AHS Imagines

16: Photography (Winter Anderson)

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Reader & Winter take a photography class so they have to go out to take pictures but it turns out different than expected

Winter and I had exchanged maybe 4 sentences between each other before this partner assignment. Our photography teacher wanted us to get practice taking nature pictures so we'd learn the right manipulations of lighting and angles. All of these assignments were given to partner groups that he'd make up. I didn't really know Winter well but she seemed to be pretty good at photography from the class work displays. 

Our plan was to drive out to a flower field and start taking pictures at about 3:30 to 4 in the afternoon since the Sun would be in a good position. The grass there was tall and vibrant flowers were the only splashes of color in the setting. It was a very beautiful setting that took 2 hours to get to, and luckily Winter didn't mind driving both of us over there with all the equipment. 

To match the free-spirited natural appearance of our surroundings in the field, we were both dressed in loose, white, 70's-reminiscent clothes and the entire general appearance of soft grace. She combed her silver hair out to be straight and applied soft pale blue eyeshadow to her eyelids. We arrived just on time and unpacked all the equipment into the tall grasses. 

"Hey, let's just chill out here before taking the pictures so they look more natural." Winter offered, her hands gently feeling the waving blades of grass up around her shoulders.

"Okay, what do you have in mind?" 

"Well, with all these long-stem flowers I could try making a flower crown. I've kinda wanted to try making one." She smiled, picking out some of the flowers to work on entwining them. 

I joined her, sitting bare-foot in the grass and trying to braid or otherwise twist the stems together to form a crown of sorts. Winter cracked stupid jokes and I told her funny stories as we sat down on the ground together. Upbeat, but chill indie music played quietly from her phone in the background. She put the, pretty decent, daisy flower crown onto my head and told me to just run around the field or pose naturally while she took a picture. 

I took off in a quick jog and whipped my head around to make sure Winter was still following behind me. It was so freeing to be out there without anyone else to observe what we were doing and to have so much space to just run in. A gleeful smile formed on my face without me even thinking about it. This was probably the most fun I'd had doing photography assignments. 

"Some of these pictures turned out so perfectly, I'll show you when we're done." Winter informed me, handing the camera over. 

I took it from her and instructed her to just recline in the bunches of flowers, a few of them tucked into her long hair. Winter followed my request and looked stunning sitting calmly in the field with the sun glinting a gold light across her pale skin tone. I picked a few more flowers and threw them up over her just before snapping the picture, making it look like there were flowers floating in the air. 

"Okay, all of those turned out really well. Do you want to go back now?" I asked.

"Why the rush?" She shrugged, lying down in the grass.

I shrugged, accompanying her on the field. A light breeze drifted through the air and the Sun was still shining brightly in the early evening sky. We looked through some of the pictures while lying down together on the ground, laughing at the ones where someone blinked when the picture was taken. Winter commented how daisies apparently suited me well because the flower crown she'd made for me was made of them. 

"Hang on, if you edit this picture to be just a bit darker and turn the saturation down a little too it would be so perfect." I suggested with one of the pictures of her. 

"Yeah! That's exactly what I was thinking." Winter nodded.

"Doing this was much more fun than I thought it'd be." I admitted.

"I agree." She smiled then laughed as she told me the next story: "My brother, Kai, actually wanted to come out here as an excuse to get out of the house because he thought it would be some kind of provocative photoshoot or something."

"Could you imagine the photography teacher assigning that?" I scoffed. 

"Dude, he's like 600 years old and that would be pretty weird." 

"Okay the teacher's not that old or else he'd probably be retired by then and he seems pretty understanding of modern editing apps and stuff." 

"Yeah. Do you wanna go see if there's some place nearby or on the way back to get food at?"

"Sure, I'd love that and I'm honestly kind of starving now." 

She grabbed my hand and started walking down the path through the tall grasses to get back to the car. We must've wandered decently far off because the car was left further than we expected it to be. The scenery was just so beautiful all the way out from the road and the pictures turned out more natural-looking in setting. Being too formal or posing too much made the photos seem very staged and this was probably my best work and my best appearance from the entire class. Winter was definitely some kind of sorceress photographer for being able to capture an image of me that way and she was a fun assignment partner.