When I was in high school, yearbook was a course, not an extracurricular activity. Ostensibly, we were supposed to learn layout and design, editing, basic photography, project management, etc. A few of us did; the rest enjoyed a forty-minute free period. Anyway. When selecting photos for each spread, we differentiated between posed shots and “candids.” Because so few of us were experienced photographers, “candids” became shorthand for “kinda crappy photos.” Candid photography is, of course, about capturing life as it really is — the shot before or after the team is exhorted to look at the camera, for example; or the shot of your lab partner grimacing at a dissection. In other words, the photo that isn’t “staged.” For our tiny team, that sort of shot was often a hot mess of graininess, over- or under-exposure, and blur.

Today’s picture embraces both of those definitions of candid, then. It’s a kinda crappy photo that definitely wasn’t staged. (After all, who can tell a cat what to do?)