Hot Shoot

“I think we need more lights.” This photographer, some famous one I had never heard of, was having an affair with an excess of wave-particle duality matter. I was sure he was trying to use photographic lighting melt off what little clothing I had on. This, after I sat in front of the camera shivering in next season’s latest erotic loungewear for almost an hour until he showed up, fresh from the shops, with a whole moving cart full of new lights.

“It’s an untamed technique,” he promised myself and the rest of the crew. I didn’t care, but I was very happy to have so much infrared spectrum shining on me. I went from cold hands to an almost-headache in a matter of five minutes once he had all the lights set up. But then, naturally, “all” seemed to be an incredibly relative term. Naturally, as a famous shooter, he had other photographer friends with lights of their own.

“Can’t you just use a longer exposure?” I muttered to myself. Two of his friends showed up with more lighting and they talked excitedly about this new, preposterously low-ISO film stock that had come out. Apparently the grain was so fine that it was smaller than digital pixels could pick up on a scanning bed. What I understood that to mean was that the sweat dripping from every pore was going to show up on camera and ruin the whole “sharp elegance” campaign we were working on.

One of the lights shorted out, flickering and sparking. Then another, and another. Flames leapt up all around set. I couldn’t move because of all the ridiculous staging we had set up (which had kept me from taking breaks off set to cool down), and as the flames roared through the studio the exotically domestic scene we had so carefully pieced together turned into a furnace. The combustion of all that potential energy felt even worse than the lights had. As I succumbed to the inferno, I could have sworn I heard the camera shutter clicking.