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191 - Until It Clicks: An Original Photography Horror Story · The Nerdy Photographer Podcast

• 0:01
  Casey Fatchett: Hello, and welcome to a special spooky
• 0:04
  season presentation of the Nerdy Photographer podcast. As has
• 0:09
  become tradition on the show, I will be reading a
• 0:10
  photography-themed horror story to you, and this just happens to
• 0:17
  be another story that I myself wrote just for you guys because
• 0:22
  I like you, and in this story, it's a tale that many
• 0:26
  photographers are familiar with: staying up late, editing photos
• 0:30
  to meet a deadline, and your mind starts playing tricks on
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  you, or does it? So sit back, relax, and enjoy until it
• 0:39
  clicks.
• 1:00
  The Reyes campaign was due at 9:00 a.m. Chance glanced at his
• 1:04
  phone, 11:47 p.m. He rolled his shoulders, tapped the spacebar,
• 1:08
  and let the next image fill the monitor. The model stared back
• 1:12
  at him through the glow, all cheekbones and attitude, and a
• 1:17
  stray hair cutting across her left eye. He zoomed into 200%
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  and went after it. Remove brush, healing brush. Remove his
• 1:25
  earbuds. Pumped something low and synthetic into his skull.
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  Music helped curb his ADHD while he edited. Without it, his mind
• 1:33
  wandered to invoices, to rent, to the creative director who had
• 1:37
  said very casually at the end of the shoot, we were really
• 1:41
  excited to see what you'd do with this-the kind of casual
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  that wasn't casual at all. This was the job, the one that could
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  put his name on the right lists or quietly cross it off.
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  Somewhere under the baseline, something clicked. He paused,
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  accidentally removing part of the model's iris, Control Z,
• 2:02
  probably just something on the track. Click, not in the music,
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  outside it. He pulled the earbuds out to stop the
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  playlist. Silence, or the studio's version of it-the whirr
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  of hard drive spinning, the drone with the mini fridge in
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  the kitchenette, the faraway sigh of traffic, four floors
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  down. He waited. Nothing. Okay, he said to no one. Went back to
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  the hare. He let the music off so he could catch it if it
• 2:29
  happened again. If something was broken in his studio, he would
• 2:34
  certainly let his landlord know about it. What, given what he
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  was paying for his space, 10 minutes passed. He heard it
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  again, clean and unmistakable this time, because he'd heard it
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  1000 times, 100,000 even. The slap of the mirror, the whisper
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  snap of the shutter curtain, he turned in his chair. The only
• 2:54
  light in the studio was the one above his workstation, a warm
• 2:58
  cone that ended at the edge of his desk like the shoreline of
• 3:03
  some deserted island. Beyond it, the studio was a dark sea of
• 3:07
  shapes: the sea stands, the backdrops were old and leaning
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  in their rack, the wardrobe rail, the psych wall glowing
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  faintly pale at the far end. Hello. His voice went out in the
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  dark and didn't come back. He got up and walked to the door.
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  The heavy industrial steel one with the push bar and the
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  deadbolt locked. He rattled it anyway, still locked. On his way
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  back he caught something in the corner of his eye-a figure
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  standing beside the wardrobe rail, shoulders square,
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  perfectly still, watching him. His heart did something violent.
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  He actually stumbled back a step before his brain caught up the
• 3:47
  dress form, the one Ariel had dressed in the cream trench coat
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  for the final look. It had no head, which somehow made the
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  entire situation worse. What the? He breathed and then he
• 4:00
  laughed too loud. Jesus Christ! He sat back down and shook out
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  his hands. On to the next image, a crease in the fabric at the
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  model's elbow that needed a little smoothing. He was out of
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  the chair before he'd even thought about it. He crossed the
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  wall and slapped the bank of switches, and the overheads came
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  up one row at a time, buzz, buzz, buzz, flooding the room in
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  a flat, fluorescent white. Everything was exactly where it
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  should be: the backdrops, the rail, the dress form, harmless
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  now in the light, the trench coat hanging off its shoulders.
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  His main camera body sat beside his keyboard, where he'd left it
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  after offloading the cards. And halfway across the studio, on
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  the folding table by the psych, sat his second body, the DSLR
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  backup he'd used for detail shots that afternoon. His trusty
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  50 millimeter on the front, exactly where he'd set it down,
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  about six. Hours earlier, he walked over to it. He didn't
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  touch it. He just looked.
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  The power switch was off. Of course, it was. He felt as if he
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  had stopped breathing and made an effort to breathe in and out,
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  forcing the air into his lungs. He went back, sat down, left all
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  the lights on, the fluorescents hummed overhead like insects. He
• 5:25
  stared at a frame and realized he'd been staring at it for a
• 5:28
  long time without actually seeing it. His eyes felt full of
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  sand. It's 12:20. He'd been up since 5:00 a.m. Click, zoom,
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  brush. Okay. He shoved back from the desk so hard the chair
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  rolled into the wall. Okay, who's there? Nothing. Ariel.
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  She'd left at 1030. Codon telling him not to stay too
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  late, knowing he would anyway. She had a key. She also had a
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  sense of humor that ran slightly cruel when she was tired. Ariel,
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  if that's you, you got me. Okay, very funny. I said you got me.
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  The fluorescence hummed. He started with the backdrop rack,
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  yanking the rolls aside, peering into the gaps behind them. He
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  tore through the wardrobe rail, shoving hangers down the bar
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  with a long metallic shriek, ripping garment bags open and
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  finding nothing but sequins and silk and tissue paper. He
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  dragged the sandbags off the grip cart. He looked under the
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  tables. He threw open the door of the tiny bathroom, the supply
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  closet, the cabinet under the kitchenette sink. He even looked
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  behind the dress form and felt stupid doing it. No one.
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  Nothing. No telltale heart under the floorboards. Just him
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  breathing hard, standing in the middle of a room that looked
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  like it had been robbed. Made himself breathe in again. In for
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  four. Hold for four. Out for four. That's the job, he told
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  himself. "It's the pressure. This is the big one: make or
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  break. And you've been running on coffee in fear for three
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  days. And he knew that sound better than his own heartbeat.
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  Some nights, lying in bed, he'd close his eyes and watch whole
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  shoots play out against his lids, the lights, the poses, the
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  settings, and under all of it, that sound, it was carved into
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  his gray matter by now. Of course, his brain was playing it
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  back. His brain was tired and scared, and it was doing what
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  tired and scared brains do. Needed to go home, sleep, come
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  back in a few hours with some coffee and fresh eyes, and
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  finish the last few frames like a professional. He cleaned up
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  the mess he'd made, re-rolled the backdrops, rehung the
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  clothes, zipped up the garment bags, dragged the sandbags back
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  into place, straightened the trench coat on the dress form
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  without looking at it too closely. You stay there, he
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  whispered as he patted the sleeves and walked back to his
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  workstation, saving his work and shutting down the monitor, he
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  shrugged into his jacket. All at the door, he hit the switches,
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  and the overheads went dark in reverse-buzz, buzz, buzz-until
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  the only light over his workstation was left-the island.
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  He reached for that switch too. He turned across the studio in
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  the dark. A tiny red light was blinking-the card access light,
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  the one that meant something was being written to the card. It
• 8:29
  was his other camera body. Blink, blink, blink, and then it
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  stopped. He didn't remember crossing the room. The camera
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  was heavy and cold in the sands. He turned it over. The switch
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  still said off. His thumb found the latch on the card door.
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  Before he thought about it, the card popped up, and it was warm.
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  Actually, warm, like something that had been working hard. He
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  set the camera down on the table, carried the card back to
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  his workstation, and woke his computer. He slid the card into
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  the reader. The import window opened. Thumbnails began to fill
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  the grid one after another. The first was dark and grainy, high
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  ISO. The way the camera shot in low light. It took him a second
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  to understand what he was looking at. The back of a man at
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  a desk, hunched in a warm cone of light. The monitor glowing in
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  front of him. It was him. The second was the same, but closer.
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  The third, closer still. His shoulders, the white nub of an
• 9:26
  earbud. The fourth was blurred. His head turned halfway towards
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  the lens, smeared by motion. His mouth slightly open, as if he'd
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  heard something. He had.
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  He'd heard this. Fifth, sixth. The angle drifted as if whoever
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  held the camera were moving around the room with him, one
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  from behind the dress form, one from beside the door, his hand
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  on the deadbolt, one in flat fluorescent white, every light
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  on him standing over the folding table, staring down at the
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  camera, shot from behind him and to the left, so close the back
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  of his jacket filled half the frame, one of him tearing
• 10:08
  through the wardrobe. Mouth wide, mid shout, closer, closer.
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  The last thumbnail loaded, dark again, just the workstation
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  light. The back of his head, so close the focus had fallen
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  apart. Single hairs soft and enormous across the frame.
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  Beyond them blurred the glow of a monitor, and on the monitor, a
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  grid of thumbnails. His breath stopped. Behind him, so close he
• 10:36
  could feel it stir against his neck, came the sound.
• 10:40
  I hope you enjoyed this special spooky season presentation of
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  the Nerdy Photographer podcast. Please leave a review for the
• 10:49
  show; it helps a lot with discovery, new listeners coming
• 10:54
  and finding the podcast, which we really appreciate. This
• 10:58
  episode of the podcast was written, produced by me, Casey
• 11:02
  Fatchett. That's right, I wrote the story. The music by Moby.
• 11:07
  Yes, that Moby. Get free music by Moby for your projects at
• 11:12
  MobyGratis.com. That's MobyGrattis.com. And until next
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  time, everyone, stay safe and stay nerdy.