The Middle One

July thirty-first.

Three frames. Same block. Same light, same angle, same gray concrete with the afternoon shadow cutting across it at the same place. I took them about forty seconds apart and they are, I have looked at them side by side enough times to say this confidently, nearly identical. There is a small difference in where the shadow edge falls relative to a crack in the pavement. That is the whole difference.

I showed them to Simone at the end of our shift on Tuesday. I turned the camera toward her and said pick one, and before I had quite finished the sentence she put her finger on the screen, the middle one, and went back to tying her apron. No deliberation. I said how did you do that and she said the shadow has a tiny bit more room to breathe and then walked away. I stood there for a second. The thing is, I had already decided it was the middle one before I showed her. I think I was testing myself rather than asking. I think I already knew that too.

Simone pointing at the middle one without hesitating.

I have been trying to articulate what the workshop taught me, and I kept landing on technique, light direction, frame discipline, when to stop shooting, but that is not actually it. What it taught me is that I have preferences and I have had them for longer than I admitted. The choosing is not the hard part. The hard part is trusting the choosing before you have enough evidence to justify it. Three identical frames and one obvious answer: that is the whole arithmetic.

The camera is on the hook by the door now, next to my keys. Not on the shelf above the coat rack, not in the bag I almost didn't buy. On the hook. That happened without me making a decision about it, which I think means the decision got made.