Hello fyn  . Thank you for submitting your entry. I am Just an Ordinary Boo!  and I am going to be reviewing your piece for "Short Shots: Official WDC Contest"  [ASR]. Please do not edit your item until the results are declared.
 The Title: I liked the title, it was so obvious that the cliché was being used in some innovative way. With the image prompt in mind, I thought of how the person wielding a camera was likely to missing from the film, 'not' visible or in other words - 'invisible'.
The Beginning: "Daniel Merrick didn’t know for sure that he had a dad, until he didn’t." The first sentence is a paradox and an enigma. It is clever, pithy and apt, yet it would be a fitting ending, not a beginning. To ask someone just dipping into a story to appreciate such heights of abstruse logic is a tall ask, some might be intimidated or put off. It did, however, do its job, introducing the chraracters, setting the background of the tale etc. etc.
The Setting: I wonder if you think the setting of the tale was obvious. Bits of info were scattered through the tale, but nothing to create a compelling picture of where he lived, what he saw. If his eyes had been forced to witness what no eyes ever should, that phrase leaves us dangling, it creates less impact than a glimpse of what it was that he witnessed.
The Characters: "After a while, Daniel quit pestering his mom, for he had deduced that he must be a product of in-vitro or something similar." Either he was a child prodigy or he quit after many years. Deducing that one is a product of in-vitro techniques requires an understanding beyond mere childish comprehension. The characters did not become three dimensional to me, niggling details like why Daniel actually stopped pestering his mum, actually irrelevant to the tale's progress, made me fail to glimpse the character in his or her entirety. We get no sense of the physical description either, not because there is no description, but because the description fails to make much of an impact.
Then too, the protagonist is referred to as Daniel in some places and Merrick in others, I thought that was not required and caused more than a little confusion.
In some places the information given to us about minor characters seems superfluous: "He was, therefore, a bit surprised when Sophie, or Saffron (as she liked to be called) knocked on his door the morning after he’d returned from his latest jaunt to Birchar in Algeria." Why was he surprised, presumably mail did collect in his every absence, his landlady coming to give him the pile must have commonplac? The morning after his return would be an acceptable moment to do this helpful task. If you call the chracter - a quirky ‘lost in the sixties’ pottery lady - Saffron, just after the bit describing her attributes and origins, it would be smoother. Two lines later we might not have retained the information. But, we're not finished with things to note, we are also told the town and country from which he has returned. I might be picky, but I like to have facts slip into the story, not bristle in profusion from one point.
The Descriptions: Some of the word choices for the descriptions were less than arresting, even confusing: "Dark eyes that had seen more than any eyes ever should seemed huge in his rather thin, sparse face." Would you not say the word 'sparse' usually refers to growth? Or did you mean 'spare', as in 'thin'? 'Gaunt', 'cadaverous', these convey more vivid images.
There are bits that conveyed a perfect picture - "With a quick smile, she turned, her floral skirt dusting the narrow stairs behind her as she returned to her pottery store below." I could see Sophie.
The Story as a Whole: There were some things that did not quite 'jell' to me. For e.g.: I found the fact that a mother would tell her son such a fairy tale, about a literally invisible father, not in keeping with the image of the mother who talked of 'inconsequential minutiae'. There seemed no real reason for her to use such a term, or for the father to echo the sentiment in his letter.
There were lots of little turns and twists which left me flummoxed, I understand this can be laid at my door, at my lack of percetion - but do you feel all the intircacies of the tale were evident? For e.g.: "She was such an expressive soul, but she'd have withered with my being away so much." So the answer to not being able to be around much was to totally abandon? The son found her to be "as a black and white image in a colorful world." and yet the father said"Filming as I do, in black and white, your mother was a brilliant combination of color and light.", the only similarity was that both abandoned her.
The Rules:
Your story must be:
 Fiction. 
Based on the photograph above.
Rated 18 or below: Any story that falls above this rating will be disqualified. E -
2000 words or less: Word count must be provided at the bottom of the item. 1937 words
Newly written for this contest:
Submitted One Time Only:
Edited Only Until the Deadline:
What I liked: Well, it tugged at my heartstrings, for a poor little boy who was lonely becasue some adults made childish decisions. For a psyche so affected that two-dimensional reality becomes meaningful and any interaction suspect. It affected me deeply, for the futility of the father's advice, preaching what he could not, or would not, practice.
Suggestions: There were no real 'errors', just points where I needed to pause and pnder the exact meaning. Too many of those in a story and the reader is lost, in both senses of the word.
"Sparsely, but comfortably, furnished with a bed, a desk, a comfy chair and a coffeepot, it was more of a landing place between trips than a home." 'Comfy' is a slang shortening of the word 'comfortable' - to resuethe same word in such close proximity implies a lack of vocabulary - defintely not evident elsewhere.
"the mystical tale of ‘the invisible father’ grew more troublesome and one of those things he’d soon enough just forget about entirely." I admit to having ruminated a bit here - do you mean 'one of those things he'd as soon forget about'? The other way sounds as though he is still to forget it.
"So he grew up without the fabled father and managed quite well, thank you very much." Why was the father a 'fabled' one? I mean one grows up with or without a 'fabled' silver spoon in one's mouth, but fathers are real. Another thing, he managed pretty ill, lonely and longing for a meaningful realtionship. That is not just my prection, a few lines later we find him seeking books, which succeed in "transporting him far away from the empty, colorless one he lived in."
"Part Kona and part Kenyan, the smell of it while brewing was enough to get his blood moving. Rather than stand there wishing it was already coffee," It was already coffee, only it was not ready for him to drink; the brew or decoction is no more coffee than the powder was. Maybe you could make 'rather than stand there wishing it was ready.'?
Any comments are made as an individual opinion. Please sip what you find sweet and discard what you think is sour.
Jyo
 May your words go on to shine!
 Effort brings colour to Life
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"I could hear music and laughter from thirty directions, and delectable aromas from every corner made my mouth water."
"Any exercise was to much for me."
Your third line and it has the third hiccup. I think you mean 'too much'.
) - the first letter of each word is a capital letter. 
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