Misadventures in Saint Louis
“Hurry, hit the button! I’m getting wet,” Jeremy yelled, standing awkwardly in an increasingly damp t-shirt in the middle of a grassy clearing. Behind him was a large pond, once still just moments ago, now disturbed in a kaleidoscope of ripples rebounding off one another.
I stood ten feet away, fiddling with my camera on a tripod, determined to get a nice shot of our adventures in St. Louis. So far, the trip wasn’t going very well.
“Ok!” I yelled, rapidly turning dials on my camera. “One last thing to set. Get ready!”
I felt the cold trickle down the back of my neck and seep through my sheer shirt. Why did I wear this today? I set the timer for 10 seconds and pressed the shutter. The light on the front flashed orange and I ran over to Jeremy, his shoulders now soaked.
We stood there, clutching each other, squinting through fat droplets falling steadily from the sky. The light kept flashing. The sound of water hitting the pond intensified and the droplets fell harder. I held my grin thinking about my camera’s exposure to the elements.
The camera flashed more rapidly then snapped 5 times and stopped. I ran over and checked the photos. I hated them all. Jeremy wasn’t smiling. He had a habit of sabotaging our photos in protest. I frowned at him.
“We have to take them again!” I yelled. “You didn’t smile!”
“Are you serious!?” he said incredulously, but he knew the answer. I wasn’t going to leave this place until we got our photo.
“Get ready!” I wiped off the top of the camera, full of water, and changed the timer to 5 seconds. I hit the shutter and sprinted toward him, leaping over the pile of mud I nearly tripped in before.
We clutched each other again and watched the camera, counting the flashes. In the seconds it took for the light to count down, a deluge unloaded on us. I shrieked but I didn’t move, determined to get a shot, waterfall or not.
In the final moments, I relaxed and started laughing at the absurdity of this photo and this trip. The camera snapped off five more times and I ran over again. The photos appeared and I scrolled through them like a stop motion video. They were perfect.
We ran back to the car, soggy with smiles on our faces. We didn’t know it then, but the rain was only the beginning of our problems in St. Louis. But much like the photo, we laughed and made the best of it.
