Cathy Kessler, 63, had owned her new phone for exactly six days when the Boxing Day fireworks went up over the river, and she was, by her own account, "determined to get one good shot, just the one, to send to Tess, because she always sends me the good photos and I never send anything back except that thing where the light's wrong and you can't tell what it is."
She did not get the shot.
"I heard the first big bang, I looked up, I got the phone out, and I did what I thought you were meant to do, which is hold it up and press the round button," Cathy said. "And in my enthusiasm, apparently, I was holding it upside down, or sideways, or some configuration I still haven't fully reconstructed, and what I actually captured, in extremely high resolution, at what I'm told is 48 megapixels, was my own foot."
The photograph — sighted by this newspaper, reluctantly, after some negotiation — is in sharp focus. The foot, clad in a sandal Cathy describes as "the good ones, at least, so that's something," is well lit by the fireworks reflecting off the pavement. Somewhere in the extreme upper corner of the frame, a single smudge of colour is visible, which Cathy maintains, "if you squint, and you already know it's meant to be fireworks, could technically be fireworks."
The Almost-Send
Cathy's first instinct, she admits, was to send the photo to her daughter Tess immediately, "the way you do, before you've thought about it, because that's the whole point of the new phone, isn't it — you see something, you send it, that's meant to be the fun part."
Her thumb, she reports, was over the send button for what she estimates was a full three seconds.
"And then I thought — hang on. What is she going to say to a photo of my foot. What is the caption for that. 'Happy Boxing Day, here is my foot.' She'd think something had happened to me. She'd ring in a panic thinking I'd dropped the phone off a bridge and this was the last transmission."
She did not send the photo. She instead, by her own description, "stood there in the crowd, foot photo still on the screen, actual fireworks still going on above me that I was now missing entirely because I was looking at a picture of my sandal, having a bit of a moment about it on my own."
The Story Outlives The Photo
Tess did not learn of the foot photograph that night, nor the following week, but at the pair's next catch-up — a Sunday coffee, three weeks later — Cathy raised it unprompted, mid-conversation, with the specific comic timing of someone who has been saving a story.
"She just started laughing before she'd even finished the sentence," Tess said. "She does this thing where she tells you the ending first and then goes back and does the whole thing properly, in order, like a director's commentary. 'I sent you a photo of my foot — well, I didn't send it, I'll get to that — but I want you to understand, in the moment, I was very proud of that photo.'"
Cathy maintains the story has, if anything, improved with age and repetition.
"It's a better story than the actual fireworks would have been, if I'm honest," she said. "Nobody wants to see fireworks on a phone, they're never as good as being there, everyone knows that, you've got that little blurry orange smear and someone's head in the corner. But 'your mother took a very detailed photo of her own foot and stood in a crowd having an existential moment about whether to send it' — that one gets requested. Tess's told it to her husband. I believe it's now been told to people I've never met."
A Phone, Somewhat Better Understood
Cathy reports she has since worked out, with assistance, "which way is up" on the new phone, and has successfully photographed several subsequent events, including a garden, a cake, and — on the second attempt — her other foot, "on purpose that time, for comparison, as a bit of a joke for Tess."
Tess, for her part, says she has requested nothing further. "Honestly, the foot story is doing more work than any fireworks photo ever could have. I don't think I want it improved on. Some things you just want to stay exactly as they were."
Asked whether she'd attempt fireworks again this coming New Year's Eve, Cathy was noncommittal.
"We'll see," she said. "I've learned my lesson, sort of. Though I will say — for one foot, it really was a very good photo."