The Photograph(er)

Her Point of View

The day I got my DSLR camera was perhaps the happiest day of my life. I’d always been into photography and longed for a professional camera for years, and finally, there it was in my hands, solid as a brick, just begging me to get started click, click, clicking.
I told all my friends I would be photographing them – I thought it would be a nice thing to do considering how they always appreciated my skills, but at the spur of the moment, I did something stupid and even promised HIM a picture. By him I mean my stalker. Not literally a stalker, but something very close to that considering that he’d been in love with me for five years despite me trying EVERYTHING to drive home the point that I was quite simply not interested. I guess you can say he was a friend, a bit of a clingy one though, someone I didn’t really like to associate with too much in case he got the wrong ideas.
He didn’t ask me for a picture but somehow I offered to click him. Maybe I felt sorry that he didn’t usually have any nice profile pictures on Facebook. Some part of me just felt like doing him a favour, I suppose. The thing is, like I said, I didn’t really associate too much with the guy, so there were very few chances when I could have fulfilled my promise. What’s more is that although I was confident of my skills, inside I wasn’t too sure whether clicking him would be a good idea. What if I couldn’t make him look good? Or worse, what if he took my innocent gesture as a sign that I fancied him or something? He was anyways weird, I didn’t need him jumping to conclusions and becoming even clingier than he already was. So I guess just as unconsciously as I had promised him the photo, I avoided having my camera with me whenever I knew he would be around. I did have it once or twice, but fortunately, he never asked me to click him then.


His Point of View

When I first set eyes on HER five years ago, I lost everything. My heart, my head, my common sense, and in an indirect way, my self respect too. It was not because she had the most beautiful eyes I had ever seen, though that did play a major role in pushing up my heartbeat, but no, the real reason I fell for her was the way she treated other people. I had always thought pretty girls were snooty and/or bitchy, but she proved all such assumptions wrong. She was the kindest, warmest person I had ever met, with a friendly smile and an even friendlier voice. When most other girls pretended I didn’t exist, She let me be her friend. She would listen to me talk and ask my opinions and even joke around with me sometimes. She was the sunshine of my life. She was also very smart, which is why it didn’t take her long to figure out that I fancied her. When she found out, I was sure she wouldn’t want anything to do with me anymore, but to my utter shock – and pleasure – she was cool with it and didn’t treat me any different. I loved her even more for that.
But one day, things changed. She changed. Being an avid photographer, she was over the moon when she finally got her own DSLR camera. When she first told me about it, I didn’t even know what a DSLR was and had to Google the term. I was happy to see her so happy but at the same time, I couldn’t help noticing a slight transformation take place in her personality. The girl I had always thought to be most down-to-earth was turning into a bit of a show-off. All she ever talked about anymore were her photos: who and what she had clicked and the nice things people had said about her skills. Her Facebook profile was flooded with appreciation. It made me smile but I worried that it was all going to her head a bit too much; it was apparent in her behaviour. She hardly talked to me much anymore. Granted we were both busy in our own lives but we had never before gone for weeks without exchanging so much as a ‘hi’. We were drifting apart, I could sense it. And it depressed me.
I guess that’s why I was so upset when she seemed to forget something that she had promised me. As non-photogenic as I was, I was looking forward to her clicking my picture. After years of people telling me I looked rubbish in photos, I had sort of unconsciously put my trust in this brilliant girl I loved, trust that perhaps she could prove my own doubts wrong and show me that I could have a nice photograph if the photographer was good enough. And SHE was better than good; she was the best as far as I was concerned.
I would run into her now and then, with her camera slung on her shoulder, but I could never work up the nerve to ask whether she would click me. I always thought that since she was the one who had made the promise, she should be the one to fulfill it.
And so I waited in silence, occasionally feeling bad when I would see her photograph her other friends, the ones who didn’t even need professional cameras to make them look good. I wondered whether she would ever remember what she had told me. It wasn’t fair.

Her Point of View

'What?'
That was the only word that came to mind when I heard the news.
It couldn’t be.
No way.
He could not be…
No, I couldn’t bring myself to think that word. It was too terrible, too sudden, too unbelievable. Young people did not just drop dead one day. How could he have…
‘Because he was ill, you fool,’ a small voice in my head said. ‘He was suffering since years and you didn’t even notice.’
But how could I have noticed? He never said a word about it, no hint, nothing. He had always seemed to be just another normal young person. How was I to know he had cancer?
And to think of how I treated him… this sounds sick to say but if only I’d known, I’m sure I would have been nicer to him. I didn’t even click his photograph when I KNEW how much it meant to him. God, how could I have been so nasty? And that too, to someone who loved me. I had always thought his whole ‘love’ thing was a bit blown out of proportion but I can’t now, after he’s left me a diary full of stuff he’s written about me. His brother gave it to me today. After the funeral. And it made me cry like nothing else ever has.
I can’t believe I laughed about him behind his back, and that I never did a single nice thing for him all his life. The only thing I can find comfort in is what I managed to do before the burial: I photographed him. I don’t know how I did it but I knew I had to. I asked permission from his family; I explained to them that it was something which meant a lot to him, and although his brother was dead against it, his parents gave in. perhaps only to stop me pleading with them.
He was lying there in the casket, all suited up, with his hair neatly in place, looking almost handsome, and more peaceful than I had ever seen him. I stared at him for what seemed liked an eternity, my eyes welling up with tears of shame and remorse, and finally, at long last, I fulfilled my promise.
It turned out to be a hauntingly beautiful picture. I posted it to his Facebook profile and it’s got over 100 likes. I guess my stalker is a lot more liked and popular in death than he ever was in life. Which sounds kind of terrible but isn’t really.
Because with the photo was my long drawn-out and overdue apology to him. I think that’s what people really liked: that I publicly apologized for how badly I had privately treated him.
Sometimes, things we believe to be ‘no big deal’ turn out to be much bigger than we can handle. A promise, or giving someone our word, is one of them.

*The image is from www.photographybebastocapture.blogspot.com