wanderlove a Short Story by Lisa Vega

Short Story by: Lisa Vega
Model: Ashley Adele
Creative Direction and Video by: Catie Menke

wanderlove a Short Story by Lisa Vega

Snap. Snap. Snap. Snap. Snap. Five—that’s right—five shots of the same vanilla chai beside a vintage postcard photo book at five slightly different angles. I was no trained photographer or anything, but I rocked the phone camera like no one’s business. And who cares if five iterations was a bit more than is justifiable for a beverage, and the café patrons were whispering over their loose-leaf teas and coffee cakes? It was the last shot standing after I purged the four rejects to the void that mattered. It was that perfect angle that people saw.

The perfect angle happened to be just inches above the height of the table. Not high enough to capture, say, the title of the book clearly, but enough to catch a glimpse of cinnamon atop a mound of foam cresting the rim of the wide terracotta-colored mug. That would be the star: the foam. All else—the book with its crinkled plastic dust jacket, the matching terracotta saucer, the weathered grain of the oak table beneath—would sit ever so slightly out of focus, leaving only the mug with its foamy plumage, isolated, alone, and loving every second of it.

Art Direction and Photograph by: Catie Menke. Model: Ashley Adele.

Was the subject matter cliché? Sure, but it fit my MO. Local cafés were a must if I traveled anywhere, and a charming atmosphere was always a plus. To be entirely honest, I didn’t even like chai.

My camera points forward. A brief description that sat below my social media handle and said it all. My followers had never seen me. They had no idea what I looked like. All of my photos consisted of landmarks and nature scenes, monuments and museums, tourist traps and teahouses. As wanderlove, I was well-liked, but not famous. Talented but not boastful. Interesting yet invisible. I celebrated the places I had been, without feeling the need to document that it was, in fact, I who had been there.

Continue listening here.