He’s been waiting the whole day for this moment. Since 4AM in the morning he’s been looking forward to taking this picture and finally his patience is being rewarded. In a bright red cabrio sports car the movie stars are heading in his direction. He takes a few pictures and walks closer to the crossroads. Exactly as he planned the traffic light jumps to red and the car has to stop. He takes a few more shots and waves excitedly to the couple. Normally these movie stars don’t like paparazzi, but they can tell that this young man is different. It turns out to be the photographer’s lucky day. “We’re heading to a party, do you want to join us?” they ask him. “But only if you promise not to take any pictures there, since there will be many more celebrities.” The photographer doesn’t have to think for even a second. He happily puts his camera in the bag and jumps into the back of the sports car. The traffic light turns green and off they go. 📷

He packed his cameras and lenses deliberately. It was more gear than a typical shoot, but this one would be different. He had chosen the bag for mobility, and his choices were pushing the limits of what it could contain while still giving him the speed of access he needed.

This assignment was going to be different. He had known that for the week, hanging over him as a reminder in the back of his head. He looked up at the awards on the wall. Each cataloged a moment when he had been in the right place at the right time.

What the awards did not and could not acknowledge was that he had simply known what the right place at the right time would be. He didn't know how he knew. That part was still a huge mystery. It now appeared it would always be so. It's too late now to worry about figuring out how. When he made the news tonight, it was one of the first things they would say. "The award-winning photographer." "The man who captured so many iconic moments."

He looked down at his bag. The battered Sony was only a year old and already showing age from the demands of daily press coverage. There was also his grandfather's ancient Olympus. The camera that had captivated him so many years ago when he was so young. It was the camera that had started his whole cursed journey in photography. Grandad had shown him the cramped, claustrophobic room under the stairs in the basement of the old house. It had been so strange: reels on the shelf, the enlarger on the counter, the film and prints hanging from the wire, the chemical smells of traditional imaging. He had grown up in a digital world, but Grandad had shown him the magic of silver.

He would dangle the old film camera from his shoulder next to the digital. When he captured the early moments, the digital would be the first images transmitted. They would be the precursors, the story before the story. He just knew that. But the film, quickly spun back into its metal canister and buried deep in his pocket, would be the iconic image to survive and remember The Day. It was analog history in a temporary digital world. He just knew they would recover it from the body and rush in frantic despair to find a lab, any obscure lab, that could still handle it on this day. It would bear scars of the violence of its creation and the near tragedy of its handling. It alone would be a visual testament to the moment that happened. And despite all the risks and poor odds, it would win him a posthumous Pulitzer. That image would be everywhere overnight.

He accepted the supernatural truth of it, opened the door, and headed out to do his job.

I wanted to travel the world. The only thing I was I’m not good with math or debating, so any of those jobs were off the table. I was the artist type, who sees the world in a different light. I became a photographer. I wanted to travel the globe and share it with other people. And I still do it. I’ve met amazing people and seen incredible things that most have never seen. That is my job.

Jon’s pants itched. Scratching them, he readjusted his position in the bush he was in. It rustled. He hoped nothing had heard.

Bugs the size of his eyes buzzed around, making that annoying sound everyone hated: the whining of a mosquito.

Swatting away approximately 20 bugs having a feast on his pant leg, he wondered why he had wanted this job.

Then he saw them. The cheetah mother and her kits. He’d been trying to find them ever since he spotted them on his drone, doing a check for wildlife.

The mother stopped and lay in the grass. Her kits tumbled over to her, mewling for milk.

The mother fed them, then nudged them to a little hollow. She padded off, probably to go hunting.

Carefully, jon snapped a few photos of the kits, then used the drone to track the mother, making it hover while she caught an antelope.

She was coming back. She fed the kits more, and then led them to the top of a hill, almost as though to pose. He knew she was just smelling the air, but he always felt, when an animal made the perfect position, it was posing for him.

He snapped another photo. He loved this job.

Salty, real name Steven Harrison, packed the small bag with clothes and the big bag with camera equipment.

His luggage choices mirrored his life choices. Since boyhood, he’d always been much more interested in capturing the beauty of the world around him than in trying to look good himself.

The small bag had three of everything - t-shirt, jeans, underwear and tube socks - a tube of laundry detergent and a piece of rope he could string for drying. The only shoes he needed were the ones on his feet.

The camera equipment, on the other hand, was anything but nondescript. He was a connoisseur of photography technology - he acquired every new innovation, often before it hit the market. For insurance purposes, he estimated his travel bag alone had equipment worth $25,000, but it was worth so much more to him than that.

As a professional landscape photographer, Salty traveled all over the world. But for this shoot he wasn’t going far. He was headed two hours east to the small dying mill town where he grew up. The town historian had asked him for a favor. Would be come shoot the town before it completely crumbled into the ground from neglect? How could he say no.

As he drove into town that afternoon, Salty looked around and realized he really should have said no to this poject. At first blush he saw no beauty worth photographing, no visuals worth preserving. The town had fallen on such hard times since he was a school boy there, it was essentially unrecognizable.

Then, as he rounded the corner from Main onto 2nd Street, wondering out loud what he could photograph that would do the towns’s rich history justice, he saw her. Had she never left? Was she back? It didn’t matter.

In her he had the embodiment of the rugged beauty and understated elegance of this town, of what it had been for generations of residents. The first picture he took would have to be of her.

Bryn was an introvert at heart preferring to tell his stories through a series of pictures. Never indulging much in the way of conversation at star studded parties, charity or prize giving events he’d simply nod or utter a few words where appropriate.

Bryn, a world renowned photographer, is a tortured soul. He’d met his kindred spirit at the age of five and his mission, really, was to find her again no matter what and at any cost. Her, being Sara.

At eighteen she’d declared her love for him whilst staring into the lense of his Nikon F2; too stunned yet elated to say anything at all Bryn had stuttered and merely smiled. But at the same time he had captured her essence in just one single click. It would haunt him for the rest of his life.

And that was the last time he ever saw her.

Bryn’s quest to find her over the next thirty three years; his burning desire, obsession and depression all journaled via an all mechanical, antiquated single-lens reflex camera. Some of the most insanely, exquisite women imprisoned onto a thirty five millimetre film; aching to mean something in his life but never being able to quite compare.

And Bryn would travel the world searching and taking his pictures. Once he even thought he had seen her, but he couldn’t know for sure as he wasn’t quick enough to grab his camera and anyway the crowds had somewhat engulfed them both at such an alarming speed.

The night of Bryn’s “Torn” exhibition was a stormy one. It was non-stop rain with most of the guests arriving bedraggled and a bit annoyed. That didn’t stop his work being bought though - all but one photograph forever present at every exhibition but never for sale. Sara.

Bryn silently paced the floor and he felt he could never be at peace. His life had felt like one wretched stretch; trying to feel what he had felt in those very few minutes when she realised he was the one. How cruel life can be and how he finally no longer wanted to participate.

The knocking at the window was slow and echoey. A lonely figure had been watching him from afar, waiting for the last couple to leave. The hairs on the back of Bryn’s neck rose as her voice resonated through the empty hall.

“Hello Bryn. It’s me. Sara.”

It must have been the focus ring. It was misaligned. Happened when Drew had dropped the bag getting off the plane. Shit.

Yeah. That was it. It was the only explanation.

Drew fiddled with the controls, deleted the picture, hell- deleted the last five, ten.

Start again. He told himself. Again.

He knew how important it would be for him to nail the assignment. Candids of the common people. What a trite byline.

He snapped another. This one was in focus! Huzzah!

But… it was still off. The shutter speed must have been off. The passerby looked like a living streak, stretching the length of the frame and then some.

Ugh. Delete.

He fussed with the shutter speed and, preemptively, adjusted the f. Stop, the iso and once more spun the focus ring back and forth, close and far and in between.

Whatever the problem was, he had to have gotten it. Now he just had to wait for the right someone to come along.

And wait.

And wait some more.

He did look up just in time to see the end of a proposal, perfect and pristine, any photogs dream on a tourists bridge. And also over.

He swore under his breath. He raised his camera, clicked the button with an indifferent tap.

The snapshot on the lcd screen smiled back; a perfect candid of no one in particular and yet perfectly captured the crowd as a unit.

Some coming, some going. Some blurs, others crisply in his window of critical focus.

That was it. Or a window to it.

He smiled, remembering why he did this job. Then he took another.

The idea for a photographer finds something unique and memorable, for many of them, takes ages; however, the majority remain unprofessional, just doing it for the close circle of people. One brief moment could change the fate of the object and our hero. Antony, for a fantastic shot, would get hidden corners of our planet; nevertheless, the best photo he did near his home, he captured a girl crying and laughing at the exact moment

Behind the camera lense I hide Hiding my face and instead looking at the more beautiful ones. The woman I was photographing Beautiful. Pure beauty. She looked nothing like me She was the image of grace and elegance. Me on the other hand. Scruffy Untidy Unwanted Just some other lost soul looking for a place to go. But I guess we all are. No one fits in. We all make our own place we belong. I am a puzzle piece. And I have found my place.

A single block of colour One lonely pixel Filling the phone’s screen And then she zooms out Slowly Slowly More blocks appear Adding to the lonely pixel Sharpening the tighter she pinches The screen

And at first it looks like A child’s Pixel Art drawing Just random blocks that make no sense D5ACA9, EBCFB2, B38D97 But slowly Slowly The blocks compress To reveal two shining, happy faces Full of life and youthful joy Engagement pictures

One lonely pixel is part of Billions that make up a photo In the same way that one lonely person Is part of billions that make up society And human life But the things that make up pictures Are not the photos themselves In the same way that a world cannot be Defined by its people But rather, its full beauty

Photos aren’t just images on a screen They’re beautiful memories captured In time, frozen moments Preserved forever where you can see them And the whole design is admired Rather than the tiny building blocks

Even so, those pixels are needed In the same way you are needed You are loved Even if you feel small You are important

Love yourself, the celebrity photographer says, shielding her eyes subtly from flashing lights, and she ends her speech to whistles and applause and the curtains close

as does the Photos app as the celebrity photographer now weakened with age smiles down at her late sisters’ engagement photos.