Footspotting

Author's note:

Just a heads-up to readers: this story has elements of both voyeurism and foot fetishism. If either of these is unappealing to you, I encourage you to find a different story. Otherwise, please enjoy. Also, thanks to CuriousKnight for assistance in editing.

***

It was a beautiful spring afternoon, warm and sunny with an occasional light breeze to cool things down. Students across campus were taking advantage of the weather and relaxing in hammocks, on benches, or even on blankets and towels spread across the well-maintained campus lawns.

Roger, however, was far from relaxed. He had an assignment due the next day that he had forgotten about until this morning and the damn squirrel wouldn't get out of its nest.

Roger was a photography major. Specifically, he was interested in wildlife photography, hoping to use his degree to get a job at a conservation group, a nature magazine or even a zoo. It was an atypical career path, compared to his peers, but he hoped that he would have better luck than most of them, who would almost certainly become hacky "starving artist" types, working off their student loans at menial service industry jobs.

So, obviously, the assignment to take photographs in full natural sunlight had led him to an animal. He had hoped to get out to the nearest national park for more exciting opportunities, but the looming deadline forced him to pursue a much less interesting subject—a squirrel in a tree on campus.

But the damn thing refused to poke its head out of its nest. Or, "drey", the technical term for a squirrel's nest. He knew he should have patience. Real wildlife photographers could spend weeks or more waiting for their opportunity. But he needed this done fast. If he couldn't figure it out soon, he would have to fall back on his plan B of photographing a flower, or something lame like that.

As he surveyed the surroundings, he had an idea. The tree with the nest was surrounded by campus buildings. If he could get access to an upper floor of one of them, or even a rooftop, he might get to an angle that would let him see the furry bastard. And he had a few telephoto lenses in his pack that should be able to focus on the subject from a distance.

Roger tried the liberal arts building first. Its windows were all old, dirty and/or fitted with screens. No rooftop access either. Next, he tried the math and engineering building. It was a lot newer, but its windows had some sort of tinting treatment that messed with their transparency and they didn't open at all. His third choice was a dorm building. He felt a little awkward being there, since he wasn't a resident, but it was co-ed, so he wasn't bothered too much. The windows were filthy and didn't open. But, to his surprise, he found that the main stairwell led to a rooftop, the door to which was cracked open.

Now he really felt like an intruder, so he quietly slipped through the door and walked out on the flat rooftop. He was about to make his way to the edge of the building that faced the nest when something caught his eye—there was someone else on the roof.

Beside a small rooftop garden, there was a young man, perched at the other end of the roof, squatting and holding something in front of him. He looked like what Roger imagined he would look like, staring down the lens of a camera at something below. Not wanting to completely shock the guy, Roger quietly cleared his throat.

The man shook in startled surprise, fumbling his camera—his phone—in the process.

"Oh, hey," he sputtered out, "I'm just checking on these tomato plants."

Roger saw through the lie with ease and approached the man in curiosity. He wanted to know what there was to photograph on the other side of the building. The young man awkwardly rose to his feet and hung his head in shame as Roger peered over the rooftop.

The student athletics center was the building behind the dorm. Which included, at this time of year, an outdoor pool area, packed with students swimming, lounging and sunbathing. Roger sneered with disdain. But this was only slightly due to the creepiness of the act.

"Dude, a phone camera is complete shit for somethin' like this," he chastised the embarrassed man. At this point, he looked up and noticed the camera around Roger's neck and his bag of gear.

"Whoa, you're here to take pictures too?" he said, in awe of the professional equipment.

"No," Roger said flatly. "Well, okay, technically, yes, but I'm here for a photography class assignment. Not for creep shots of half naked women."

"C'mon, just try it out," the young man pleaded. "You're right, these phone pics are shit. You can do a lot better, I bet."

Roger rolled his eyes but ultimately succumbed to the flattery. If nothing else, it would be good practice. And, of course, it was hard to turn down the opportunity to check out hot young women in bikinis.

He took up a position beside the tomato planter. The way the trellis was positioned actually made for a pretty effective hunting blind—he would be practically undetectable to the people below.

"The plants are my doing," the man explained as Roger set up his camera, attaching the appropriate lens. "They're technically part of a project about sustainability for an environmental science class, but I really did it to get access to the rooftop. Say, how did you get up here anyway?"

"Door was cracked open," Roger replied absently, focused on his work. He took a few test shots and made some adjustments.

"Oooh, can you try to get Lauren Smith?" the man asked eagerly. "She's the blonde in the purple two piece sunbathing by the shallow end."

"Workin' on it," Roger answered, slightly annoyed.

"Oh, I'm James, by the way," the young man said in introduction.

"I'm Roger," he replied curtly. Another few shots. Not bad. This Lauren had a pretty impressive body. Somewhat small but very pert breasts, a flat stomach and long smooth legs.

"Wow, amazing," James said, looking over Roger's shoulder at the screen.

"Yeah, but it's a little washed out," Roger admitted as he adjusted some of the components of the camera. He took a few more shots, which looked a bit better.

"Now, how about Gabbie Ortega?" James asked. "Long brown hair. Red one piece. I think she was over by the lifeguard tower."

"Hey, what do I look like?" Roger asked with indignation. "I'm not your personal student body paparazzi."

"I'll pay you," James offered. "If you can email them to me."

Roger frowned. The whole situation was still a little creepy to him, but he could certainly use the extra income—camera accessories weren't cheap.

"How much?" he asked.

"Well, I can't speak for everyone, but I'd give $20 for a good one of Lauren."

Roger considered this.

"Wait, what do you mean 'everyone'?"

James grew sheepish again.

"I, uh, I'm part of a kind of a group of guys who exchange pics."

"You mean, creepshot photos of hot girls on campus?" Roger clarified.

"Yeah, pretty much," James admitted. Seeing Roger's growing skepticism, he added: "we're harmless, really. We're not stalkers or rapists or anything like that. We're just losers, weirdos, and nerds who want to jerk off to pics of the girls in our classes who we would never actually have a chance with."

Roger recalled how, in his younger years, he had had many great jerk off sessions to social media posts of his hot female classmates. This was, admittedly, a little different. But not by that much...

"So, is $20 the going rate?" he asked, mostly just buying time to think it over more.

"No. We don't ever get money involved. It's just an exchange thing. But seeing as how you're not actually in the group, and you're getting such amazing pics..."

"Yeah, $20 will do," Roger finally agreed. "I think I see this Gabbie chick you mentioned. She's got a towel over her shoulders, so you can't really see her tits very well."

"That's okay. As long as you get her feet."

Roger pulled his face back from the camera to arch an eyebrow at James.

"Hey, it's not for me!" he cried defensively. "John's the one obsessed with feet. He'll go crazy over pretty much any halfway attractive girl on campus, as long as she's barefoot or in sandals. But I know he's got a particular thing for Gabbie. I think she went to his high school."

Roger rolled his eyes but took some shots anyway. Feet were kind of a weird thing to obsess over, but not that weird. From what he could judge, Gabbie's were pretty nice. They were painted a deep red that went well with her tanned brown skin and matched her one piece bathing suit.

"So, does this group of yours have, like, a bounty list, or something like that?" Roger inquired.

"Not really. We just get what we get and share with everyone. Some of their favorites, like Gabbie, stick out in my memory, but there's no formal list in place."

Roger considered this and began to scan the pool area. A petite chick with a dyed blue pixie cut and a bunch of bad tattoos was sunbathing in a pool chair. Not really his type, but he got a few pics of her anyway.

A kind of chubby blonde with big tits was sitting on the pool edge with her legs in the shallow end, talking and joking with friends. He got several shots of her, including one where she was laughing and another where her foot was out of the water, after kicking to splash her friends.

Another highlight was a short brunette who wasn't dressed for the pool—a baggy white t-shirt, shorts and sneakers—but evidently stopped by to visit some friends. As she squatted poolside to talk, her friends had playfully splashed her, making her white shirt transparent and revealing a hot pink sports bra underneath.

He got a few more, but those were the good ones. To his credit, James had waited quietly as Roger had gone about all this.

"So, here's how this is gonna go down," Roger finally explained, lowering his camera. "Give me your email address. I'll go back to my computer, process all these, and send you ultra low res preview images of them all. Share them with your buddies, let them make their offers, and get back to me. I'll send you my PayPal info. Once I get the money, I'll send the full res images."

James mulled this over, but ultimately agreed. He gave Roger an email address as well as the code to the roof door, in case he ever wanted to return. They soon parted ways. Roger had almost forgotten why he had come to the roof in the first place, but remembered the squirrel before he left. He had a perfect view of the critter and managed a great shot of it curled up in its drey, sleeping with its litter of two babies.

***

His squirrel photographs got him a good grade on the assignment, as well as the acclaim of his professor. The pool pics went over even better—he made almost $200 from that one session alone.

All the transactions were through James via email, so he didn't get a sense of how big the group was or why the photos that sold had done so well. Some throwaway pics of unremarkable women in unremarkable positions had sold while his personal favorite—one of the chubby blonde with a wide smile on her face and her tits practically spilling out of her bathing suit—had been ignored. He guessed that most of these guys lusted after specific women, who they had some sort of connection with. So, there was no way to know what they would go for.

The only comments James made regarded John, the foot guy. He had made more of the purchases than anyone else and, apparently, his pockets ran deeper than those of the others in the group. Roger realized that he probably wouldn't keep up his pace of income for long, unless he pandered to John specifically.

So he made another trip to the rooftop the next week—on a different day of the week and at a different time, to increase his chances of seeing different women. He did pretty well that day too.

His strategy was two-pronged.

One approach was to just shoot everyone, regardless of how attractive he thought they were. The women sunbathing in the poolside lounge chairs were boring, but easy targets. Several of them turned to tan their other side while he was shooting, so he managed to get them from both sides. He hoped that a collage of a girl from multiple positions would sell well. But he also got every woman he could get a clean shot of, whether in the pool, walking around or talking with friends. His shot of the day was of a busty blonde lifeguard, legs crossed and looking particularly imperious atop her elevated chair.

The other approach was to focus on the feet. The sunbathers were all barefoot, so that was an easy get. Although, he was limited in his angle, based on the position of the rooftop. Some of the lounge chairs allowed for a shot from behind, which took in her chest, stomach, and the tops of her feet and toenails—but not really her face. Most of the chairs afforded more of a side view. Only two, on either side of the lifeguard tower, gave a view of face, body and soles. He wondered if the tops or the bottoms of the feet were supposed to be sexier. He supposed that, personally, the tops looked better. Painted toenails just seemed more interesting than the other side. At any rate, he took them all—let John decide what was good or bad.

As he scanned for more feet, he found that this took a little more patience and quick thinking than just shooting everything. There was so much going on at the pool at any given moment, and it was tough to take it all in. One minute, a woman might be standing waist-deep in the water, chatting with friends—feet hidden. But a moment later, she might be climbing out of the pool, water dripping from her body, a single foot revealed, toes spread as her weight pressed it against the hot cement.

He found this aspect of things a lot more exciting. At least, more exciting than just shooting still bodies in chairs. It reminded him of what he liked about wildlife photography: utilizing patience and quick thinking to seize the perfect opportunity. There was an element of danger to all this as well, which thrilled him. He felt well hidden on the roof, behind the tomato trellis, but if he was spotted, he might get in a lot of trouble.

After an hour or so, he felt like he had gotten a good haul and packed up for the day. He processed the raw images back at his computer in his apartment, made a few collages of a single woman in different positions, generated low quality preview images, and sent them all to James.

That afternoon's worth of work ended up netting him almost $300. The collages were especially popular, as were the ones with prominently featured feet. The only downside was that James explained to him that the guys were running low on disposable income for this kind of thing. The images were of mind-blowing quality, compared to what they normally got—but what they normally got was free. James said in his reply email that his sell-rate would almost certainly go down, unless he lowered his prices.

Roger understood where he was coming from, but decided to stay with the $20 price point. He'd see how the next set went.

***

The next set, taken a few days later, went great but sold poorly. More great shots, more collages and more feet, but it was, he admitted, a bit stale. He took another set the following week, which sold even less. It was basically just John buying at that point, and even then he wasn't buying every single foot picture.

What made matters even worse was that Roger himself was getting bored. He never thought he'd see the day when hot women in bikinis would bore him, but it was just all too same-y and easy.

Roger had an epiphany one afternoon as he ate his to-go cafeteria lunch at a table outside the student center. The next table over, a young woman sat eating her wrap and chips. Her legs were crossed and her flip flop dangled from her toes, painted in deep blue nail polish, as she rocked her leg. Roger realized that the advantage of taking photographs of women at the pool allowed him to capture parts of his subjects' bodies that were typically hidden—bare shoulders, exposed necklines, midriffs, navels and thighs. But if feet were the target, there was no need for such a particular location—women walked around with their feet exposed all the time!

With a quick glance around to make sure no one was looking over his shoulder, Roger took out his phone and got several candid shots of the young woman's feet.

After that, the world would never look the same to Roger. He saw opportunities for foot pics everywhere. Women sitting on the floor outside of a classroom, waiting for the doors to be opened. Women sitting on a bench, looking at their phone. Women just standing around, talking with one another. Incredibly banal moments were now potentially lascivious.

His phone's camera had the obvious advantage of being inconspicuous—everyone had their phones out pretty much all the time, so it was very easy to take photos without raising concern. The downside was, obviously, that the resolution of the images was far inferior to what he could get with a real camera. And while this might not have bothered most people, Roger was accustomed to having pictures in the highest possible resolution, so it irritated him greatly.

So he found clever ways to photograph women and their feet with his camera without arousing suspicion. One strategy was to hide in plain sight—he would position himself at a nearby statue, fountain or even flowerbed to take photos of that subject. But in between shots, he would idly point his camera at the women nearby as he pretended to make adjustments to the camera. He would then take his real photos.

Another strategy involved a shutter remote. This was an inexpensive device that connected to the camera by Bluetooth and allowed him to take the picture by pressing a button on the remote instead of touching the camera itself. With this, he could walk around with his camera hanging around his neck and his hand on the remote in his pocket. He would walk by and pause to check a nonexistent message on his phone, stopping in the perfect spot to secretly take a photo.

And all of this didn't end at campus either—coffee shops, grocery stores, waiting rooms, laundromats... they were all suddenly potential opportunities to get pictures of pretty women and their sandaled feet.

This thrill of the hunt was a big part of why all this appealed to Roger. But, the other half to his growing foot fetish came as he scrutinized the photos he had taken. He had always thought women had (or, could have) attractive feet. Sure, men had feet too, but women's feet were fundamentally different in several ways. They were hairless, unlike men. They were painted, unlike men. They could be contained within decorated sandals or high heels, again, unlike men. But quite a few parts of women's bodies were like this—their ears, their hands, their arms. Feet were part of the "total package" of an attractive woman, but a foot by itself was not capable of provoking sexual arousal any more than a forearm could.

At least, that was how he had thought before.

What he hadn't appreciated was just how much nuance there was to feet. The big toe was, obviously, the biggest but there was a point at which it was too big and became unattractive by virtue of its peculiar size. The second toe was supposed to be the longest but, again, there was a range of attractive proportions and if it was too long, it started to look freakish. The following toes got progressively smaller but the pinky toe was all too frequently a source of imperfection, either by being too small or hanging out at an odd angle.

The toenails were also subject to opposing extremes. Too long and they looked gnarly and sharp. Too short and they made the toes look stubby and fat. If they were painted, this was almost always a plus, although natural nails could look good too. The most unattractive state was painted nails that had grown out, becoming worn, patchy and chipped, and leaving the base of the nail unpainted.