Throwing the windswept hair out of her eyes she grabbed her camera up against the reddening, dying light and snapped. The trees' silhouettes stood out as if someone had carefully drawn each fading, balding wintery-branch onto a canvas.
She hadn't returned to this spot beside the river since she was ten. Back then he'd sat, paintbrush in hand, dabbing away at a tiny portable set of watercolours, and somehow with the minimum amount of effort everything around them had come alive. The pockets of the cartridge paper had captured the watery paint, so that slowly the crystal clear painting looked like someone had rubbed vaseline on their lens. There was something about the way that the page had turned every feature of the landscape into tiny pits of colour - the world turned into indistinct blotches; water; rays of sun, autumny leaves - as if someone had grabbed the sky and yanked down, crinkling it up as they went.
So now as she tried to capture the past, she sighed at the futility of it. The images in her head and the pictures her camera took never matched up; her vision was all squew-iff. It was a long time since she could remember what the scene had actually looked like: the flashbacks she had were always of the painting now. What she'd been trying to do failed as her camera recorded the world with the harsh clarity of a stranger who hadn't read the brief.
Two weeks later her prints were sent back, the world preserved with sharp lines and lacklustre colour. She'd done this on numerous occasions - wandered off to see the old church they went to or the farm that they used to pick gooseberries at - taken photos - and returned, grumpy and discontented with how the world appeared to her now. The images in her head were always so different. Sighing at her silliness, she realised she'd mistaken the clarity of what she saw in her head for the world outside. Like everything else, it was all very black-and-white in her head; but reality always fumbled around and missed the point.
That Thursday she made a decision: quit trying to recreate the blotchy, crinkled up past. Change the time, change the day, change the picture. She hopped on her bike and rode down to the river, abandoning the usual ritual of cornflakes and E4 re-runs, this time just taking a pad of paper and sticks of charcoal and chalk. With the grass cushioning her, she looked out towards the boats on the river, with the stark trees hanging overhead and set about re-making it in black and white, just as she saw wanted the world to be.
She hadn't returned to this spot beside the river since she was ten. Back then he'd sat, paintbrush in hand, dabbing away at a tiny portable set of watercolours, and somehow with the minimum amount of effort everything around them had come alive. The pockets of the cartridge paper had captured the watery paint, so that slowly the crystal clear painting looked like someone had rubbed vaseline on their lens. There was something about the way that the page had turned every feature of the landscape into tiny pits of colour - the world turned into indistinct blotches; water; rays of sun, autumny leaves - as if someone had grabbed the sky and yanked down, crinkling it up as they went.
So now as she tried to capture the past, she sighed at the futility of it. The images in her head and the pictures her camera took never matched up; her vision was all squew-iff. It was a long time since she could remember what the scene had actually looked like: the flashbacks she had were always of the painting now. What she'd been trying to do failed as her camera recorded the world with the harsh clarity of a stranger who hadn't read the brief.
Two weeks later her prints were sent back, the world preserved with sharp lines and lacklustre colour. She'd done this on numerous occasions - wandered off to see the old church they went to or the farm that they used to pick gooseberries at - taken photos - and returned, grumpy and discontented with how the world appeared to her now. The images in her head were always so different. Sighing at her silliness, she realised she'd mistaken the clarity of what she saw in her head for the world outside. Like everything else, it was all very black-and-white in her head; but reality always fumbled around and missed the point.
That Thursday she made a decision: quit trying to recreate the blotchy, crinkled up past. Change the time, change the day, change the picture. She hopped on her bike and rode down to the river, abandoning the usual ritual of cornflakes and E4 re-runs, this time just taking a pad of paper and sticks of charcoal and chalk. With the grass cushioning her, she looked out towards the boats on the river, with the stark trees hanging overhead and set about re-making it in black and white, just as she saw wanted the world to be.
Again, really nice imagery. Feels comfortable to read.
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Very well written :-)
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