Trask Avenue

When I’m tooling around with a camera it’s pretty tough to catch Red in an unguarded moment. She has a sixth, seventh and eighth sense which alerts her when I’m pointing my camera in her direction. The result? She assumes a variety of amusing (if quite affected) poses. She’s perfected the gang sign pose, the incredulous pose, the cheesy smile pose, the pouty pose and a several others which I can’t rightly describe. The countless stockpiled photos of her demoing these various “looks” are, of course, precious to me. However, the photos which I most treasure are those of her simply being her. Simply Red, as it were. Every now and then I manage to snatch one of those and it makes my day.

One such moment came while we were in Durham, England a couple of months ago. We spent the day exploring, eating and exploring. The shadows were getting long and our energy was dwindling. As we headed back to the rail station we came upon a narrow alleyway which looked pretty cool. We had no idea where it led, but this was not time to consider such things. How can anyone pass up the opportunity to thread their way down an alleyway which was probably laid out 700 years ago?

Before we ventured forward Red took a moment to chimp through the photos on her camera. Once she leaned against the alley wall and started flipping through her photos I knew this was one of those rare, Simply Red opportunities. You learn in life not to let these little moments pass. So I snapped a few quick shots before she looked up, saw what I was doing, and reverted to one of her stock poses. But it was too late. I’m sure she thought her timing was all wrong. I thought it was perfect.