talented."

She blinked. Twice. Then: "Oh." She uncrossed her arms and waved one at the horses, who had moved several feet down from the edge of the trees to graze on the lush grass. "Uh, aren't we supposed to tie their leashes to something?"

"Reins, not leashes. Usually you tie the reins or use a hobble, but not with these two. Misty won't wander away from us, and Durango will stay with his mother."

"Oh."

"Okay, today's lesson will be composition in the viewfinder and picture exposure options. You have macro capability..."

The smirk appeared. "Is that, like, something the doctors can cure?"

I sighed. "Correction. You are in that group that is smart, smart looking, and smartassed."

She smiled like I'd just crowned her Miss Dallas.

"Macro capability means you can take close-up pictures, like flowers or insects or baby animals. Those rabbits, for instance?"

"Oh!" I had her undivided attention again.

"We'll get to macro photography tomorrow, or maybe this evening in the studio so that tomorrow you'll be ready to do take some close-up nature shots first thing tomorrow. Okay?"

She shrugged. "I guess. You know what you're doing."

I stared at her in disbelief. "I have no idea what I could have done to give you that idea. Okay, let's talk about framing your shot. First, look around and find a scene you want to photograph..."

The afternoon went quickly. Cheryl was an apt student as long as we were doing something of interest to her, and the photography had definitely caught her interest. She took a few pictures of me, even though I said portrait photography was a future lesson.

"Then I'll have something for comparison to see how much I improve," she said, sounding uncomfortably like Mandy explaining (choose-any-topic) to us ordinary dimwitted mortals.

I laughed. "You assume that if the later pictures of me are better, that it will be because of you. Maybe it will just be that I improved with age."

She blinked. Twice. "God, I hate you." Translation: Damn! I'm not the only one who's a smartass.

I whistled. Misty raised her head, looked at me, and then trotted toward us, Durango following two lengths behind. "Does that mean you don't want to go with me to see Blaze?"

She sighed. "Okay, I'll forgive you. This time."

I wiped imaginary sweat from my forehead and tossed it away with a flip of my wrist. "That's a relief. Remind me to put it in my diary tonight. Okay?"

She blinked. Twice. "Would you take my picture sitting on Misty?"

"Sure."

She mounted. Not gracefully, but that would come with practice. By the time she left it would be as natural and as graceful as the way she walked. Except, of course, for the way she walked after half-awakening every morning. "I want the house and barns in the background. That means you'll have to compensate for the brighter background because of the afternoon sun, so show me how you do that again."

I walked through the steps as a teaching point and then did it again for the actual picture. "Ready?"

She crossed her arms over the knot in her blouse again. "I'm going to duck my head so that my hair hangs down in front, then straighten and flip it back. Okay?"

"Yep. I do that shot a lot, though you're the first model whose been on horseback at the time. You know that it usually takes several attempts to get a good shot, don't you?"

"No. But okay."

"Let's do a couple of practice runs first so I can time your hair movement. You need to move the same way every time."

She frowned.

"I told you a model's life wasn't all glamor. A lot of it is dull, boring repetition."

She did it four times before I was satisfied. I set the exposure and framed the shot where I knew she'd be at the moment I tripped the release. "Okay."

She leaned forward, wiggled for a moment, and said, "Ready."

"On zero do it exactly the same way," I said and counted down from three.

On zero she straightened, throwing back her hair and pulling the untied shirt tails and the unbuttoned shirt front wide.

When I lowered the camera she grinned and asked, "Ready to do it again?"

"Nope."

The grin widened and she dropped the ends. "What's the matter? Awww. Does it bother Uncle Homo to see a girl's boobs?"

"No. I told you that before. And I saw them at breakfast and survived, remember?" I set the viewscreen to show the last photograph and handed the camera up to her. "I don't see how we could improve on this shot before dark."

She looked at it and then handed the camera down to me. "God, I hate you." Translation: What does it take for me to get to you?

I waved away the offer. "It's your camera. You keep it. I have enough of my own."

"Smartass," she muttered as I mounted Durango. I'm sure that doesn't need translation.

"And it's okay with me if you want to ride back like that, but it's only fair to warn you that the guys haven't left yet."

She gave me a smoldering glare and then tied the shirt tails together again. A moment later, seemingly having arrived at a decision, she also fastened one strategic button.

I was once again removed from the hate list when we stopped at the stream and I had her tell me from the hoofprints how many deer had come to that spot to drink. She got it right: three.

By the time we'd left Blaze and returned to the house for salad with house dressing, filet migñon avec champignons, baked potatoes, steamed mixed vegetables, and more Beaujolais wine I was again her favorite uncle.

She didn't pretend to gripe about the post-grub cleanup. I wasn't sure if the reason was Cheryl's Blaze or the photography lesson or both. Afterward we plopped down on the couch together. She leaned sideways and rested her head on my shoulder. "I had a nice day."

"So did I. Do you want to do learn the basics of macrophotography tonight or just skip it?"

Her head popped up like a prairie dog's. "Can we? I mean, if it means we can shoot the baby rabbits in the morning. Well, not 'shoot' them but..."

I laughed. "Go get your camera and bring it to the studio." The last three words were spoken to her retreating back. I watched her bouncing butt climb the stairs. Her muscle soreness was evident in her awkward movements.

I was ready when she returned. She was still wearing the same tied blouse, but she'd traded the long pants for painted-on white shorts with a single empty hip pocket, empty because the shorts were so tight that not even a single thickness of tissue had room enough in it. She hit the camera's power switch. The screen lit up, showing the picture of her on horseback.

"It's set for display. We need to set it for shooting again and click the macro setting on. No, wait. Turn it off."

She did, and I removed the memory card. Standard SD memory. I put it aside and fetched an empty card from a stack on the shelf behind me.

"Are you getting rid of my pictures?" she asked with that familiar angry expression.

"No, I'm saving them. I don't want to overwrite them. We'll back them up on the computer, too, and then we can more easily note the progress of your improvement over time. Plus I don't want to lose that last picture of you." I took it to the computer desk, grabbed a marker pen, and wrote "C-01" on it.

She grinned slyly. "Boobs and all?"

"Boobs and all. Let me show you something." I dug out two portfolios, one of Kelly's and the one I did for Debbie Richardson. I flipped to vaguely similar poses in both, then stuck the SD card in the card reader and popped Cheryl's image onto the computer screen. "Note that these two were the best shots out of almost fifty and just over seventy. Now look at yours. It's better, and I did it on the first shot."

She looked. "I guess."

I pointed. "Look at the way your hair looks, like the wind is blowing it back rather than flipped. Now look here at your blouse. You pulled your arms forward a little just before I tripped the shutter, so that the material caught some air and bulged backward. It looks like the wind has caught it and is blowing it back, too. Your eyes look determined. Your chin is still up slightly, and your chest is thrust forward. Symbolically it looks like you are facing into the approaching storm of some unknown adversity and are prepared to meet it. See? Don't look at yourself but at what image you project. Understand?"

The brown gull-wings pulled together and her lips tightened as she studied the screen.

"Yeah." She thought about it. "Yeah! I see what you're saying. Hey, you're good!"

"Some of it has to do with having the right model," I said, admiring the image on the screen, "and some of it has to do with the fact that I'm one of the greatest photographers of the twenty-first century, even if the rest of the world doesn't realize it yet."

"Now, there's one thing that you can't possibly deny," she said as a finger traced lines in the image without actually touching the screen.

"My greatness?"

"The fact that you're Mandy Kuczynski's twin."

I straightened. "Your meals for the rest of the week will be gruel and water."

"Eh," she said dismissively. "Tomorrow's Saturday anyway." She still hadn't taken her eyes off the screen.

Maybe she'd noticed it, at least on a subconscious level. I waited a few seconds for it to sink in and then asked, "Okay, what's not working in that picture? What's keeping you from buying the description I just gave you? What's the inconsistency?"

After a minute I lifted a hand to point, but she said, "No, don't tell me. Please, Uncle Randy? I want to figure it out for myself. I understand what you mean, and I know it's there, but I don't see it yet."

That's the kind of student I love to teach. "Take your time."

Another minute later she said, "Oh! Well, duh! Misty's mane," she said, pointing at it. "It's lying down instead of being blown back in the wind."

"So you admit I was right?"

Her voice turned suspicious again. Matching eyes turned to look at me. "About what?"

"That you're both beautiful and smart."

"Oh. Thanks."

"I promised I would tell you the truth, no matter how pleasant it is. Now," I said, reaching for the mouse, "this is how we can correct that."

I cropped the photo to remove the horse and saved the cropped image to a new file. "Now, notice that you're no longer centered in the photo. Your face is closer to an edge than the back of your head. This plus the hair streaming gives an impression of movement forward. Not only are you prepared to meet that unknown adversity, you are moving toward it, planning to meet it on your terms, not its terms."

The look of wonder on her face was worthy of capture, but I had time only to impress it in the memory of my own mind. "You did all that out of a quick snapshot!"

"It wasn't planned. Those portfolio shots were planned, and that's why they took so long. Serendipity happens. Maybe if I'd had you practice one more time the actual photograph would have left you looking sweetly vulnerable or defiantly angry or maybe only like a Halloween decoration."

That was good for another glare.

"The camera freezes very tiny slices of time. It catches transitional expressions that our eyes don't otherwise notice, such as eyes closed in a blink."

"Oh." She sighed and turned an embarrassed shade of pink. "Yeah, I've had a couple of those."

Obviously there was more than just a blink involved, but I knew asking would be foolish. It didn't matter. She understood the point, and that mattered. "This may turn out to be my favorite photo of you. We might spend the rest of your time here shooting portfolio shots and not catch one as good as this. Or we might top it on the very next shot. That's because good photography is an art, not a science. Forgetting that can cause a lot of grief. Now: are you ready for your macro lesson?"

I left the cropped image on the screen. She seemed pleased.

We spent almost a half-hour practicing depth of field and framing with small objects on the table, with the camera both hand-held and tripod-mounted. I noticed that she was moving stiffly, especially when she had to move her hip joints. At the end I said, "If you want, I'll massage the soreness out of your leg muscles when you're ready for bed. I recommend you first fill your tub with hot water and soak for about twenty minutes. Let the heat penetrate and relax the muscles. Then I'll massage them."

She looked up from stuffing her camera in the carrying case. "That sounds good," she said with a smile, though for an instant her face indicated that some smartass comment was about to appear.

"We'll do the massage on your bed so that you don't have to navigate the stairs, straining the muscles again after you've relaxed. While you're soaking I'll put some heavy towels on it so that we don't get oil on the sheets. Then you can just roll over and go to sleep."

"That sounds even better. Is it time to check on Blaze, or can I look at those portfolios?"

I glanced at the clock. "We have an hour or so. If you'll grab those two tall chairs over there, I'll adjust these lights as you can look at them on this work table. Okay?"

"Sure!"

She studied Kelly's portfolio first. "It looks like this is the real her and that snapshot was one of those frozen moments you mentioned."

"That's why I get paid a good fee for the portfolio. Even with someone as pretty as you it would still be a lot of work and would require time to make the best possible presentation for someone using it to land a job. Portfolio shots have to be the best of the best of the best."

Cheryl grunted. Translation: I have no idea, but it seemed to be "I never thought of that." She frowned and twisted her head to look at one shot from several angles. "She looks sorta familiar."

"Kelly's appeared in several local commercials on Phoenix television, with regular appearances for five businesses. No local ones in Texas or Colorado, but she has two national commercials to her credit, with a contract for another beer commercial to be shot here after the snowfall accumulates."

She frowned at the picture, then at me, the picture again, the general direction of the mountains, and me again. Her eyes widened in recognition. "She's the one on the skis by that creek?"