Phlippin' Photos

[arianna]

Being the school newspaper's photography, Arianna was fortunate enough to have a small room (more like a large closet) in the back for developing her pictures. This meant she could have the pictures ready on her own time instead of having to send them to someone else. The only bad thing about the arrangement, though, was finding out just how many of her pictures didn't turn out. In turn, the girl was going through several rolls of film for one paper.

Despite her artistic nature, Arianna had yet to learn the full range of the 32mm Cannon film camera (her own, since she didn't think the school's would be in top condition). She had the various lenses and had read the manual several times through, but still had trouble getting things right. Oh, she'd have the potential picture set up nicely; as one would expect from an accomplished painter, but quickly found that what came out on film wasn't always what she saw through the lens; usually because shutter speed was too slow and captured too much light or movement, causing the pictures to come out blurry or too bright. Of course this was getting frustrating for the girl. Especially after spending a hard day doing what she could in the lab to try and fix it. Another good thing about developing your own film is that you can adjust lighting problems then. Blurriness, however, it almost impossible to correct.

"I just...don't get it," she muttered to herself as she came out of her work closet, a stack of photographs in her hand. She tossed them onto a desk and shoved herself into the seat behind it then stared. Simply stared at the camera in front of her, expecting it to tell her what to do. It, of course, would tell her to use the automatic setting. Arianna scoffed at that, though. How was she supposed to become a decent photographer if the camera did everything for her? She would use it if needed, but not until she had figured out just how and why all the different settings worked.

{open }

[Esmerelda Mizart]

Es glanced up when someone spoke to her. It was Ari, Nic's girlfriend. She wanted to laugh when she remembered the last time she met up with Nic. That fool was so funny. He was really confusing too. Her eyebrows furrowed and then she realized Ari wasn't talking to her, but she responded anyways.

"Don't get what?"

She asked her. Okay, so it was a strange place for Es to be and many would probably be confused as to why she would be there. In fact, Es was confused as to why she was there. She had started in her Common Room earlier that day. She was sketching because suprisingly, she hadn't sketched in quite awhile. (Obviously too busy to do it with other things more, eh hmm, important distracting her.) So she couldn't really keep her heart in it and she hated throwing away pictures cause she didn't put her heart into them so she just placed her sketch pad lovingly in it's place in her room and headed out.

She didn't know where she was going, most likely out on a walk just to clear her head, or make it more confuzzled. She started out with just walking the halls but was stopped by too many people just to say hi or ask her questions about Brandon. She wanted to rid herself of the thought of him right now and how was she supposed to do that when every five minutes she was being asked the question if they were going out? Rumors flew quickly around her and she couldn't believe the day had come that her life was entertaining enough to be talked about by the student body.

So out onto the grounds she had gone but the sun was shining too bright and she couldn't think. Her emotions and thoughts were bugging her. She used to be able to control her thoughts and emotions and now they were raging out of control. This could possibly be a normal thing many people called hormones. So back inside she went to wander the halls and right as she reached the fourth floor, Ari came out of the Newspaper office. Well then, another distraction. Perhaps this one would be of help.

[arianna]

Arianna looked up at the question, surprised that anyone was in the room. Especially Esmerelda. Arianna didn't think the girl was on the newspaper staff, but that didn't mean she couldn't have recently joined. Whatever. It wasn't important. What was important was that she figured out how to get these dang pictures right.

"Hey, Es," she greeted the girl with a small smile. One that showed just how stressed she was. Arianna always did so well in the art department, whether it be painting, drawing, carving; she had taken up all three without any difficulty at all, mostly learning on her own, and developed her own style that was already being recognized in small art competitions. So why, then, could she not understand the basics of film? She had an excellent eye for what should go on that film, but getting it on there was proving to be a big stress for her.

"I can't figure out why ninety percent of my pictures won't come out right!" she complained, waving her hand over the ruined photographs. "Overdeveloped, underdeveloped...blurry! Why can't I just draw and color the pictures we need? They'd come out a billion times better and we wouldn't need this stupid....box to do it for us!" she picked up the camera and waved it about as she glared at its existence.

Now, let's not get this wrong. Arianna loved photography. She loved looking at it and enjoyed the many ways in which one could use it. Photography was another media of art. And a wonderful one at that.

It just wasn't as much fun when you realized you couldn't do it.

[Esmerelda Mizart]

Actually, Es wasn't on the Newspaper staff. She hadn't even thought of joining, although she would probably be good at it. She was embarassed that she was in there for no reason and hadn't even realized it. But she was glad Ari hadn't brought up that fact. She flashed her a smile when she greeted her. She walked over to the photos Ari had barely just developed and understood why she looked so tired and stressed. She felt sympathy for the girl.

"I didn't know you drew. So do I, I love it.. "

She flashed her a reassuring smile, hoping it would comfort her a bit and perhaps a subject change was in order. However, she wasn't ready for one just yet. When Es had a problem placed before her, she tried to figure out the answer or solution to it. She didn't just wanna comfort Ari, she wanted to help her. She looked at the pictures and let out a "Mmm.." Es glanced at her.

"Well, have you asked them if you can just draw the pictures for it? It looks like it would be a lot easier.."

She paused, looking at the pictures again.

"and you'd probably save them some money..."

She added softly, giving her a small, apologetic smile. Es looked over the pictures and realized she could draw and color them too. It didn't look that hard, really. And it would come out a billion times better than the pictures Ari had tried to take. Plus it would give her something to distract... eh hmm... do. She turned to her, tucking her long black hair behind her ear.

"Ya know, Ari, I could help you draw and color some of these if they actually let you do it. That is, if you wanted my help.."

She offered. Okay, she'd admit it. But to herself only. She wanted to help Ari because she wanted something else to do to distract herself. She had tried just about everything she could think of to distract herself and nothing had worked! As if she hadn't thought about Brandon before they kissed, now she was a mess! And it was really starting to bug her. But she knew that if she had something like this to do, something she had to concentrate on, she could keep him off her mind for at least a little while.

[arianna]

"Yup. Been drawing for as long as I can remember," Arianna spoke matter-of-factly, her head bobbing in a short nod. She could actually remember being eight years old and having one of her drawings destroyed by someone older who felt the talent was wasted on the girl. Arianna hadn't stopped then, though, but used her art to escape from the world whenever she felt the need. She wished she could do it more often, but schoolwork always beaconed to be done first.

"I was even going to work on a comic strip for the paper, too, but I'm spending all my time on these," she motioned to the stack of pictures, shaking her head. The photos were actually supposed to save more time than drawing would. After all, you couldn't immediately capture a quidditch moment with paper and charcoal. And by the time you did, it was likely that a few things were embellished or forgotten. With the way her brain worked, taking a nearly perfect picture of something she noted as art-worthy, Arianna usually did more embellishing than forgetting, which wasn't always true to the moment and exposed more her emotions at that time than what was going on. Even so, Arianna could see possibilities in Es' suggestion.

"Really?" she asked, her eyes wide with excitement over the prospect. Oh how she hoped Felicity would okay it. Arianna would find an excuse to make this paper a special edition with few or no pictures. Only drawings. It would even give her more time to work out her camera troubles. "That would be great. I need a break from the film anyway and I think we can convince the editor if we get a few drawings done now."

Arianna was already digging through her bag, pulling out school book after school book and setting aside on a nearby desk. Next came a box of fresh quills, several bottles of ink in various colours, and a large roll of parchment. Then, reaching even further into her bag, and showing just how impossibly big and Mary Poppins-like her bag was, the girl produced a large art box, proving just how serious she was about art once she opened it, exposing a variety of coloured pencils, pastels, charcoals, watercolours, brushes, and oil paints; each neatly arranged on their own trays. Arianna grinned as she gazed down at what she thought of as one of her most prized possessions. Every time she opened her art box, she felt as though she had stepped into a toy store. And indeed, in her mind, she had.

[Esmerelda Mizart]

Es flashed her a smile when she told her how long she'd been drawing, she couldn't remember, that was how long.

"Me too.."

She added. So, they had more in common than they had previously thought. Not that they particularly took time out of their lives to hang out and really get to know eachother, but she knew Ari was a really nice girl. For Es, her drawings were the best thing she could remember about her recent childhood. Up until she was eleven, she had always had Landon to play with. He would give her piggybacks and treat her magic tricks that she couldn't do yet. But when she could, she knew them better because of him.

Then when he was gone her parents walked around like they were zombies, trying to hold onto the thing they used to call life. Their love had died and been buried along with Landon. Then again, they couldn't exactly bury him, they couldn't find all of his body parts. She knew when she was tiny she would draw a flower and give it to Landon. The delight that radiated from her was obvious and Landon thoroughly encouraged it. So to get away from the numbness she felt, Es went back to drawing. She could escape it all for awhile and found out she wasn't all that bad at drawing.

Es could feel the delight swelling up in her again as she told her that it would be great for her to help. She rushed over to Ari's side and watched as she pulled out all of her drawing toys. Oh the fascination! Ari had all kinds of colors that she could only dream of. The funny thing was, she wasn't amazed by how much stuff Ari pulled out of her bag, she was amazed at all the many things she had. She could do so much with this!

"Where'd you get these?"

She breathed, inspecting them carefully, but not picking them up out of respect for Ari. Es didn't know whether she was the type to freak out if somone else touched her colors or not. She wasn't going to touch them without permission and so Es conjured up the usual things she used. She had elementary colors, some unusually pretty colors, a couple of paint brushes, parchment, and of course her sketchbook. She wasn't one to really paint so most of her pretty supplies were sketching pencils. She loved her charcoal pencil as well as the ones that made her sunsets melt into blue. Es tucked her long black hair behind her ear and pulled up a chair, ready to get started anytime Ari was ready.

This was an awesome thing. Here she was, getting ready to draw pictures for the school newspaper with Arianna. The awesome thing was that all the pretty colors were distracting her for once. It was wonderful, to be distracted from being distracted. She opened up her sketchbook, studying a few of her recent sketches to make sure they were really done. Many of her sketches were of sunsets or sunrises, they always fascinated her. She loved getting the colorization just right. Others were of flowers or random people she was able to catch. She loved her sketchbook more than almost anything in the world.

[arianna]

"Various places," Arianna replied simply, smiling to herself as she looked over her pride and joy laying in the box. If she was ever anal about anything, it was this box of art supplies. Everything else in her life was always in a constant state of 'organized mess' as she liked to put it. Allegra Thornton would think her bed area a disaster, but Arianna did keep things picked up, if not necessarily where they should go. Everything was where she could find it, though, and that was the important thing.

But this box...oh, it was a different story. Every pencil, every crayon, every tube of paint, and every brush was arranged by colour, shade, size and use and any half-empty tubes or small pencils were organized in the very top tray so she could know which ones she needed to buy next shopping trip. Like many serious artists, Arianna did not buy any of her supplies in boxes, but individually. Yes, it does seem more expensive, but was it really worth buying boxes of Crayola's and end up with several brown pencils because you never use that colour?

"The best place is not too far from Diagon," she went on to explain, smiling over Es' excitement. That was another thing about Arianna's box. Not just anyone could touch her paints. She had made a few exceptions and let some of the Ravenclaws use the finger paints she kept at the bottom, but aside sharing with Krissy, no one else had had the privilege to set a finger on anything inside. "Rows and rows of every media in every colour you can imagine. Here..." she pushed her box toward Es, inviting her inside her little world of art. "use anything you want."

[Esmerelda Mizart]

They were very amazing and Es was a tad bit envious of Arianna for having them. But it was her fault that she never really had searched out colors. She just kind of let them come to her and it had worked for the most part. Until she saw Ari's huge collection, that is. However, she pushed the jealousy aside and shared in her world of wonder and happiness. She couldn't imagine how many people have probably tried to touch it and she freaked out at them. She was happy when Ari told her a good place to go. She'd definitely have to go check it out.

Es let out a small gasp as Ari pushed her magical box of wonder towards her. She looked to Ari, as if unbelieving. Admiration filled her. She wasn't sure she could share if she had such a glorious box such as that. She choose and carefully lifted a light blue from the box. Beautiful. No, gorgeous.

"Thank you.."

She breathed, taking it all in. Okay, so maybe Es was a bit weird sometimes. But come'n, we're talking about the mama of all coloring boxes she had ever seen, ever even dreamed of. She snapped out of it for a moment to look over at Ari, and then down to the paper she had conjured.

"What am I supposed to be drawing?"

She asked softly. She was blushed from delight.

[arianna]

"Well...." Arianna grabbed the pile of photographs and flipped through them, digging for the best of the worst. If one looked close enough, they could see that there was potential for some excellent pictures. She just had to get past that annoying problem with the shutter. Of course, maybe someone would see exactly why she had a problem once they saw just where she had been taking her pictures.

"Mermaids," she answered simply, setting the photograph in front of Es. It really wasn't all that bad, really. Just a bit dark and fuzzy. Arianna had dared to take her camera out into the lake, hoping to get some sort of special feature in the next issue. Looking at the pictures, one would have thought she had gotten up close and personal with the creatures, but Arianna wasn't that stupid. She had one of those zoom lenses that could take a picture of a bird from several hundred feet away and make it look as though the camera person had been standing just feet in front of the subject. Thus she had been able to observe at a distance and take pictures of the creatures she had only before heard rumours of but now had proof that they did indeed live in the lake.

[Esmerelda Mizart]

Es glanced up at Ari as she started flipping through the photos but was soon distracted again by her box of magic. When she knew what she wanted her to draw, she'd draw it. But other than that, she was gonna stare at those amazing things for as long as she could. Because, obviously she wouldn't be seeing them everyday. This would probably be the only time, in fact. Considering they had been at the same school for seven years and this was the first time she had seen this box. But either way, it was a miracle she was here, now, with it and Ari. What a nice girl.

As Ari set the mermaid picture down in front of her, she let out a squee of joy. Mermaid's were a beautiful thing to sketch. She hadn't experimented with them much but she knew that they took a lot of blending of beautiful colors and that she was perfect at. She nodded at Ari and flashed her an excited smile. Es picked up her pencil to start sketching out the picture. Sketch first, color later. That was how it usually went. Except in special cases, like sunsets. Which was the thing she sketched most but that wasn't the point. The point of this writers babbling is to portray how excited Es was. Got it? XD

[arianna]

Arianna pulled a few pencils out of the box, then returned them. She then reached for the crayons before pulling her fingers back again. She didn't know what she wanted to use this time. She loved both and that seemed to cause a problem...which did she want to use more? Arianna couldn't decide and instead reached for the charcoal. She could draw first and then decide on the colouring later.

"Wait....what're you drawing?" Arianna glanced over to Es' picture, a slight frown on her lips. Okay, she knew her pictures weren't all that good, but were they bad enough that Es couldn't see what they really looked like? She was drawing something pretty...which was so not what the mermaids looked like. Maybe in their own way, they were, but Arianna had found them a far cry from the pictures everyone drew of the creatures. She supposed there were those that were actually pretty, but the ones she found were a sickly grey with green hair. Not exactly horrible or ugly, but...definitely not as pretty as the versions they were used to seeing.

"I guess you can't really see their faces, huh?" Arianna picked up the picture and turned it this way and that. She couldn't blame Es for drawing something different than what she had actually seen. Not with as awful as the photos were. "That's okay, though. I know what they look like. Maybe we can do a piece about how different they are from what most people imagine. They really weren't as pretty as in your drawing and you're too good not to get your stuff published."

[Esmerelda Mizart]

Es jerked her head towards Ari when she asked what she was drawing.

"Mermaids."

She replied simply. She looked to her mermaids and then to the picture of the mermaids that Ari had given her. Es wanted to smack herself. She felt like an idiot.

"No, it's okay, I wasn't looking at the mermaids, I was just drawing them the way that I see them when I think of them. But you're right, they're actually pretty scary looking... Sorry I messed up."

Yeah, she felt like a total dork. Sometimes when she drew she didn't actually look at what she was drawing, she drew what she felt coming from the inside. In this incident, she couldn't help it. Everyone advertised them as beautiful, spiritual, almost goddess-like creatures. Why did they say they were like them when the ones in the lake weren't like that? They were ugly creatures who were selfish and despicable. She had seen them only a couple of times but didn't like the feelings they left inside her when she managed to escape their captivating presence. Perhaps other mermaids really were pretty, but they just had the ugly ones. She shook her head.

"Not really, but it's totally not your fault."

She placed the pencil she had in her hand on the table top and frowned. Not at Ari or the pencil, but at herself. The first time to do anything professional with her artistic ability, and she screwed up her first try. Well, at least the picture wasn't a bad one, just not what the photograph was. At least she hadn't gotten very far with it. She was starting to go into the detailing before coloring it when Ari had stopped her. She shook her head once again, tucking her long black hair behind her ear and looking to Ari.

"No, it's okay. I wasn't very far, I can start over and draw it the way your picture looks. Sorry, again."

She bit her lip and hoped her pinks weren't red from embarassment. Great, now Ari was going to think she was either totally weird or blind.