She always seemed to have a camera. It was one of those old black and white film cameras that had a giant round lense like the eye of a Cyclops. You could always tell when she was about to take a picture. She would get this gleam in her eye when she saw something in a way that she knew no one else had seen it before. Then you would hear the ratcheting of the advancing film and a click as the shutter rose.

I knew that sound by heart.

I remember always dodging out of her shots, mostly because I don't like looking at pictures of myself. I didn't much care for the awkward and unnatural smiles that I always seemed to sport in the year book and family albums. I could hear her exasperated sigh every time I turned away.

But I distictly remember the first time I didn't look away. The sun had been setting over the lake and I stood by her side on the pier, both of us looking out over the water in comfortable silence. The sound of frogs and distant town festivities created an ambient roar of soft music for our thoughts to dance to. I remember not noticing until it was too late, my mind had become so accustomed to the sound of that creaky old camera that I hadn't thought to look where it was pointed.

Click.

I thought for sure she had finally captured me. I turned to her in surprise and saw how the sun shone on each of her hairs like strands of golden flame in a halo around her head. I thought that if anyone in the world should be photographed in that moment, it should have been her. I finally understood that gleam in her eye, because it had entered my own.

She turned to me with a smug grin and I couldn't help but oblige with a grin of my own.

"Don't worry," she said, fiddling with the apertures,"there's no film in it. I can't even remember the last time there was film in it actually."

"What?" I muttered weakly, still a bit distracted by the way the sun was painting her.

"I don't actually take pictures with it." she explained, letting it hang loose by its strap again.

"But..." I trail off, confused," For all this time you never took a single picture? Why?"

"Because," she said, pointing the lense towards the still fading sun and focusing on the golden horizon with practiced finese," I don't want pictures, those get dirty and clutter everything up, and you're always too worried about something happening to them to appreciate them." she pauses as she lowers the camera again, eyes still fixed out towards the fading light,"Every time this shutter clicks I make a memory instead. I remember the way things look through that viewfinder rather than just going through life with my eyes glazed over. With this," she holds up the camera proudly," I can see the world however I want, and I get to focus on whatever I choose."

I nodded in thought for a second and then held my hand out. She hesitated for a moment before looping the strap over her head and placing the camera in my hands. The metal was cool to the touch despite having been out in the late August heat all day. I brought the viewfinder up to my eye and clumsily focused. A breeze blew through the reeds and ruffled our hair, hers sofly swaying its golden strands.

Click.

And I'll never forget that picture for as long as I live.