Photography

By Rida Shahariyar

I met him in a quiet bar off Westwood. One of those half-forgotten places that still smells like spilled beer from the 1980s. I was nursing a drink, killing time between assignments. He sat two stools over, drinking something dark.

“You shoot?” he asked, out of nowhere. I laughed. “All the time.”

He smiled at that. Worn face. Hard eyes. Military cut, even though he wasn’t in uniform.

We got to talking. I told him I was a photographer, mostly freelance. Portraits. Events. Sometimes warzones, if the price was right. He said he traveled too. Didn’t say much about the work. Just that he “took care of things from a distance.”

We talked for a long time. About lenses. Light. Timing. And what it meant to take the perfect shot.

“It’s not just aim,” he said, swirling his drink. “It’s patience. Breathing. Waiting for that one moment everything aligns.”

“Yeah,” I said, leaning in. “People think it’s the camera. But really, it’s your instinct. That gut twitch. That second where something…clicks.”

He nodded slowly. “Exactly.”

We talked about isolation. How you have to be removed to do it right. How detachment sharpens focus. He told me about sitting on rooftops for hours. Said the best shots came when he didn’t blink for minutes at a time.

“Sometimes you only get one,” he said. “One shot. One chance.” I understood.

I told him about the girl in Kandahar. Twelve years old. One shoe missing. Dust in her hair like ash. The photo I took of her made it to Time’s front page. But I never saw her again. Never even learned her name. I didn’t have to.

“You feel guilty?” he asked. “No,” I said. “It’s just the job.”

He smirked. “Yeah. That’s what I tell myself, too.”

There was a pause. Not long. Just enough to let something crawl into the silence. Then he asked, “You ever have to wait? Watch someone for days? Just to make sure?”

“Sometimes,” I said. “Clients want candids. The raw stuff. You follow someone long enough, you see who they really are.”

He looked impressed. Or maybe something else.

“You develop a feel for the rhythm of their life,” I added. “Their weak points. When they least expect it.”

His eyes lit up. “Exactly.”

The bartender refilled our glasses without asking. We toasted. Didn’t say what to. Just nodded, drank, and went quiet again.

“You ever miss?” I asked, half a smile on my face. He didn’t smile back. “Once.”

I waited, but he didn’t say more.

Eventually, he asked if I wanted to step outside. “Smoke?” I don’t smoke. Never have. But I went with him.

The alley was quiet. Cold. Only one flickering streetlight.

He lit a cigarette and looked up at the dark windows above the bar. “You ever feel like someone’s got you in their sights?” he asked.

I shrugged. “Sometimes. Comes with the job.”

He looked at me for a long time. Really looked. Then he smiled.

“That’s how you know the shot’s about to come.”

He turned and walked off into the dark, smoke trailing behind him. I stood there for a while, heart in my throat.

And that’s when I realized it didn’t feel like he was talking about photography anymore.

By Rida Shahariyar