That's not a lie- this is platonic. Jem might be blushing but that's because Val is quite pretty, he'd also be like that around literally every character I've posted so far because he's a disaster of a human being who can't be trusted with a fishbowl.

I'm really proud of the background in this one, and the doves. The doves turned out gorgeous and I can fully understand Val's love of them, though her current reasoning for these pictures is silly.

See, the professor for their required 'Basics of Magic' class had long white wings that they claim is because they're a dove hybrid. This is false, they are a roman goose, which have similar colorings to the traditional dove you'd be familiar with (white feathers and a pink-ish orange beak). Val is the only one well versed enough in birds to call her professor out but no one would believe her. After all, why would they lie about that?

So she's gathering evidence to prove her professor is a goose, not a dove. Jem has tagged along because he wants to spend time with her doing something she loves, even if he's fairly clueless on both birds and photography.

Jem actually has a vendetta against the very concept of birds so it's actually even sillier than you initially believed. Why does he have this vendetta? A life long suspicion that birds are faking it on purpose for an excuse to commit crimes since animals can't be arrested for human crimes, of course.