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#144 Take a Picture, It'll Last Longer

Whether you pose happily or are a serial camera dodger, there are probably some photographs you treasure. Photos are a way of connecting us with our past, capturing a special memory, or even giving us a peek into each other’s lives — albeit through a filter.


This week’s stories explore the unique art of photography, and how it impacts our lives in big ways, and tiny ones.

This week's prompts

Start your story with somebody taking a photo.

Adventure – 75 stories

Write a story about a wedding photographer.

Valentine's Day – 31 stories

A character finds an old roll of film, and takes it to be developed. What do they find?

Middle School – 45 stories

Write about a character who’s pathologically camera shy.

Character – 21 stories

Write a story that centres around an Instagram post.

High School – 20 stories

Stories

Key to the Past

Submitted to Contest #144

He picked through the rubble of what had been his childhood home, looking for anything that might be kept as a souvenir. Bryon meticulously opened drawer after drawer in the kitchen before moving on to the cupboards and then searching under piles of old papers and leaves that had been left to blow arbitrarily through the broken home, lifted by even the gentlest of breezes as it wafted through from the missing front door to the broken patio glass. He hadn’t been back there since that night.Memories would occasionally surface in his mind of th...

26 likes 4 comments 4
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Nomenclature

Submitted to Contest #144

ClickWhirrrFLASHThe raptor’s eyes danced with black spots. Irritated, he growled and shook his head, trying to clear his vision.The unknown humans on the other side of the fence were very distracting. Their noise especially. “Look at its toes, Brad!”“What’s it shaking its head for?” “Prob’ly ’cause you stink so bad.”“Dude, you’re the one who just came from football practice!”Tap tap tap FLASHJuvenile shrieks. Sub-adult chatterings. Adult mutterings. All caused anxiety.Click FLASH click FLASH click FLASHThe raptor glared in annoyanc...

26 likes 46 comments 46
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Welcome Home

Shortlisted for Contest #144 ⭐️

“Huh, what’s this?” I wonder aloud to myself over the rush of the waves. The third level of the observation tower groans as I step forward and put my hands on the rusted railing. I look into the fog beyond the breakwater toward an inlet I hadn’t noticed before. As I focus my gaze, I see an elaborately built house, complete with gables and towers, just behind the misty curtain. I zoom my phone’s camera in and take a picture portrait and then landscape. It’s like something out of one of those “it was a dark and stormy night” stories. With...

25 likes 11 comments 11
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Four Pillars

Submitted to Contest #144

Amber cavern walls covered in dusky roots, a golden ray of sun from above, and a shimmering coffee pool. And the Four Pillars in the middle of it all, of course.Despite herself, Dr. Ellen Azwani gasped. The photo on her tablet was perfect, rivalling the real thing.“Oh my, my, my,” she said, grinning. “Oh, Curtis. You’re going to love this. I bet you never thought I could be a photographer.”The photo held little research value, she knew that. Particularly compared to the thousands of hours of video, the ground-penetrating 3d scans of the...

23 likes 31 comments 31
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The Answer to Queer Quandaries

Submitted to Contest #144

               Ah yes, 5:00pm on Friday, that magic hour where I am set loose from the metaphorical cage that is my office at the NYC DOE and set free to roam once more.  The last 30 minutes of my day always seem to drag. I have picked up the bad habit of boredom scrolling Instagram. My Instagram discovery today was that my ex girlfriend Maddie had gone and gotten engaged. She was now engaged to the ex girlfriend of my dear friend Mel. Th...

21 likes 6 comments 6
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Choosing My Religion 🙏🏻😇

Submitted to Contest #144

Sarah, Dawn, Maddie and Charlotte stood in a line in front of the possible new recruit, their school uniforms covered in specks of mud and creases due to a previous break time tree climbing assignment that had gone wrong. Charlotte reached into her trouser pocket and pulled out a long strip of golden material no wider than a standard issue school ruler. She wrapped the material around her neck and stuck the two ends together using the sticky tape attached to it. Looking like a glammed up Vicar, Charlotte took a quick photo on her phone of th...

20 likes 2 comments 2
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Carolina

Submitted to Contest #144

The first time I meet her is in a photo, behind a beautiful pane of glass, outlined by the curves of an oak frame. I imagine that the crowds of graduates, friends, and family were bustling loudly around them. Tears of pride and joy streaked down their faces as bear hugs were handed out like penny candy at a birthday party. The sky behind them is blue, cloudless. Perfect. I’m so certain her mother pushed them together for the photo. Pulled out her phone and shot five or six of the same exact moment. This girl has her arms wrapped around his n...

20 likes 10 comments 10
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Photographer, Wedding Photographer

Submitted to Contest #144

CW: Some crude humorI sensed that they could no longer stand each other. So, I sent them running and set a drone after them.You see, I had always wanted to shoot. I grew up watching so many 007 movies, I was confident, by the time I reached a certain age where I could straddle a gun or a lady as the occasion demanded, I would go onto dangerous missions with a 100% success rate, where I and I alone would be humanity’s last hope.But there were three problems. First of all, in my country, there was no majesty to serve. The second one, by the ti...

20 likes 19 comments 19
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#instaregret

Submitted to Contest #144

I wish I never sent a post out the first time. It was the most stupid idea I ever had, but my friends begged me to get on Instagram and share my story to the world. "It'll be fine Mark!" they told me. "It isn't that bad!" They told me. They lied. With their venomous words, they flipped my life upside down. At first it was nothing but a couple of posts of my cat or new video games I purchased. But then, someone replied to one of my posts. I should have ignored it, you know. My parents told me never to talk to strangers, especially on the inte...

19 likes 6 comments 6
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Not Another Picture.

Submitted to Contest #144

For many years her mother complained about not having any pictures, of her radiant face as she calls it, to hang on the front room walls. After Arabella turned fourteen she just down right refused to take any photos, or be put in family videos.Arabella had always ran from her father with a camcorder, when he came shooting for family memories. She would crouch and hide when someone called out for family group pictures.Arabella had a condition that made her stomach squirm when even the word photograph was mentioned. Over the years though, she ...

19 likes 2 comments 2
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Confessions of a Wedding Photographer

Submitted to Contest #144

        “So, what do you have planned for this weekend Suze?”, My co-worker Janet asked me as I was packing up computer to get a little writing done over the weekend.                 “I am working a wedding this weekend and enjoying whatever free meal I get as the photographer.”                “That sounds nice. It must be so satisfying to captu...

19 likes 8 comments 8
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Light Is an Introvert

Submitted to Contest #144

“I, Light am an introvert. People think that because I shed myself on things without people having to ask that I’m outgoing. Wrong. I’m just dutiful. Whenever I can, I retreat into nothingness and let Darkness show off.” The woman in the black suit across the table from Shawn sighed. Her dark, almost black skin showed the glint of the whites of her eyes.             “We have a deal for you,” said a man in a white suit covered in rhinestones who appeared from nothing next to Shawn. “...

19 likes 17 comments 17
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Portraits

Submitted to Contest #144

“Amanda, a picture for page six?” Amanda turned around and smiled holding up her glass of champagne as the event photographer took her picture. “Got it! Thanks.” They said walking away as they began taking pictures of the other guests. She stood at the gallery balcony and looked down at the crowd. Hundreds of people wearing exquisite gowns and tuxedos were there all for her. Celebrating her latest painting. She sipped her champagne feeling the bubbles float down her throat and thought about how much her life had changed in the last year. A...

19 likes 10 comments 10
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Soul Sipped Not Sucked

Submitted to Contest #144

Soul Sipped Not Sucked“All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.”The detectives enter the house through the front door when no one answers the doorbell or their incessant knocking. The one in charge snaps a picture to document the condition of the possible crime scene. Click! They continue on into the dark silence."What the hell...it was ...

18 likes 6 comments 6
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Pictures Only I Can See

Submitted to Contest #144

Click.  I always wished I could take a real photograph just by blinking, my eyelids acting as camera shutters, silently fluttering closed and open again in a split second, the image projected and then frozen into the darkness of memory – permanent and only mine. Sometimes, on days when I spent all day outside of the apartment, I pretended to do it. I would capture my friends, grinning with their teeth sparkling and eyes catching the warm light. I would pause an unknown stranger waiting for a train, staring out at the road and the cars...

18 likes 8 comments 8
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