In Focus

As part of a travel writing class, we were given a 500-word memoir assignment: Revisit a photograph from a trip, return to the exact moment it was taken, and write about what we were doing and thinking at the time. This essay is the result.

My son and I set out for a day on the beach near the water in front of our hotel in Virginia Beach. I wanted to get some photos of us before we got sweaty, sandy, and sunburned. This was something he had become accustomed to: me wanting to get some photos of us. A pre-digital selfie with the tools of the day: a Nikon 8008s film camera, Fuji Superia film, a small tripod, manual focus, and the in-camera timer.

My son, young and somewhat patient, was lying where I had positioned him, waiting while I finished setting up the camera.

Lying in the sand behind the camera, I adjusted the tripod in the loose sand to level the camera. Not always an easy task. I then set the focus, gauged the light, adjusted the aperture and shutter speed, and set the in-camera timer.

I pressed the shutter button, got up, and moved quickly.

Dropped into the sand beside him.

He climbed up onto my back.

We both looked at the camera.

And we waited for the click of the shutter.

This was one of our first summer trips after my divorce. I wanted my son to know that life would go on and that we would be okay. There was no manual for those years, so I followed my instincts and carried a camera everywhere, documenting beach trips, hikes, ball games, and ordinary afternoons I didn’t want either of us to forget. Photographs couldn’t replace the experience, but they could help preserve it.

And yet, with all these heavy life issues, in that exact moment, lying in the sand with my son on my back, us staring back at the camera, what was I thinking? I hope we are in focus. I hope the exposure’s right. I hope we got set up in time.

Since I was shooting film, only time would tell. We would need to wait for it to be processed before seeing the results. No instant confirmation or gratification here.

Looking back, it seems almost trivial. At a time when my son and I were adjusting to a new chapter in our lives, my biggest concern was whether the photograph would be in focus and properly exposed.

In the film era, you sometimes didn’t discover you had missed the shot until days later when the prints came back from the lab. And I didn’t want ours to be one of those lost moments.

Turns out, the entire roll came out just fine.

More importantly, so did we.

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