The Shadow Test

September ninth. Simone got a new phone. I know this because she spent the last twenty minutes of our post-climb wind-down not talking about the climb but about what the camera does with a shadow. She photographed the corridor wall. She photographed the vending machine. She photographed the corkboard at an angle I have never thought to try.

Then she showed me the results and I experienced something I can only describe as equipment envy, which is a feeling I thought I had already processed when I bought my own camera years ago and decided I was serious about this. Apparently that processing has an expiration date.

The specific thing she showed me was a shadow, one of the overhead lights catching the edge of a posted flyer, and the gradation in the shadow was very, very clean. She said something like 'look at the detail in the midtones' and I said 'yes' in the voice of someone who knows what midtones are and was not at all rattled.

My phone and I are having a quiet moment

I looked at my own phone on the way out. It is a perfectly functional phone. It has done nothing wrong. I am not replacing it. But I did stand there for a second thinking about late-afternoon light on the windowsill, and the cord, and whether what I thought was a camera limitation was actually just me not standing still enough. The prints are still against the kitchen wall, undecided. The phone is still in my pocket. Simone is probably already photographing something else.