Four cameras followed the branches.
Her finger found the light.
The patch of sunlight left Elise’s photograph before she could take it.
She lowered her eye from the viewfinder. A cloud had crossed the sun, leaving the distant trees flat and grey.
“I had that arranged,” she said.
Above her, a branch shook yellow petals onto her camera bag.
“Apparently the forest has amendments,” Nina said.
Their First Positions
They had reached the clearing that morning, following Grandma along a narrow path between moss-covered stones. The air smelled of damp earth. Sunlight warmed one side of Mira’s face while the other remained cool beneath the trees.
Clara spread her tripod legs on firm ground and checked the frame. Nina crouched beside her bag. Mira found a branch that balanced neatly against a pale trunk, and Elise waited for the distant view to brighten again.
Four shutters sounded at different intervals.
Grandma walked between them, looking where each camera pointed.
“Have you made a photograph from there?”
They had.
“Good. Now leave that position.”
Mira kept one hand on her camera. “All of us?”
“You can take the equipment with you.”
Nina stood, brushing a petal from her knee.
“I was just getting comfortable.”
“Yes,” Grandma said. “I noticed.”
Four Different Directions
Nina stepped away from the flowering branch she had been treating almost like a portrait subject. She looked up instead. Two trunks rose above her, their tops opening into yellow and blue.
“At least these subjects won’t ask which side looks better.”
“You still have to choose,” Mira said.
Nina moved a little farther left.
Clara left her broad view of the clearing and approached a small spray of blossoms beside rough bark. Just as she focused, the wind pushed them out of place.
She waited. They returned, swayed past, and returned again.
“They’re visiting my frame,” she said.
Grandma lifted a finger toward a gap in the canopy. Light was spreading along the branch, catching the thin edges of the petals.
Clara watched it reach her flowers. This time, she was ready when they swung back.
Mira moved around her tree. From the new side, a branch cut diagonally across the picture instead of settling into the tidy arrangement she had first made.
She shifted once more, stopped, and made a frame before reaching for another adjustment.
Down Here
Elise tried a view from the edge of the clearing. More sky, less sky; one step forward, then two back. Whenever the distance brightened, the foreground slipped into shadow.
She checked her pictures. None held the light she had wanted.
“I might leave this one,” she said.
She detached her camera and bent beside her bag to put away the tripod. Near her shoe, a narrow passage between the stones caught a warm stripe of sunlight.
Elise stayed bent over.
From there, the moss filled the lower edge of her view. Beyond it, fallen leaves marked a small path between the trunks. She had walked past it without seeing where it led.
“Mira. A moment.”
Mira came closer, stopping behind her.
“You’ll have to come down here.”
Mira crouched. Elise brought the camera to her eye, keeping her knee on the bare patch of ground beside the moss.
The light narrowed.
She took the photograph.
One More Minute
When Elise turned the screen toward Mira, the path seemed to run from their feet into a much larger forest.
“I was looking over all of that,” Elise said.
Mira glanced toward the view Elise had left, then back at the screen.
“Make another before it moves.”
Elise turned her camera again.
Around the clearing, Nina was choosing between two upward views. Clara had found a pause between gusts. Grandma stepped aside as Mira returned to her diagonal branch.
A little later, Grandma opened the bag containing their sandwiches.
“Lunch?”
“One minute,” Elise said, still crouching.
Clara raised a finger without leaving her viewfinder. Nina nodded toward her camera, and Mira made one last adjustment.
Grandma took out a sandwich.
“I’ll start with a minute that has bread in it.”
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