photos aren't mine

[Zoe Wallerstein-Smythe]

"These photos aren't mine...?" Zoe had to phrase it like a question as she stared down at the gathered photos. Someone had taken down most of what had apparently been developed and set aside, and stacked everything together. As silly as she knew it was, Zoe had originally thought that everything in the pile had been hers and hers alone. She did know there were other students: there was a photography club after all, but she'd thought that she was the only one currently working on something.

Much to her surprise, she found herself staring at photographs that she definitely did not remember doing. The Brit frowned as she shuffled through them. Whoever had organized the photographs had done a brilliant job of messing things up: there was no rhyme or reason behind the assortment. Zoe would flip through several photos in a row that were hers before hitting pictures that she'd never taken.

"They are quite good though," she said as she hit another one. She paused and looked it over with her usual eye, admiring the composition of the shot. Definitely a different technique than hers: Zoe still preferred a bleak, stark contrast even though she'd moved away from gloomier subjects. But these had definitely been taken by a fellow artist, a good one too...

"But who?" Zoe murmured. She dared look around the room, trying to see if there was someone else about who looked... photographic?

Kiara Kennedy

[Kiara Kennedy]

Kiara went to pick up her photos only to find to they weren’t there. It wasn’t like she was expecting the pictures to hang around all day, waiting for people to take them. However she wasn’t sure why someone found it prudent to just take them down, without warning or at least a note. It wasn’t as if she didn’t know that other people might want to put something up or need the area, she just assumed they’d have common courtesy.

She turned towards a girl she saw going through photo’s spotting one of hers in the pile. “Hey are you the one who took the photo’s down..because I think some of them might be mine.” She said softly not wanting to sound like she was accusing her of something. She was well aware of how testy some of the kids in the school were.

At the same time since she was going through them didn’t that mean she was looking for her photo’s too. Or maybe she was just looking through them, that explained a lot, she could’ve just came across the pile and decided to browse.

[Zoe Wallerstein-Smythe]

Zoe noticed the pretty girl look at her while she looked around. Zoe's first instinct was to look away, even flush slightly, though words soon drew her head back up. Zoe looked to the other girl and blinked a few times. Had she just...

"Oh, right!" Zoe said. She fumbled and held up the photos she'd been sorting through. "I actually didn't take these down, I just sort of, well someone had been organizing them?" Zoe couldn't help but turn the sentence into a question. She again found herself looking at the other girl, then down at the photographs.

Zoe quickly shuffled through a few, eventually pulling out one that she knew certainly hadn't come from her camera. "Is this yours?" she asked, turning it so that the picture faced out toward the girl.

[Kiara Kennedy]

Kiara smiled at the other girl, she was cute and she hadn’t meant to startle her so she was starting to feel a bit worried. She understood that people could be jumpy when they were startle, hopefully the girl wasn’t as paranoid as she was...or worse. “Oh okay, that makes sense I guess. Maybe they needed the space for something?”

More often than not, it was someone who thought they were helping put order to the studio. She kind of liked it messy, at least that’s how she’d have any art studio of hers. She waited for a while, not in rush to get the photos from the girl as she looked through them. Though she seemed to be piecing something together and if the photos that weren’t familiar were hers they were good.. “Yup, that one's mines” Kiara said nodding her head up and down dramatically.

“So the ones before were yours they’re pretty good” She said softly reaching for the picture the girl showed. One down, more to go...she had forgotten how many pictures she had left in the studio.

[Zoe Wallerstein-Smythe]

Zoe flushed as the girl looked, shifting to look away for a moment. The other photographer was pretty after all, even if Zoe was most definitely involved with someone, she couldn't help but notice that much. She nodded along with the suggestion: it certainly made sense to her.

The girl recognized the offered picture too. That nearly had Zoe sighing. Photography was always a safe place for her to talk, and it seemed like they had that in common. "It's quite good," she said, nodding and pointing. "You've a real gift for composition, and I love the color. I spent so much time--" she paused, realizing that the other girl had spoken too.

Zoe flushed and looked through the other pictures. "Um, well, it's less before and," she shifted to try and show Kiara the various photos, "before and after and--well," she shrugged, holding up the hodge podge collection of photographs, "at least they all seem to be ours?"

[Kiara Kennedy]

Kiara nodded she really needed to either invest in an apartment or at least a studio of her own so she could hang up all her pictures. Though she supposed having her own studio would be a bit lonely at times. ”Thanks” She said smiling, she was glad she had met someone who liked photography. Most people she met were only good for being models and even then that was a stretch. Maybe she was just a picky person?

“Well you seem to be better at drawing attention to your subject than me, mine’s always get drowned out by the back ground. That’s why I like black and white photo, no pretty colors to distract you.” Yeah, it wasn’t helping that she rarely liked to stay in the same place so her pictures always came out really busy, no one place to focus. She really had to work on that one of these days.

“Yeah, that’s true how about we go through them together? It’ll be easier than just waiting for the other to be done” She offered up, a bit eager to talk to someone besides herself and the people in the hallways.

[Zoe Wallerstein-Smythe]

Zoe smiled at the thanks, nodding. The compliment that came had her flushing slightly. "I actually started with more backgrounds: the people are a more recent development," she admitted. "But I always try to leave space to layer my poetry on top."

Zoe had been doing this for years, after all, and she'd spent considerable time, effort, and even money into doing things well. Her latest achievements said as much, but she still couldn't quite look at someone's work like this and see things that the other person did better. This girl clearly knew how to work colors and composition well, and Zoe was already trying to figure out how to incorporate bits of that into her own work.

"Oh, that would definitely be easier!" Zoe said, almost sighing with relief. She'd managed to pull her attention away from the photographs long enough to nod and smile at the other girl. "I'm Zoe, by the way," she said, raising her hand, "and, um, if you want to shake you should probably make it brief. I, uh," she shifted her eyes away for a moment, "paralyze people when I touch them."

[Kiara Kennedy]

”That makes sense, I kind of read a bunch of books and tried to get everything right from the start. I think I should’ve started off small and worked my way up, but everyone does things differently” She added shrugging her shoulders and looking at the pictures. She figured that everyone had their strength and weakness and focus happened to one of the girls strengths.

”Cool” Kiara said nodding her head when the girl agreed to look through the pictures together. She tilted her head to the side when the girl introduced herself and warned her about her power. At least the girl was nice enough to warn her, she shaked the girls hand quickly but not quick enough to seem panicked.

“I’m Kiara and I can duplicate myself….so you might run into one of them eventually.” No need to mention that she could very well be a duplicate herself. That was a road neither of them needed to go down in that moment...or ever.

[Zoe Wallerstein-Smythe]

Zoe nodded. "There's a lot to practicing. I'm almost always carrying a camera around," she added, along with a sheepish smile. She didn't want to sound like she was bragging or anything: it was actually just that exciting to run into someone else who liked photography. Well, someone besides Quinn, who definitely understood photography and the appeal, but was sometimes like talking to a sleep-deprived porcupine.

One quick handshake later and Zoe even had a name for her new acquaintance: Kiara. "That's a very pretty name," she said, smiling shyly, "and duplication sounds like a much better power than mine," she chewed her lip a little, before looking back down at the photos. Right, they had those to sort out.

Zoe sighed, chewing at a cheek again as she looked them over. "Do you think we should just divide the pile into two halves? There's almost a hundred pictures here..." well, they were prolific, after all.

[Kiara Kennedy]

“Same here, I actually stop random people to be my models. I’m sure i’ve hassled at least a dozen people a week to pose for me.’ Kiara said excitedly, she was glad she wasn’t the only person that carried around her camera everywhere. She had always figured it was a quirk of hers though it can’t be much different from taking your guitar everywhere.

She shrugged “too each their own I guess, I’d trade if I could though judging from you words it isn’t greener on the other side” Other than that she was more interested in the pictures. Her power wasn’t something that she was comfortable talking about to someone she had just meant.

”yeah that sounds like a good idea, lets find somewhere to sit first.” She suggested walking over to a couple of chairs near a table. She hadn’t realized how many pictures she had actually snapped until now.

[Zoe Wallerstein-Smythe]

Zoe had to giggle a bit at Kiara's comment. "It was like that for me too when I first got here, still is sometimes," she turned to smile at Kiara, the expression reaching Zoe's big brown eyes. "At least most of them should be used to it by now. I used to creep along in the bushes and stalk people with my camera."

Zoe almost giggled at the memory. Soon enough she was nodding, again agreeing with Kiara's assessment. Yeah, it probably was just a matter of the grass being greener or something, at least regarding powers or talents or what have you. Though some part of Zoe was tempted to insist that she had the poor end of the stick when it came to abilities. Most people didn't get locked off from touching people for the rest of their lives. It seemed like having a possible clone of yourself ranked decidedly below that.

But Zoe would much rather focus on the photographs. She nodded at Kiara's suggestion, turning to look around herself. Kiara found some chairs, so Zoe gathered up the photographs as best she could: a bit of an awkward load but doable, and carried them off. Soon she was spreading them around. "I was actually doing a lot of pictures of the Academy grounds lately," she said, looking through the stacks, "I'm working on a project that compares the devastation of the event with the work and triumph of us all pulling together to move past it. The fire, I mean, and, well, the hatred," Zoe paused for a moment, chewing her cheek, feeling like she'd just gone a little preachy or something there.

[Kiara Kennedy]

Kiara smiled she couldn’t help but find the girl adorable “Yeah, though i feel bad about just stalking people, I don’t want to invade their privacy besides a lot of my pictures end up on my blog” She explained, knowing that the other girl would understand somewhat. “I still like to take sneaky pictures, as long as they’ve given me their permission at least once.”

“That sounds really cool, I’ve been sticking to either black and white photos or landscape photography since we live in the mountains basically.” Of course now that she thought about it Zoe’s project sounded a lot cooler than anything she did “But let me know when you’re finished I want to see how it turns out. I should probably start a new project but I get side tracked.”

Not to mention there was a possibility of a duplicate taking her camera and trying to play photographer. Though she supposed it was the same thing as her taking the photograph but it was still different. Thinking about it too much would surely confuse her.

[Zoe Wallerstein-Smythe]

Again Zoe found herself nodding. It was sometimes difficult to try and explain why you had certain photographs of people, especially if you tried to put them somewhere. Though: "Blog?" she asked curiously, tilting her head, "I didn't know there was a photography blog. You'll have to give me the link."

Zoe did follow various people online though, and she certainly wanted to follow a blog that featured photography. She was almost tempted to ask if she could post her work on there too, but she didn't want to be presumptuous or overstep her bounds or anything along those lines. Especially as she did have her own project, which Kiara did sound interested with.

"Those mountains are screaming for a good photographer," Zoe agreed, nodding. "I just can't quite do them the justice they deserve." She had to smile, remembering a few of her attempts. There was definitely a reason she stuck to people and manmade buildings. She nodded again, moving to sort out a few more of the photographs, figuring that they should keep moving with that, make sure that they weren't taking up the table or anything.

"Did you have any projects in mind? You could probably do something wonderful regarding the views around Kalispell: there's just so much here to photograph," Zoe finished by picking up some of the photos they had, which, well, served quite almost too well to fit what she was saying.

[Kiara Kennedy]

Kiara got a piece of paper out of her bag and wrote down the link to her blog “here you go” she said handing the girl the piece of paper. She was guilty of following a lot of photographers and models on social medias. Not to mention the various downloaded pictures of artwork from around the world. Even though she wasn’t a talented drawer she appreciated art.

Kiara got an awesome idea, since she had been behind in her posting lately due to her only free days being on wednesdays. “If you want, I can add a gallery for you. I don’t post on it most days and I could totally turn it into a website for kids from our school to display their art.”

“I grew up around nothing but woods and everything was basically built around the woods. I like nature but sometimes I like taking pictures of the city because it’s busy. You’ll never get the same picture twice.’ She explained, although she supposed if you too the same picture rapidly you could. But she assumed that Zoe caught on to what she was saying.

“Not really but that does sound like a good idea, do you mind if i steal it?” She asked shyly not wanting to out right take an idea that was just mentioned. That was how people got sued these days. She started making two piles of photos making sure to study the ones that weren’t hers.

[Zoe Wallerstein-Smythe]

Zoe's eyes widened with slight surprise as Kiara actually got out a piece of paper and started writing. She felt like she should say something or turn it down or suggest a text or something, but before she could even work up the courage to make noise, Kiara had the address written. Zoe could only mumble a thanks and take the piece of paper, sliding it into one of her pockets.

Then came the idea which had Zoe's eyes widening and her head shaking again: "oh, I couldn't! I mean, it's a nice gesture and all, but I wouldn't want to impose on your blog. It's yours, after all. It would be very rude of me to just sort of post there..."

Zoe trailed off, chewing on her cheek again. Her nervous fingers played with the photos for a few moments, not quite sorting through things but not quite not doing so either. She looked back up at Kiara at the mention of the environment, smiling. Her experience had been so drastically different, but that's what made this place wonderful.

"oh, by all means," Zoe said. "I was suggesting it for you, after all," she had to smile, looking down at the photos. She gestured at them, "I get so many ideas that I know I'll never have the time to go through with them all. If I wasn't so good at sticking with a project, I'd probably just have these collages that are hodgepodges," she let out another little giggle and reached for a photograph taken at a sports game. She held it up for Kiara to look at: "Though the school does pay me to take photos too. I'm sure they'd pay you too, if you wanted. It's a good way to get money for film, if you, um, don't mind taking photos like this too."