The Day My Sugar Baby Sparked My Interest in Astrophotography

My sugar baby is from a small town in the mountains. We’re talking about a population of 8,000 people, where everyone knows everyone and no restaurant is open after 9 pm.

When she told me this, it wasn’t something that I really thought twice about. I grew up in the city, and I met Sage in the city. And when she told me her name was Sage, I figured she was giving me a pseudonym (but it would actually have something to do with her hometown, more on that later).

I knew that Sage was an up-and-coming photographer. I had seen some of her stuff on exhibit at an art gallery, and I asked the curator to put me in touch with the artist. I loved how she had been able to photograph little bits of nature in urban landscapes: a vine growing on the side of a building, a weed sprouting from the base of a fire hydrant. It was an interesting take, and I hadn’t seen anything interesting in the photography world in quite some time.

Anyway, she sent me a text once she got my number, and I asked her if she would like to get coffee with me sometime. Sure, I had seen a picture of her at the art gallery, so I knew that she was pretty. But I didn’t have an expressed interest in becoming her sugar daddy. I just thought we could meet, I could maybe buy a few photographs, maybe keep her number in my phone in case I needed a photographer.

That being said, I think we were both surprised at how much magnetism there was between us from the very first date. I told Sage a little bit about my work as an environmental lawyer, and her face lit up.

I felt immediately embarrassed that I had given the wrong impression. “Don’t get me wrong,” I told her. “I like nature as much as the next guy. But it’s not like it was my life’s passion. I just happened to know a guy who knew a guy who had a job opening. And I followed the money.”

Sage raised her glass in a toast, “And you’re saving the planet in the process. " Win-win.”

Sage was at the beginning of her career, so she didn’t have a lot of extra time to spend with some older lawyer guy who was quickly falling for her. I asked her if maybe I could come with her on one of her shooting days.

“I’m really good at carrying photography equipment and buying coffee,” I said. Maybe it came off as desperate. But if you’re not willing to look a little desperate for a girl like Sage, then you’ll never be lucky enough to spend the day with her exploring the city, looking for the perfect shot. Which we did, every Saturday morning for the next six weeks. These outings were typically followed by brunch, then a little bit of one-on-one time back at my place, then Sage would go to the studio to start developing the film from the day.

Of course, spending so much time with a photographer made me want to dabble in the art form myself. And so I got my old DSLR camera out of the closet and brought it along for our Saturday morning “hunts.” Without question, I wasn’t as talented as Sage. But just being around her was inspiring, and I learned a lot without having to ask a million annoying questions.

This was such a fun time in our relationship. And the sugar part of it honestly felt like I was contributing to the next generation of artists. So long as she had me, Sage could explore her creativity without having to worry about getting a corporate job. It was very fulfilling for both of us.

But still, I felt like there was some kind of melancholy hanging over Sage. She would frequently get overwhelmed by the noisier parts of the city, and traffic stressed her out. Some Saturdays, she would ask if we could just stay home and not talk. She was tired of so much noise, she said.

It was troublesome to me to see her this way. When I asked her about it, she said that she got this way most years around this time. It was hard for her to be away from home over the summer.

“Why don’t you go back?” I asked her.

“I would love to,” she said. “But I can’t afford it. I have my place here. I have shows lined up, and I’d have to fly back and forth for that. It’s just too expensive.”

“Sublease your place,” I suggested. “And let me cover the cost of the flights.”

Sage wanted to say no, but I could tell she knew I was making her an offer she couldn’t refuse.

“What’s the catch?” she asked with feigned suspicion.

“You have to invite me to come visit you.”

Within two weeks, Sage had found a subletter and gotten herself on a plane back home. She found a rental in her hometown (her parents had since moved away, so she couldn’t stay with them) and had already contacted a local photographer friend of hers who offered to let her develop in his studio. Every roadblock had been cleared, and when I visited Sage a week after she had settled in, I could see that she was so much happier surrounded by pine trees and lakes and her charming small town.

“Okay,” I told her, “What does a girl do for fun in a place like this?” “Well,” she said, “The weather’s good. There’s no moon tonight. So we take a nap, and then we spend all night taking pictures of the stars.”

If I thought that we needed a lot of gear for our morning outings in the city, I was astounded by the amount of equipment needed for night photography. Among the items that we packed into the trunk of Sage’s rental car were:

• Two cameras (a Nikon Z5 and a Sony A7IV)
• Her wide-angle lenses
• Night filters
• Back-up batteries
• Tripods
• A remote shutter release
• A tent
• Sleeping pads
• Two camping chairs
• Lots of warm clothes and blankets
• A couple of headlamps and flashlights

As we drove towards the area where we were going to set up camp for the night, a clearing just south of town where the pine forest gave way to a more desert-like landscape, I noticed that we were surrounded by sagebrush and desert rose. In the golden light of sunset, it was absolutely stunning.

“Hey,” I asked, “Does this happen to be the kind of landscape that inspired your name?”

Sage smiled and nodded.

“It fits,” I told her.

That night, Sage taught me all about astrophotography. And while she was an excellent teacher, I have to admit that a lot of the technical details were lost on me. I was just happy to be in her presence, listening to her explain things like aperture, white balance, and shutter speed.

But, although I was a bad student, Sage was an even better instructor. She gave me pop quizzes to make sure that I was retaining the information. And she even made me assemble the second camera and take my own shots so that I was a part of the process.

Once everything was set up and we were settled into our camping chairs, that’s when the fun part really started for me. As the cameras did their magic, we sat back and looked up at the stars, talking about every topic under the sun until the sun itself started to peek out over the mountains.

“I can see why it’s so hard to stay away from here,” I told Sage.

She just nodded.

“Do you think,” I said slowly, hoping that I wasn’t overstepping, “That we could make this a yearly thing? Or maybe even more frequent? I think I’m really tapping into my inner astrophotographer.” That last part was a joke, but Sage understood what I was proposing.

I looked over at Sage and could see the outline of her smile in the soft early morning light.

“Absolutely,” she said.