Beneath the Wide Silk Sky by Emily Inouye Huey

Author:Emily Inouye Huey [Inouye Huey, Emily]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2022-10-02T00:00:00+00:00

“She said she’d develop it?” Hiro’s face mirrored my elation. Out the window of his truck, pine trees flipped by. “Then you just have to take the shot. Let’s go get the camera.”

“Right now?” I laughed. “Just go take a prizewinning shot? It’s that easy?”

Hiro grinned. “For you, sure.” He gave me a look that made my stomach squeeze.

I blushed and turned so he couldn’t see my face.

There was something different about the way Hiro was talking to me today. He’d taken Kiki—who for once didn’t have arrangements with friends—home after school, then had come back and picked me up after I finished a biology lab.

Like that day when I’d stayed to talk to Beau, Hiro had come back just for me. A part of me knew he felt some sort of duty to make sure I didn’t run into trouble again. But another part felt like he … wanted to give me a ride. Was I imagining it?

I thought of the way Kiki talked about boys liking her, and I shook the idea from my mind. I didn’t want to start assuming things like she did.

“There’s a lot that has to come together,” I said.

“Like what?” he asked.

“Well, the lighting’s the trickiest part to time. You have to shoot when the light is right, or it doesn’t matter what else you do.”

“Is this light not okay?” Hiro asked.

I looked up at the sun. The shadows it threw were hard and cold. “It depends what you’re photographing, I guess, and how you want the final shot to feel.”

My eyes darted to his face. He gave me a look that said, “Go on.”

“Some light is soft. Some is harsh. It can make your shot feel upbeat. Or moody. Or warm or stark or even eerie. It depends what you want. People think you just point the camera and press a button. But really so much has to go right. Everything has to shuffle into place just so.” I gazed out the window at the harshly lit forest. “You have to find the right subject at exactly the right time, with the right light, from the right angle. And that’s all before you even touch the camera settings. The aperture, shutter speed, even the film—they can all completely change the feel of the photo.” I held up my fingers, as if marking a shot. “Then—click! You have less than a second to capture it. But when you do, it’s magic.”

I let my fingers fall to my lap and peeked up at Hiro. His lips twitched. “I got carried away, didn’t I?”

Hiro’s eyes crinkled. “You definitely know what you’re doing.”

I bit my lip. I wasn’t trying to show off. “It’s just … It’s what I love about photography.”

He nodded. “Is this light wrong, then?”

“For the photo I’m thinking of.”

“Guess I’ll take you home, then.” His mouth twisted, and the look he gave me—disappointment, maybe?—made my stomach squeeze again.

Hiro pulled onto Main Street. “What’s that?” I asked, pointing at a trio of figures gathered in front of McClatchy’s General.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.