Check, Please?

Chapter 5

After two days of studying my own work, I still couldn’t figure out what the hell Mr. Wentz was talking about. “You look emotional in this picture.  There is emotion all over this picture!” I shouted, slapping an old picture of Harry onto the island.  He leaned forward off of the counter and looked at the black and while still of him on his knees in some black Calvin Kleins. The shot was from about 2011 when his hair was still long and extremely curly.  He leaned back against the sink and took a large gulp of water from his wine bottle.

“Did you submit that picture?”

I hesitated. “I don’t… I don’t think so…”

Harry sighed. “Maybe you just submitted the wrong pictures, you know? I thought I would be able to help you with all of this but I’m just not a photographer… I don't see anything wrong with your pictures at all.”

I slunk to the floor and leaned my head back against the refrigerator. “I know.” I stared at the pictures spread around me on the floor, occasionally moving one or picking one up.  I was completely discouraged, discouragingly confused, and confusedly agitated. 

“Here, stand up and take a picture of me.” Harry grabbed my arm and pulled me upward after a few moments.  I groaned, irritated that he didn’t suggest that before I sat down. I grabbed my camera off of the island and turned it on.

“Take a picture of just you?  I have a million of those.”

“Me and the bottle,” Harry said, leaning back against the sink and shifting so that the bottle was more visible in his hand.  I snapped a quick shot and looked at it on the screen of my camera.

“Feeling posy?” I asked, confused about what Harry was making me do.

He shook his head and turned his back to me to face the sink.

“Now take another one.” He raised the bottle up and began to pour the water from the bottle.  I snapped the shot and looked at it as it flashed onto the screen.

“What are we doing?”

Harry put the bottle down and walked around the island to see the pictures too. “Look,” he said, flipping back to the first shot.  “This is just me holding a bottle of wine.”

“It’s water-“

“But the audience doesn’t know that.  It just looks like a guy holding a wine bottle.  Nothing else.  But this-“ He flipped to the second picture.  His back muscles were flexed and his hair looked a mess as he poured the liquid down the drain. “This tells a story.  There is emotion.  Why is he pouring the wine down the drain? Is he an alcoholic?”

I frowned at Harry. “Harry, I’m a fashion photographer. I'm not taking pictures for an anti-wine campaign anytime soon.”

I turned to walk to my room but Harry grabbed me by my shoulders. His green eyes glowed with excitement. “But maybe that’s what Wentz is looking for.  He wants to see the human side of you.  He probably gets hundreds of people every day fighting for this job and he sees the same thing all the time.  Show him something different.  Show him Scotlan.”

My ears rang with Harry’s words as my mind dove into another memory. “Show me Scotlan.  Show me the real you.”

“Mr. Howard,” Anna chimed in from the desk beside me. “I’ve been Scotlan’s friend for three years now and I haven’t even seen the real her.  This project is going to cause her to fail. No offense, Scotty.”

I nodded in agreement with her.  My photography teacher sighed and looked down at me.  I was tired of trying to argue about this with him in front of the whole class.  Mr. Howard’s thick, black mustache twitched and finally he leaned down onto the desk, his hairy arms crossing over one another as he looked me in the face. “Scotlan, it’s just 5 pictures.  5 pictures that aren’t just pictures, but pictures that tell YOUR story. You can’t do that?”