Obsession Of A Tourist
I have a obsession. I’m a photographer. But I don’t just take pictures - I discover special moments.
When I have my eye to the viewfinder, I'm seeing everyone and everything, but with no pressure to interact because all I'm looking to do is to take pictures.
I was good at taking snapshots of a moment, such as a pretty lady three islands over at a gas station, putting gas into her Land Rover. Then she lowered her shades a little and winked my way.
I was lucky I’d snapped a picture. But then I checked to make sure that her wink wasn't for someone else behind me and when I turned back around, my friend Jack was in front of me, blocking my view.
"You think like a tourist, just passing through," Jack said. "You see the world from a distance and you're not really part of it. You look at the world through a camera lens."
"Are you serious? Get out of my way!" I demanded. But by the time he’d moved, she'd gone.
"So you think of me as a tourist?" I asked, angrily.
"Yes. You already wear a camera around your neck like it's a life saver."
"You know I used to be a reporter," I told him, but halfheartedly since Jack never really related to the subject.
"That isn't the point," Jack said. "You're not really part of anything."
"I don't need to be if the pictures I'm taking are good," I explained.
I’d gotten a last minute call to shoot pictures of a wedding, from a wedding planner who expected me to do more than just take pictures and my friend Jack was trying to be helpful.
"There is a subtle solution for an infinitesimal chance of being seen, if you want it," Jack said, attributing the quote to his advertising manager.
"What? I don't want to be seen! I see with my photographic eye," I cried, and he obliged me with a business card for someone named Ben Forest, in advertising.
"You can't keep making the same mistake and expecting different results," Jack said as I examined the card.
Jack was a big man who made surprisingly little effort. He was accustomed to big portions of fast food and falling asleep at odd times - even while sitting in a restaurant after a big meal - then waking up from the slightest stimulus. His ability at troubleshooting broken appliances kept him employed, but barely.
"It's never been easy for me to take a no," I said. "And to wonder what she might be missing."
“You know what she’d be missing?” Jack asked. “The mystery of love.”
That didn’t help. To me, a photographer didn't have to get his hands dirty. Or at least that’s what I believed, right up until the wedding.
The wedding planner found me the second I arrived. She was efficient in the way people become when panic has been simmering just beneath professionalism for too long.
She started by introducing me around to the family and friends of the wedding party, calling out names faster than I could remember them. Then immediately she became very involved in redirecting my attention to specific locations for pictures.
She’d walk to a spot and say, “Let’s take some photos here by the garden.”
I’d glance at the sky, squint, and say, “Actually, there’d be better light over there on the other side.”
She nodded politely, then said, “Walk with me for a second.”
That’s when she mentioned her boyfriend.
“He’s very jealous,” she said casually, as if describing a dietary preference. “And he’s currently texting me in all caps.”
She pointed him out across the room. He seemed terribly worried, pacing with his phone clenched in his hand, eyes locked on us, glowing with the intensity of someone who believed betrayal was a lifestyle choice.
I leaned in and whispered, “I've got to remain objective, to get the best pictures."
I even tried to suggest the radical idea that I could simply be left alone to do my job. She smiled, the way people do when they’ve already decided against something they never understood.
“Just stay close for a bit,” she said.
So I did and let her move me strategically to places where she felt we wouldn’t be disturbed. Behind columns. Near exits. Along walls where conversations ended quickly. We weren’t hiding so much as rehearsing escape routes.
Soon, we were planning exits and shortcuts, still we couldn’t avoid him completely. He finally caught up to us near the dessert table.
“Who’s this?” he asked.
She didn’t hesitate but pointed at me and said, “It’s complicated.”
He looked me up and down. “But that’s the photographer. What’s he doing here when they’re cutting the cake over there?”
It was a fair question. I would’ve asked it myself.
My badge said Photographer but my real job title should been Distraction and Buffer.
"Sometimes people need someone with an official role to stand nearby, someone who looks legitimate," I explained to the boyfriend. I felt certain that he wasn't receptive to what I was saying.
I went back to and kept shooting pictures. The couple laughing. The parents crying. The kids dancing inncently. And somewhere between framing shots and checking exposures, something changed. I wasn’t observing from a distance anymore. I was in it as the quiet sidekick who kept the chaos just out of frame.
The planner squeezed my arm and whispered, “You saved me.”
I nodded, pretending this had been the plan all along and I thought about the woman at the gas station. The wink and the missed chance. I was glad to have just captured a picture because I expected nothing more.
And I asked her one important question: What's your name?
She blinked.
“My name?”
“Yes,” I said. “Because I feel like that should’ve come up sometime between the cake and the near-riot.”
“Lydia,” she said. “But right now -”
She didn’t finish, because at that exact moment the bride’s mother appeared, clutching a napkin like a distress signal.
“Photographer!” she urged. “Can you take a picture of me with my sister before she leaves?”
I opened my mouth to say yes, but Lydia had already nudged me forward as if I were the only responsible one there.
So I did my thing. I arranged, I angled and I told the sister to lean in and the brother to blink less aggressively. I snapped the photo at the precise moment before someone said something unforgivable. I let the arguments begin off camera.
Then the groom’s uncle grabbed my elbow.
“Hey, buddy,” he said, breath heavy with champagne. “You look like a neutral party. Can you tell my son he’s cut off?”
Before I could answer, the son appeared.
“You’re on my side, right?” he asked me, perhaps figuring that I was involved.
“I’m on the side of available light,” I said, and took his picture mid-eye-roll.
The bride’s father cornered me near the bar.
“Can you stand next to me,” he said quietly, “so my ex-wife won’t talk to me?”
The flower girl needed help finding the bathroom. The best man wanted advice on whether to apologize or double down. Someone’s aunt asked if I could Photoshop out her regret later.
Everywhere I turned, there was another emotional spill to mop up. People wanted me to help them be "camera ready," so I was juggling family matters like plates, smiling while they spun, hoping none of them shattered at the height of it.
Jack’s voice echoed in my head, that I wasn’t hiding behind the camera anymore, that I’d stepped completely out from behind it to become a stand-in. A proxy. A guy with a lens who people assumed had the authority to fix things simply because of the way I took the pictures and how they were retouched afterwards.
I stepped back and I raised the camera to my eye and put the world where it belonged: inside the frame, not leaning on my shoulder.
“I can’t do much more,” I said, gently, to the next person who reached for me. “But I can take your picture and promise to show you are at your best.”
Something magical happened when I got the good moments because they seemd to lead to good things.
People solved their own problems. The drama didn’t disappear, it just stayed where it belonged.
Out of my hands and in the picture.
I shot the rest of the wedding from a half-step back. Catching laughter before it turned to arguments. Real moments.
Outside, packing up my gear, I thought again about the woman at the gas station. The wink. The missed chance. And I realized something important: I miss moments when I lose perspective of who I am: I'm only the photographer. I’m not a stand-in.
So maybe that way, I'm no fun.
And if someone winks at me again from three islands away? I’ll take the picture if I can.