Shuttertwitch was hunkered down in his favorite room in a little hut on the outskirts of Ponyville — his work office, reserved for all things photography and camera related. It was a sizable room, the largest in his house, in fact, and it was absolutely cluttered with polished lenses and sparkly lights and busy backdrops for every occasion.
It wasn’t a mess, mind you, Shutter was a bit of a clean freak, but it was filled to the brim with all sorts of gadgetry and smelled of development chemicals, used plastics and metal. Hanging from a wire that crisscrossed the room were freshly developed pictures set to dry. Yes, it was a place where work was happily completed and there was nowhere in the world he’d rather be than giddily fiddling away in his office.
Shuttertwitch had always had an interest in capturing the moment, even before the bright flashy camera mark appeared on his hindquarters. He had fond memories of running all about Ponyville, little hooves sending clouds of dust in the air, as he snapped imaginary pictures of startled old mares and confused delivery ponies with a wooden camera his father had fashioned for him from an old, knobby tree trunk he’d uprooted while landscaping their front yard.
His father had been a photographer as well, you see, and his grandfather before that! In fact you could trace Shuttertwitch’s lineage all the way back to the invent of the camera obscura, and even before that they’d been a family of artisans and painters. So when he was old enough and his father had taken him on their farthest walk yet, all the way to the Everfree Forest (a place he had always been forbidden to go as a younger colt), he was told the story of their family history and how they’d forever be ponies who aspired to freeze time in an image so that others could remember and enjoy it. It was their trade and they took it very seriously.
Shuttertwitch still had that wooden camera. It was one of his most loved possessions and he kept it in a glass case at the top of his camera shelf. He quickly looked up from his current work to eye it fondly, then went back to his duty, seeing flashes of a young colt with dreams of grandeur galloping about in his mind’s eye. This made him smile. He adjusted in his seat and hunched down to get a closer look at what he was polishing… or rather, WHO he was polishing.
He was humming merrily as he went about the day’s chore of cleaning the lens of his most prized camera, which, by the way, was named Spectre.
Yes, his favorite camera had a name, and a bit too much personality as well, if you were to ask him. He switched it on to check the power and it hummed to life with a magical violet intensity. He smiled and waited for the camera to wake up and speak.
You could say that Shutter got the Paranormal Panoramic Pain-in-the-neck model — I know it’s a bit overwhelming at first, what with talking cameras and all, but it will make sense in a moment, I promise.
“Do you have to rub so hard?” Buzzed the camera in a masculine, raspy, tired, old noble’s voice. Spectre the camera had no mouth, the sound just emanated from all around when he spoke, causing him to vibrate slightly between Shuttertwitch’s shaky, sky-blue hooves. “I’m a delicate piece of machinery, mind you! Take it easy on me, would you please!”
If you weren’t holding Spectre, you could also tell when he was talking because he put off a modest yellow glow with each syllable. The glow lit up Shutter’s muzzle as he smiled into the camera lens and blew off one last speck of dust. He did this because he knew Spectre hated it, he pestered the old soul, but in a loving way that only old friends can manage.
“Hey now!” Spectre throbbed in faux anger. “Need I remind you that I’m your elder twice over! You shouldn’t treat me with such disrespect!” The camera cleared it’s throat, or seemed to anyway, since it didn’t have a throat to clear.
“Settle down you old gear head,” Shutter smiled and pushed up his glasses with his free hoof. “I know you don’t like it, but if we’re going to work together and take the best pictures Equestria has ever seen, you need to be cleaned every once in a while, otherwise our pictures might come out blurry.”
The ghost-camera was silent for a moment of consideration, then sputtered “Alright, proceed if you must, but just be careful!”
Shuttertwitch chuckled, and continued to polish the camera, being extra careful, as not to set him off again.
Well, at this point you may be wondering to yourself how Mr. Shuttertwitch came to possess such a haunted camera and that would be a totally normal question to ask. Alas, THAT is a story for another day and we will come to it eventually, but for now let’s just say that he came upon the living artifact while poking around in a place he shouldn’t have been and the reason he was there in the first place was eighty percent his friend Sunny’s fault. (If anything weird or troublesome happened in Shutter’s otherwise mundane life, it was normally Sunny Tendersmile’s fault.)
Speaking of Sunny Tendersmile, I believe she’s at the door now.
KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!
“Hey, you in there!” Came a muffled, squeaky female voice from the other side of the door. Shutter recognized the voice and smiled, blowing a bit of his fluffy black mane out of his eyes as he carefully set Spectre on the table.
“That filly is trouble…” Spectre whispered, knowing full-well it would do no good to protest.
“Coming,” Shuttertwitch shouted as he turned to the entryway, waving a cloven sign of disregard in Spectre’s general direction. Spectre watched him quietly, he’d roll his eyes if he had eyes. He knew that the arrival of Sunny Tendersmile meant one thing: CHAOS!