The tourist who asked if I could "fix the exposure" on his phone photo

A man on the beach yesterday, watching me pin wet paper to a board in the wind, came over and asked if I could "fix the exposure" on a photo he'd taken of his wife. He had his phone out, already scrolling for it. I said this is not that kind of photography. He looked at the blue print, then at his screen, then back, and said oh, so it's like a filter.

I didn't correct him. I just held the paper down and let the sun do its work while he walked off. But I've been turning it over all evening. Everything I do is slow and uncertain and half out of my control, and people keep wanting it to be a shortcut to something else. Nobody asks a painter if they can just crop it.

Maybe it's my fault for working in public. The sea makes people think everything is easy.

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Sol Reyes·1d

The filter thing is the part that would've broken me honestly. Not in a mean way, I can't even blame him, it's just this total gap between what he was looking at and what he thought he was looking at. You're out there fighting the wind holding wet paper down and he sees an app.

I get it with people seeing my charcoal work and asking what software I used. Software. I'm like, the software was my hands shaking for four hours and a stick of graphite that cost three dollars.

But I think what gets me about your story is that you didn't correct him. I don't know if I could've done that. I'd have wanted to explain the whole thing, the sun, the waiting, the not knowing how it'll come out, and I'd have just sounded like a dick about it probably. Letting him walk off with the filter thing hanging there takes a kind of quiet I don't always have. Good on you for that.

Giulia Bruno·1d

The hands shaking for four hours line, that got me. It's the same with printmaking, people think the plate is the hard part and the press does the rest, like the machine is where the labor lives. No. The labor is in the hundred bad proofs you pulled before that one, and in deciding which of the hundred was wrong and why.

And yeah, not correcting him. I keep doing that too. I think part of me is tired of explaining, but the other part is that I don't actually want him to understand. There's something in keeping the slow work obscure. If he'd gotten it, it would've cost me something. Does that make sense or am I just making peace with being a snob about it?

Inês CostaOP·1d

That part you said, about not wanting him to understand. That hit me. I've never been able to say it that plainly, but yes. There's a kind of protection in it. Not secrecy exactly, just that some things lose their shape the moment you have to make them legible to someone standing there with a phone.

The printmaking thing is true too. The press is where people think the magic is, but it's the hundred bad proofs that teach your hands what they know. Nobody watches those hours so they can't see them. And I think that's fine. The work carries it anyway.

It costs something every time you explain. You said it better than I could have.

Inês CostaOP·1d

The charcoal thing hit me somewhere real. Four hours and your own hands and they ask for the software recipe. It's not even that they mean harm, it's that the whole frame is off and there's no quick way to hand them the other one.

I didn't correct him because I couldn't find the words that would fit in the time he was willing to stand there. He'd already decided what the thing was. Some days I have it in me to talk about the sun and the tide and the waiting, and some days the wind is taking the paper and I just want to pin it down and let it dry.

I've been wondering if the gap is growing, or if it was always this wide and the phones just made it visible.

Sol Reyes·1d

The "so it's like a filter" bit got me. That's the whole thing right there, the way people flatten everything down to something their phone can do in two seconds. I get this a lot with my charcoal stuff, people ask if I can just make it look more like a photo, and I want to scream that I'm not trying to get it TO a photo, I'm trying to get it AWAY from one.

The slow uncertain half-out-of-your-control part is the whole point though. You can't outsource that to an app. That's the part that costs something. The sun doing its work is the part he walked away from, and he'll never know he missed it.

Inês CostaOP·1d

the getting away from a photo part, yes. that's exactly it. everything I do is a fight against the easy picture, against the thing that's already finished before you've even looked at it. the sun and the salt decide, not me. that's the whole point and it's also the part nobody can see while you're doing it.

and you're right that he walked away from the only part that mattered. I kept thinking about that this evening, him scrolling back to his wife on the screen while my paper was still out there turning in the light. he'll think of the filter and never know what he missed. some days that makes me sad, other days I think it's fine. the work isn't for that moment anyway.