Typical Day
"Did you hear a word I just said?" snapped Hector.
"Huh?" mumbled Candelaria Camera, as she avoided his eyes and started flipping through her lookbook for that afternoon's shoot. Maybe he'd get the not-so-subtle hint that talking about his mother was the last thing she wanted to do on shoot day...or any day, really...but especially on....
"She keeps asking when we're going to have a baby."
Candelaria stared intently at a picture of a model wrapped in gauze and curled up in a pile of driftwood. The twisted wood wrapped around her like mutilated jail bars.
"Did you hear me?" said Hector, and suddenly Candelaria knew exactly why the mutilated jail bars spoke to her.
She snapped the lookbook shut and grinded her chair away from the table.
"Let's make a rule, Hector. On shoot days...if I ever have another shoot day...never talk about your mother or babies."
Twenty minutes later, Candelaria was shoving her equipment into the back of her rental SUV. Hector had offered to help, but she couldn't stand another second in his presence. Why couldn't he understand what this meant to her? This is the day. The day. Sure, they had been talking about having kids for a while, but she just needed a little more time.
It'd taken years of scrimping by to get to this point. Years of school, with her parents hounding her about majoring in photography. Years of waiting tables, with her parents telling her they told her so. Years of shooting for free, as she built up her portfolio and perfected her website.
When she'd scored the assistantship with Devon, one of the edgiest fashion photographers in town, she'd thought her parents might be at least a little bit proud. They weren't. They didn't get it...especially since it paid next to nothing. They also didn't get the tribal tattoo on Devon's face, but that was the least of Candelaria's concerns.
As she pulled the SUV into the honking traffic of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, a text came in from Devon...
"Don't mess this up. :-)"
She managed a smile, but her stomach churned at the same time. This was Devon's way of saying good luck, but he was also dead serious. He was the one who'd set her up with this shoot. Kiko Lee, a rising star of the fashion world, had just opened a new boutique in SOHO, and had offered the image campaign to Devon.
Luckily for Candelaria, Devon was too busy...well, in all actuality it just didn't pay enough for him to even bother with it. So he offered the job to Candelaria. Kiko had been dead-set against it at first. An unknown photographer? Really? But Devon had weight, and Candelaria's portfolio had sealed the deal—provisionally.
Still, it hadn't been easy to get to this day. Candelaria went through tons of concepts before she found one Kiko was into. He was super demanding, and his breath always smelled like raw garlic—so none of it had been pleasant.
The logistical stuff had been a headache, too: finding the right models, finding the right location, getting permission to shoot in the right location, hiring a lighting guy, booking stylists....
A sign that read Coney Island appeared, and Candelaria's stomach dropped. All that work was about to come down to this.
She saw two terrible things upon pulling up to the site.
1) Adisa, the gorgeous African model, holding a bag of ice to her face.
2) The scowl on Kiko's face as he watched Adisa holding a bag of ice to her face.
"A bee!" screamed Kiko. "As soon as we got here, it stung her right in the face! I told you I didn't want an outdoor shoot!"
"Okay. It's okay. We'll deal with it," said Candelaria, neglecting to remind the irate designer that it was actually him who'd insisted on going for a decaying carnival theme by shooting at Coney Island.
Luckily, Adisa wasn't allergic and in an hour the swelling had mostly gone down. But by that time the wind had started whipping like crazy, and rail-thin Adisa almost blew off the empty Ferris wheel as Candelaria tried to snap a shot of her wearing one of Kiko's tapestry-coats.
"How will you see the coat with it whipping around like that?" raged Kiko.
"It will look, um...dramatic," said Candelaria, hoping against hope that it didn't come out looking like a hot mess.
Things didn't get easier. Candelaria cursed herself for letting Kiko talk her into doing this outside. It was so hard to get the light right without the control of a studio. Pic after pic came in washed out, and every time she had her assistant (who was just her friend Dave) hold up a white piece of fabric to soften the light, the wind nearly ripped the cloth out of his hands.
"This is pathetic," grumbled Kiko. "I never should've let Devon talk me into this."
As a piece of white fabric whipped in the wind, Candelaria couldn't help but think of it as a flag of surrender. But then she noticed the jail-like wooden understructure of the old Cyclone rollercoaster.
"Over there," she said, ignoring Kiko and doing her best to sound like an old pro. "Under the rollercoaster. It'll give us some shade, and it'll help with the wind."
Miraculously that was all it took, and soon everyone could feel it, too. Shot after shot after shot...something clicked. Adisa was great, Candelaria was great, and Kiko shut up long enough to let everybody else be great.
As she drove home that night, Candelaria knew most of the 500 shots she took wouldn't work, but she didn’t let that get her down. She knew she still had days of work ahead of her. Culling the shots down to five or so, touching them up, and then gnawing her nails until Kiko got back to her. Maybe he'd hate them. Maybe Devon would hate them. Maybe this day would end up being proof that she'd been totally wasting her life.
Before she could get too down, she remembered that she'd just spent the day doing something she loved, and she was going to give herself the night to be proud of that.