Chase Me If You Can(79)
“No, I said you were far from home. Which was true.” Wes laughs at my glare. “I grew up with Shawn. Cora knows I’m a photographer and sent me a message asking if you were as good as her friend claimed. I said she wouldn’t find better.” He shrugs, his eyes straying to the storm and darkening. “My dad told me I had better be at the wedding. I was planning to skip it just to spite him, but you were going to be there. It was worth giving up the chase days to have you play with me for those ten minutes.”
“I scowled at you the entire time.”
“Mostly,” Wes says, good-natured humor returning to his voice and his shoulders relaxing. “But, for the record, the only one I wanted to spend any time in a corner with that night was you.”
I tip my head back and stroke my fingertip down the line of his jaw. “You do an awfully good job of hiding how sweet you are.”
“Our secret.” Wes gives me a quick, hard kiss and then holds up the camera. “Where do you want me?”
With one final check of the various radar scans and someone assigned to keep an eye on the storm, the wedding gets underway.
It’s the least-formal and lowest-budget wedding that I’ve shot since I got my start doing backyard weddings for some friends from high school—but infinitely more fun.
Matt’s dad conducts the ceremony like he’s at an open-mic night, keeping everyone laughing while Wes and I dart around taking photos. Tracy’s pink dress pops against the green of the grass and the deep blackish-gray of the sky, and the way that Matt beams at her is as perfect as a wedding that took two years to plan.
And when they kiss after reciting their vows, I decide not to tell them that there’s a lucky lightning bolt in the background. That can be a happy surprise when I give them the final edits.
Tracy gives us all a big grin, her cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkling. “So…we’re chasing this thing, right?”
* * *
When Tracy says she plans to chase in her dress—“Best reception idea ever!”—Wes and I offer to stick with her and Matt for the rest of the afternoon and grab a few more shots of them with the storm. It’s easy enough to take my own shots in between, but more than that, an idea is starting to form.
I thought florals in the foreground would work to juxtapose beauty versus the destructive nature of a storm, but despite producing some pretty images, something remains missing from every frame I’ve taken so far. Tracy silhouetted in her wedding dress against the dark sky is a light bulb moment. I’m not getting the emotion I want from the flowers, but the deep, vibrant pink silk of my dress ruffling in the wind might just do it.
But not today. Today I’m here for Tracy and Matt.
Almost as if Mother Nature wants to give the couple a wedding gift, the storm decides to show off. From a distance, the structure is almost textbook, striations in the clouds clearly visible. As it gains power, everyone watches the velocity radar scans with building excitement as a strong couplet emerges and a funnel cloud starts to form high above us.
But the real gift is when the storm does finally drop a tornado—miles and miles from any town—the angle of the sun is low enough to generate a stunning rainbow behind it. I snap a handful of frames of Tracy and Matt, only to have them wave me off and point at the scene in front of us.
“Get your shots too, Sloane!” Tracy yells over the wind. She pauses long enough to sling an arm around my shoulder in a quick hug. “I love you, and I’m so buying all your drinks tonight whenever we find a bar, but go do your thing!”
It’s sheer impulse that has me grabbing my tripod. I position it low to the ground and quickly set up intervals. It’s worth the extra seconds of setup time. The steadiness of the tripod allows for a slightly longer exposure to pop the colors of the rainbow, and if I’m very lucky, ensure any lightning bolts are crisp.
Wes decides to stay freehand, though he takes up a position a few feet away from me after double checking he’s not in my shot and points his camera at the sky. “You going for that unicorn?”
“I’m feeling far too superstitious to answer that question.” The storm is still kicking out a decent amount of lightning, though with how much daylight remains, it’s going to be tough to get it to show up on camera. “Ask me once we’re back in the car.”
The tornado doesn’t last long. I get just over five minutes before it ropes out, which means there are close to a thousand frames for me to choose from—and hopefully one of them has a lightning bolt. There was one in particular that came down in an almost perfect position I’m praying my shutter was open for.
Giddy at the possibility that I may have grabbed a contest-worthy shot, I start scrolling through the frames once we’re in the car. I still want to try the dress idea forming in my mind, but if I just got the shot I think I may have, there’s no question that I’m going with the unicorn. It’s too rare not to.
I pointedly ignore the fact that there are at least twenty other photographers out here who could have gotten the same shot. Not all of them were invited to participate in the contest—but Wes was. And he was standing right next to me.
“You want to keep with it or head for town?” he asks as we pull back on to the road. “I’m good either way.”
“You sure? I’d love to be able to get Tracy and Matt a few photos tonight if you don’t mind heading back now.” The decision was already made that we’d all stay in Amarillo. It’s only two hours from where we currently are, and the storms tomorrow are forecast to initiate along the border with New Mexico.