In the Files on My Camera’s SD Card
by Riel Saylor
University of Delaware
Riel Saylor is a junior English major with a minor in Women and Gender Studies at the University of Delaware, with a projected graduation in 2026. Riel writes poetry and creative nonfiction, and her work explores themes of grief, trauma, place, and identity. She has been awarded the Elda Wollaeger Gregory Poetry Award twice for her poetry featured in Caesura, the undergraduate literary journal at the University of Delaware.
IMG_0358, April 11, 2021
I’m still learning to wield my new camera, trying to hone my focus on a cluster of dandelions in our backyard. The lens catches on a few blades of grass instead, stray sprouts bursting into focus in the foreground, the dandelions themselves blurring into the background. I have just turned seventeen, peering through the viewfinder at the blossoming potential of a mundane world. The weeds and clovers I would’ve trampled over yesterday are today’s subjects, the golden light of late afternoon nesting in the veins of their leaves. The shutter snaps shut just as quickly as it had opened.
IMG_0992, May 8, 2021
I’m playing candid-photographer during the first family reunion since the pandemic began, and the last family reunion before my family falls apart. With my new tripod set up in the living room, I’m fiddling with the camera settings as my aunts and uncles flit in and out of the frame. I have corralled them into gathering for a proper family photo, my grandfather sitting on the couch with two of his children, three more crowding around them, our Amazon Echo sitting on the floor, showing one of my aunts on a video call. My grandfather proudly dons his replica John Wayne cowboy hat, the edges of the brim tinged with faux dust. I have not yet mastered the skill of balancing the lighting, and the afternoon sun pours in from the sheer curtains behind them, their faces highlighted with uncanny white contour, idyllically overexposed.
IMG_1427, May 29, 2021
I’ve always loved rainy evenings, but now even more so, as I take note of the way lights and colors seep into the shimmering streets and reflect off the surfaces of puddles. I position the streetlamp just in front of our house, the hazy orange beacon that has lit my way home for thirteen years, in the upper-right of the frame. I’m still figuring out the formal techniques of photography, committing myself to the rule of thirds as if I’ll have an exam on it. The street sign below is situated perfectly in the trajectory of the light, the black lettering highlighted in dusky saffron. The main object of my interest, however, is the patch of damp pavement painted with roseate light, transformed into a deposit of twilit fool’s gold, myself the fool for believing in the permanence of such idealism.
IMG_1878, July 4, 2021
It’s the last Fourth of July where everything still makes sense: my mother and grandfather hosting their annual party in our driveway, the town fireworks bursting overhead, my old friends from middle school ditching the neighbors’ party for ours. This year, my best friend from high school theatre joins us—the only time those two worlds will overlap. I’m doing the candid-photographer thing again, standing back with my tripod, the four of them armed with sparklers. I’ve become interested in manipulating shutter speeds to create trails of moving light, and the miniature supernovae in each of their hands are perfect test subjects. My high school friend stands to the side a bit, still figuring out the dynamic of the other three, making a face of surprise as they swirl their lights around. Little explosions of starlight strew themselves haphazardly across the frame, freezing mid-flight as they scatter from their sources. My friend on the far left—the loss of whom will hurt the most—waves the wand above her head, a shower of white-gold flame fizzling out, a nebula soon to implode.
IMG_2166, August 11, 2021
I’m experimenting with still-life, zooming in on the stray head of a rust-orange rose that fell from the rest of the bouquet, a few loose petals scattered around it. I’ve taken to buying myself those cheap spray roses from Trader Joe’s—clusters of dark orange juxtaposed against my gray-blue walls. The black pressed-wood of my piano fades into the background, the foreground littered with dust. One of the rose’s petals is peeling, still clinging onto its anchor, unwilling to let go.
IMG_2921, December 15, 2021
Winter reminds me of change, hurdling forward and stringing me along faster than I can keep track of, months blurring together like the ripples of the retention pond I’m staring into. I scale back the focal length, letting the reflection of the dusk-lit clouds stretch diagonally across the frame, a murky abstraction of gray and rosy orange. My camera’s auto-focus feature twitches and spazzes, unsure of my intended subject, as the water flows relentlessly, one illusion dissipating into another.
IMG_2952, February 11, 2022
My home is a tomb for both its living and its dead, chewing up and choking on memories of voices in its hallways. I’m letting the morbid take the place of the beautiful, documenting all the little monuments to the people I’ve lost that now sit untouched, gathering dust in the empty rooms. White light filters through the blinds and falls onto my grandfather’s shrine to his wife, situated across from his weathered reclining chair, still adorned with the faux flowers we’d bought to replace the real ones once he grew unable to care for them. With my grandfather now just over a month dead, and my aunts and uncles already making plans to sell the house, I feel the need to immortalize this scene, my lens taking on the persona of my grandfather’s reverent eyes. A few memorial objects are positioned around the bouquet: my grandparents’ framed wedding invitation, an enlarged copy of my grandmother’s wedding portrait, a ceramic cross, a prayer card depicting the Holy Shroud of Turin, her prized stained glass rooster statue, a sympathy card that unfolded into a paper bluebird, and the purple ribbon from her funeral flowers that read “Loving Wife.”
IMG_3300, April 2, 2022
I’m taking my camera outside again for the first time in months, and I’ve forgotten to switch the white balance from “tungsten” back to “auto,” resulting in all my photos being washed in a cold blue tone. The cherry blossoms are in full bloom, yet the tufts of flowers sprouting from the maze of intersecting branches look more like clumps of congealed snow when I release the shutter, the petals in the background crystallizing into bokeh as the icy sun seeps through them. I’m watching from behind glass as the world finds its way back to life.
IMG_3444, July 5, 2022
My style has grown as raw and undisciplined as I am these days, my lens lazily aimed at my feet, honing in on the texture of my fishnets tucked into my black leather Doc Martens. I’m living my life behind this ensemble of bad-girl armor, black-winged and purple-shadowed eyes squinting into the viewfinder. One leg protrudes into the frame at a slight angle, commanding attention, the other knee propped up into the foreground, the pattern of black netting drifting out of focus. Artificial yellow light glares against the tips of my boots, flooding the sea of matted carpet in the background, trying so hard to look alive. Not pictured: my shoddy purple hair dye, fading into muddy pink and gray.
IMG_3462, August 10, 2022
Our living room, gutted and dimly lit. The left wall is completely bare, as is the mantle. The shrine to my grandmother has been packed away, one of my grandfather’s straw cowboy hats sitting upside-down in its place. In front of the fireplace, his Remington statues and the wooden plaque reading “Bob” that once sat on his desk have been pushed together into a jumbled clump on the floor. The canvas of a tree in autumn—which I painted for him—lays face-up on his end table, next to a worn old statue of Saint Joseph and another lone Remington. Two pocket-sized packs of tissues sit disconsolately in the middle cushion of the dingy couch. There is no technical flair to this photo, no rule-of-thirds or lighting tricks. I’m aiming dead-center, shooting into the dark, the beep and click of the shutter permeating the silence. My photography books are stowed away in boxes; I’m taking what little I know and running with it.
IMG_3819, August 4, 2023
Washed ashore in the unforeseen future, I’m trying self-portraiture, dressed simply in a vintage denim jacket that I thrifted and have begun customizing with patches, no makeup, nothing even to hide the split-open skin on my lip. I’ve driven out to the sparse gardens behind the historic downtown on a quest to acknowledge my reality in front of the camera, but I’m quickly finding that I have a problem with showing my eyes. Even though this camera has seen so much of my life in its most desolate, unadulterated state, something about letting it see into me is too intimidating. I zoom the lens in toward my face and set the timer, giving myself ten seconds to get into place before it fires a burst of shots. I move quickly, positioning myself on the bench and squaring my head in front of the lens, letting it fall slightly over to the side. When the timer nears zero, my eyes drift away from the lens, slitting half-shut, leaving only the bottom of my iris visible through my lashes. As the shutter starts to fire, a soft gale sweeps my hair in front of my face, almost completely obscuring my lips and my left eye. A little progress is still a little progress.
IMG_3829, July 11, 2024
I’ve gotten into birdwatching recently; something to get me out of my head and back in touch with the world that has been breathing and moving forward all this time. I’m wandering the streets of my hometown, pacing through the veins of that suburban phantom, searching for something new amidst the stagnant familiarity. In the park by my old middle school, figments flicker by me as I walk: my friends and I eating pizza under the pavilion on the last day of eighth grade, my brother and I posing for a photo on the pier. I let them fade out as quickly as they appeared. A few grackles and starlings mull about in the open fields, and as I adjust my settings, a red-winged blackbird zips by me. I rush to hit the shutter, catching it in flight between two trees, its wings pointed downward to reveal the brilliant patches of red on the tops. By the time the photo loads on the screen, the bird is long gone. I wonder if everything ends just as it begins: with the mundane metamorphosing into the beautiful, with a life taking wing.
Interview with the Author
1. What do you want readers to take away from your writing?
This essay, like the majority of my work, explores the experience of loss. I imagine that most readers will have experienced some kind of loss in their lives, so I hope that those readers are able to find something in my work that resonates with their own experience. Loss is often very isolating, and as such, I think it can be comforting to know that there are others in the world who have gone through something similar. Therefore, through reading my work, I hope that readers can feel seen and validated in their experiences.
I also want this piece to exemplify how pivotal the creation of art can be in the process of healing from trauma. The photography that inspired this essay, as well as the essay itself, allowed me to preserve memories and reflect on how my experiences impacted my identity and perspective.
2. Is there an emotion that you feel when you write your pieces?
The core emotion I feel when writing pieces like this is grief. However, grief can involve an array of emotions and reactions: regret, laughter, anger, loneliness, emptiness, sometimes even gratitude. Writing this piece reminded me of the complex and conflicting emotions that I felt while living through the experiences that I share in this essay, and I felt some of those emotions all over again as I wrote.
3. What is your creative process when you write? Is there a mood you set? A mindset you focus on?
Usually, my creative process begins with an inspiration from an experience, a location, or a memory. As I sit down to write, I typically focus on tangible sensory details of the scene that inspired the work, including environmental details such as lighting, color, and sound, as well as individual actions and objects. I also consider what genre and form would best support the content of the work, though this sometimes changes during the revision process. I prefer to write my first draft in one uninterrupted sitting, though this isn't always possible for longer pieces. Then, I revisit the work at a later time to revise, which often involves eliminating unnecessary language and refining diction. As for the physical environment of my writing process, I prefer to write late at night, as there tend to be fewer disturbances at that time of day. I like to listen to instrumental music while I work; some of my favorite genres are vaporwave and video game soundtracks.
4. Were there any challenges you might’ve faced in writing your story?
For this particular essay, one of the major challenges was trying to convey a cohesive story through a disconnected series of fragments. As the essay was based on a collection of photos, I was worried that the narrative wouldn't make sense, as the photos are not directly sequential, and the subjects of the photos vary widely. I was also challenged in figuring out how to make it clear to readers that I was writing about photography without actually showing the photos. I ended up including the section headings with the file numbers and dates, as well as making direct reference to the technology in the title, in order to establish this context from the beginning.