On Playing Double Jeopardy

Previously published in The Malahat Review (winner of the 2020 Constance Rooke Prize for Creative Nonfiction).

BY CHRISTINA BROBBY

Glossary of Terms for $400, please.

For $400: It captures all data in an unedited format.

What is RAW?

This format allows more adjustments than TIFFs or JPEGs. Remember times when you felt RAW but incapable of adjustments.

After manipulating the image, perhaps increasing highlights, adding contrast, some saturation to blue skies, the original RAW file remains unaltered, ready to reprocess for a different purpose, like monochrome. It’s flexible that way.

Think that the days of feeling RAW are behind you. Recall that for decades you edited yourself to be who others wanted you to be. You were told who you were or who you should be. Now you are the real RAW, fully capable of significant adjustments while retaining your essential self. Is that wishful thinking?

Glossary of Terms again, for $800.

It’s what makes white in real life appear white in a photo.

category: GLOSSARY OF PHOTOGRAPHIC TERMS

$400 $800 $1200 $1600 $2000

The term sounds reassuring. The camera adjusts white balance easily, with options for sun, clouds, fluorescent lights and even an automatic selection.

Consider that in Ghana and other African countries, you are considered white. People laughed, believing it was a joke when you told them you’re considered Black in North America and in Europe. You don’t tell them that you as a child and a teen you wondered whether you could claim to be Black, with your mixed-race heritage. At times, others claimed you were too dark skinned to be white or too fair to be Black. In Ghana, they looked at your honey-toned skin, your almost black spiraling curls, and shook their heads with vehemence. No debate. You blame your first parents, he from Ghana, she from Britain, for the confusion, though perhaps you should thank them for the balance of representation in black and white.

$1200, same category, please.

For $1200: a lens attachment. Think polarizing, warming, or neutral density.

What is a filter?

Don’t elaborate that you learned early on to filter your own personality through the lens of the people you lived with, starting at aged three with your white adoptive parents, who preferred you to play with white children, and when you started dating, always asked whether the latest boyfriend was Black or white. Later you filtered yourself to keep your husband, and when that failed, more filters to ensure the man after your husband loved you. And your son? Yes, even him. Think about that.

Be more or less vibrant, act more coolly, like when the man after your husband said you were too emotional and that’s not what he was signing up for. You donned your neutral density filter, screened emotions, your desire to disagree on occasion. Apologized even when you felt wronged. The filtration system became so efficient, so automatic that you eventually doubted whether you are capable of remembering your original self.

Same category, for $1600, please.

This combination, which determines the exposure of a photograph, is often referred to as the triangle of photography.

What is ISO, shutter speed and aperture.

The three are related; a change to one requires compensation to one of the others.

ISO is the camera’s (or film’s) sensitivity to light. Use ISO 100 in sunlight. High ISOs introduce noise, or a grainy effect.

Increasingly, you prefer to shoot at around 3,200 in low light, where no one stares at you and casually asks, Did you move here recently? or, Where are you from? Most people refrain from asking what a person who looks like you is doing in this small northern town, a question you are still trying to answer for yourself after two decades. In the dark, contrary to what they say about high ISO and noise, it’s quiet, just you and your dog under a mass of stars.

Shutter Speed, usually stated in fractions or multiples of seconds, starts to make you nervous because, well, it’s mathematics, but your mind is distracted by the idea of shutters. Recall the time that you appeared stoic when the man after your husband indicated his marital status as ‘Single’ on his tax return, shattering your belief that you were still a couple albeit floundering and temporarily separated. Realize attempts to be your original self cost you that relationship. You’d raised your shuttered self, displayed too much emotion, made expectations of what you needed in the relationship too clear, forgot that’s not what he signed up for.

A slow shutter speed, using the trusty neutral density filter, yields a sense of calm to storm-kissed oceans, untamed streams in spring, waterfalls, even you in the months after the breakup. Conversely, fast shutter speeds freeze motion. Following the realization that the man after your husband was no longer part of your life, you were frozen at 1/2000 of a second, incapable of making sound decisions. As the books piled up beside the bed because you kept buying them despite their words being incomprehensible and blurred, you picked up your old camera, and started creating your own visual stories.

The opening of the shutter is like holding a door open for someone. These days you avoid holding doors open for any man who shows the slightest interest in you, afraid of how much is left of you to be manipulated, how many times one can lose oneself in a lifetime.

Aperture, the opening in the lens, is measured in f-stops. A larger hole allows a lot of light in. For reasons you don’t entirely understand, an f/stop of f/16 allows significantly less light than f/2.8. It involves doubling and halving the amount of the opening and perhaps even geometry, and that makes you nervous so you avoid that aspect.

You observed on people you’ve lived with – your adoptive mother and the man after your husband - that, when angry, their noses narrowed to f/22.

Aperture also controls the degree to which an image is in focus or blurred. A shallow depth of field, like f/2.8 yields only part of the image in focus, the rest being fuzzy. Now wonder how much of you was in focus when you lived with others. It was key to earning their love.

I’ll finish the category, please.

For $2000: Most often used by landscape photographers, it’s the focus distance that provides the maximum depth of field.

What is Infinity.

Infinity is more than the figure ‘8’ squiggle (∞) at the end of the focus range on lenses. If you stared at infinity for too long, it would blur the way desert heat warps reality.

You used to believe that you and the man after your husband would be together for infinity, where infinity’s measure was what remained of your lives.

Sorry, that’s incorrect.

That last statement was incorrect. The corrected version: You wanted to believe that you and the man after your husband would be together for infinity, where infinity’s measure was what remained of your lives.

When you think about that statement more, you question whether even that is correct. And whether you were in love with the lifestyle – the log house in the woods, vacations in Europe, reliable vehicles, student debts paid off, even some savings for the first time in your life – and whether that love eclipsed the ability to see that infinity in that relationship was an impossibility.

[Buzzer sounds by another contestant]

What is Hyperfocal distance.

It is something you avoided in photography because it requires significant mathematical calculations, involves a formula and the circle of confusion, which is so confusing that most people don’t understand it. This prompts the question of whether a person can ever be a real photographer without mathematical aptitude, which prompts the question of whether a person can ever be a “real” writer without a sound grasp of grammar rules. This prompts the question of whether you were a real partner to the man after the husband, a real wife, real mother, real lawyer, real negotiator, real bureaucrat, real sales person, real cleaning lady, real Jeopardy! contestant.

We’ll take a commercial break. When we return, the final category will be: Inside of Me. Make your wagers now.

Reframe your attitude. Remember that some lenses breathe, and again you don’t fully understand the concept, but you would encourage any of your lenses to breathe. Take a deep breath. And another. Admit that in fact you are still working towards the real RAW you, and some days it feels as though you are beyond reach, but today you think you know the inside of yourself well enough to risk most of your earnings.