“How about your portrait now?” she asked him. “I was thinking we could use the reflections on the water as a background before we lose light.”
“The boulder?” he asked, pointing to a large rock that rested at the edge of the water like it had rolled down from high above and then decided to take a rest a few feet shy of the shoreline.
“Perfect.”
“Shall I climb on top?” he asked when they arrived.
“We won’t get good reflections that way. What if you lean against it?” she suggested, and he did, resting his back against the boulder and giving her a little smirk that brought to mind what he might have been like twenty or thirty years ago, before he’d chosen a career full of public scrutiny. Here was Fred, with his staid fashion sense and political background, posing like a rock star on an album cover.
Sarah stepped closer until she was capturing him from the waist up with the dramatic view sweeping away to one side of him, the water glowing pink and the cliffs rising in the distance. Even the breeze settled down for an instant, giving her a moment when the reflection of the cliffs on the far side of the water was clear. His face was a little too dark in the half-light, so she threw a little soft fill light on him with a battery-powered light. The rest she could fix it in the developing process.
She took the shot and then showed it to him.
“Amazing,” he said. “First my daughter’s portrait, now mine. My wife is going to be jealous.”
Sarah smiled. “She can give me a call next time you’re in Toronto.” She realized that she meant it.
An idea for Grisha’s portrait came as she watched him talking to Kyle about the position of the stars.
“Hold on,” she said. “Grisha. Point to Polaris again.”
Grisha gave her a quick, dry smile, then turned and pointed to the star with one finger, and she took a quick picture of him in the last light of ‘blue hour,’ pointing towards the North Star so that it was right at the tip of his finger. Then she let him walk away and left her camera there on its tripod, pointing it at Polaris, for a thirty-minute-long exposure. Later, she could combine the shots so that it looked like the star trails were circling around the point of Grisha’s finger.
The Milky Way sharpened into clarity as darkness fell, and Sarah went to find Tanjul and Binita. They had chatted with her about doing a portrait that included both of them, and it was time to put it into action. It was a trick shot, one that Sarah would create as a photo montage stitched together from multiple shots, but it would make Tanjul look like he was raising a hand at one end of the Milky Way and Binita look like she was reaching out to touch the other end. Both of them stood by the water, raising one arm towards the arc in the sky, and Sarah put her camera on her tripod and created a panorama of shots of the water and sky that she could stitch together later. She used a soft light on the two of them so their faces were visible. The final version would be a photo with the Milky Way arcing between them as they raised hands on either end of it: a cosmic connection between two souls.
Jack was nearby as she finished the shot. Sarah called to him.
“It’s time, Jack,” she said. “Your portrait.”
He sighed. The whole week he had been so pessimistic that she had begun to feel for him. Nobody could learn photography in a week, but he had perhaps forgotten how hard it was to learn something new. All he saw was his own limits.
“Come on,” she said. “We’re going to light paint you so you look like a dangerous bad boy.”
Jack barked out a laugh and glanced down at his fleece vest. “Not likely.”
“Get him to take his shirt off!” Selassie called. “I did!”
“No,” Jack said with a frown.
He eventually agreed to lean against one of the small conifer trees next to the water. Sarah grazed him and the tree with side light to set him off from the dark background, the stars reflecting on the water behind him. She thought it made him look mysterious and cool.
He walked forward to look at the photo on Sarah’s camera screen.
“See?” Sarah said, thinking of all the times she had reassured nervous actors that they looked good in her headshot days. “You look a dark prince from a fairy tale.”
He considered the image for a long moment. “Yeah, okay,” he said at last, and turned to walk away. But he was smiling a little.
“It’s time, Rita,” Sarah said at last, approaching the two friends.
“Can’t we just do my head? I don’t want my whole body. Maybe if I was wearing something nicer.”
Sarah sighed, but she agreed. She took a shot of Rita’s face with her chin tilted up, the stars behind her.
“You look great, babe!” Selassie called out, holding up a soft fill light. “You look…”
Her words were cut off by the sharp sound of rock sliding against rock; Sarah turned to see Selassie on the ground clutching her leg.
“That was stupid,” Selassie said weakly. “I don’t even know what happened…”
