Capturing Beauty by JaNae Boswell (snow like ashes series .txt) 📕

I tried to focus my lens on the drops of dew so apparently clear on the autumn leave. It was spectacularly define through my lens no thanks to the fog or drizzling, light rain. After a series of shots I dropped the camera and rubbed the temples of my wet head, irritated at the world. Such beauty is to be seen and captured by the eye of a photographer but this rain and fog was driving me insane. I continued to rub my face in frustration contemplating if I should just give up for the day.
Sure, rain had manifested art many times for me. Rain had its days when it could portray the beauty of nature. Fog had its days too, they both did, just today wasn’t one of those days. Today was one of those days when fog was thick, dreary and rain made it impossibly cold to capture anything. Neither of them helped my muse anymore than rubbing my eyes was.
I needed something new, something fresh and captivating. Maybe I was in over my head with this photography thing. Perhaps I should have gone to law school like everyone else in my damn family. You think after two years of photography I would love it but there are days like this when I just don’t know. I want to see beauty through the lens, seize it and depict it, but I have yet to truly do so. I mean yes, I have taken pictures that have caught the blindest of eyes. I have confined portraits of such wonder that they have caused awes to escape the most abrasive of critic’s lips.
Yet I have not felt the slightest hint of vanity. My eyes have not seen true beauty before, let alone exemplify it through a photo. Giving it one more shot I tried to focus on a lily pad lying peacefully on the pond I was standing along. It was a serene lily pad but not beautiful or enchanting; it was just a still lily pad. I’ve never been the type to give up, throw in the gloves or tap out; but today I felt like it may have come to that. Frustrated once more I zoomed out to a view across the pond.
Then as though the heavens herd my cry and the fog started to part, as if answering my plea. It wasn’t the fog parting that answered my prayer, rather what I seen when the fog slowly divided across the pond.
I zoomed in to see a young woman, who looked to be in her early twenties. She was drenched, sitting cross legged and staring down at her reflection in the pond. She wasn’t staring at herself in pride or arrogance; instead she seemed as though she was studying her image in uncertainty. The look in her eyes seemed as though she was questioning if it was her she was staring at. She looked almost lost, or perhaps it was distressed. No, she looked lonely and in that loneliness that was painted so evident on her face was sadness.
She was very pretty, though I didn’t attain her whole face through my lens. The position her head was cocked made it so I could only see the left side of her. What made her so picturesque and interesting though was how she stared at herself. She studied herself as though she didn’t know just how stunning she was. On that foggy day by a pond and through the lens of my EOS 5D Mark II cannon digital camera; I found my muse as fast as I had almost lost it. Just think I almost gave up on it all a few minutes ago, thank you whoever you are.
Her wet hair stuck to her face but reminded me of a photograph I took last year in Australia of a raven’s wing. It was black, radiantly sleek and long like a down torrential waterfall. She had a sheer row of bangs that hung just above her eyes. It was like a dark silk curtain covering her forehead and eyebrow. Next were her eyes that were most captivating and fascinating. They were conspicuously mesmerizing but deviously blue-green.
You know the type of eyes that make you double take, stopping you dead in your tracks. You glance not really knowing if they’re blue or green. They were eyes that would catch you from inside a crowd and have you staring with wonder. With her eyes you couldn’t tell if they had more blue or green. Not that I actually cared because they were so stunning and intense I wouldn’t dare look away. From what I could see she had a heart shaped face with angelic features overall to compliment her straight narrow nose. From the position of her head, her lips looked flawless. The top was almost the perfect shape of an M, while the bottom was delectably subtle. Her skin looked delicately smooth like a Kleenex tissue, velvety almost and was a few shades lighter than buttermilk crème.
She was unexpectedly perfect.
I had to photograph her, I just had to. I got up and walked around the pond to introduce myself to her. I wanted to tell her how stunning she was, how she helped me and how I wouldn’t take another photograph in my life unless it was of her. I was about half way over to her when I started to get nervous.
What if she ignored me?
What if she told me to fuck off?
I couldn’t think about the “what if’s” right now, especially not when I was almost to her. I had to think about how I am going to go about asking to take her photograph. I mean it’s not every day you get some creepy guy at the park coming up to you on a fogged rainy day, with a camera no less, wanting to take your picture.
Did I just call myself creepy?
Well, I probably am creepy to her, I mean she is sensationally appealing and well I am sensationally boring. I mean she must be use to handsome, burly, sophisticated men throwing themselves at her. She probably already had an upmarket and refined fiancé waiting for her at home or to join her. In that moment being so close to her, I didn’t care.
I walked up to her expecting her to hear me and turn around. She didn’t though; she just continued to stare at her reflection. The rain made walking quiet, slippery but rather quiet compared to the usual crunch. I walked up behind as the fog played delicately against my face. It wasn’t until I seen my refection mimicking hers that she looked at me. I couldn’t see her face completely through the opaque pond but I could see her eyes piercingly exquisite as they found mine.
She didn’t scream, jump or even say hello; she just stared. Though the pond was murky, her eyes were as intriguing and lucid as ever. She glanced at me, sadness so obvious and definite in her artful depths. It was so quiet I could hear her breathing which was beyond faint compared to the croaks from the various frogs surrounding the mucky pond. Slowly she turned, finally giving me a full view of her face as I held my breath.
That’s when I seen it, the scar.
It was the right side of her face. It was long and in the shape of an upside down y. It extended from end of her right eye brow to the bottom of her chin and split across her cheek to the corner of her mouth. It looked like someone tried to carve her face with a cutting knife of some type. I glanced at the scar, then at her with eyes of sorrow and compassion of some sort. Not because the scar was a fault on my masterpiece because it wasn’t. I did because it was the only reaction I had to the look in her eyes when she seen me glance at it.
It was the most manifesting kind of isolation and loneliness I have ever witnessed with my own two eyes. Her eyes held nothing but the distinct view of misery and woe. In that moment I knew deep in the pits of my soul, I was truly seeing beauty for the first time. It was explicit right in front of my face and all I could do was pray I wasn’t dreaming. It was like seeing the earth from the moon or looking at your first photo featured in a gallery as a photographer.
She was indisputably breathtaking.
All the while she just stared at me with no expression just tenderly desolated eyes. I lifted my camera expecting her to shy away or smile, shit cry even, but she didn’t. She didn’t become timid or egocentric. No, she just stared at me with eyes gentle and despondent. I looked at her through my lens, through the fog and the rain. Then I took her picture, just one and captured beauty for the first time in my life.
Slowly I pulled back from the camera to see if she was still there or if I was imagining it all. She was still sitting there though, staring at me with those eyes and all that beauty. Seconds passed without us saying anything, we just stared. Well, I stared. The air was crisp and cold. The sprinkling rain refreshing, brisk; but she, she was so unbelievably scenic, it hurt to look away.
“Hello,” I finally said in a small scared voice, trying to remember how to breathe.
“Hi,” she said in response with voice that was quiet, almost a whisper.
Just then she turned her head back down staring at her reflection studying herself once more. I looked down at her through the pond like I had before but she didn’t meet my gaze. She stared at her scar with eyes that were still sad, still so full of pain. Slowly she lifted her right hand to her scar, as if to touch it but didn’t. Her hand started to tremble the closer it got to her face. Then she paused before touching her scar and balled her