While visiting overseas destinations as ebullient tourists on an overkill, many of us exhibit myriad unenviable characteristics – speaking in native language on a high pitch, gesticulating, lugging bulky bags, shoving and trying to grab the best seats on the coach ! But the most prolific of all is the propensity to capture on camera or video-graph all conceivable objects, characters and scenes that we come across.
During our 2015 Europe trip, the tour guide said to us resignedly ‘.to catch every scene on camera is futile, you will stop looking – why not savour all that you can see in your memory forever’ ! Despite these admonitions, all continued clicking happily ever after and returned back with few memorable moments locked inside us and loads and loads of pics consigned to digital space which may never be visited again. Be that as it may, why do people love taking photographs incessantly, apart from the sheer fun of shoot-and-click handsets ? Because, visuals create far greater impact than any other medium.
As an keen photographer with no real knowledge of photography, I am convinced that this too is an art to be perfected, since a photograph or a series of them, has the ability to convey stories to those that view them reflecting the psyche and rhythm of the story-teller. Pictures of rock-stars, pop-artists, racers and soccer league champs will adorn the walls of the impetuous youth, taking rare photos of musicians and artists interest music lovers, while nature enthusiasts can spend hours on photographs of nature and wild life in its many splendoured forms ! Photos tell a lot about what makes a person tick.
Pictures artistically taken have the ability to convey emotion, mood, narrative, ideas and messages, all of which are important elements of story telling. For the uninitiated, the best way to prepare a travelogue is through pictorial depiction that has the flow of an exciting journey. As the telecasting and broadcasting of major events, matches and speeches become ‘viral’ the pictures taken on the occasion also get preserved for posterity. Then we have the ‘Big Fat Indian Weddings’ which invoke countless sessions of the pair, family and friends with professional photographers all of which form an enormously costly, beautifully bound book like a historical document for the archives !
Even for the average fun-loving amateurs, why are photos so important that they need to be clicked on every occasion. A vital necessity comes from the social media where the life’s latest happenings, dresses, styles and events of any Shyam, Dinu or Hari can be posted with pics with same flair as Ranvir, Ranbeer or Raj Kumar (Rao not Hirani !).
However, aside from the much-debated privacy issue, it’s the ‘problem of plenty’ with photographs that arises – what to do with the tons of them ? Yes, the digital means are fine, but they too require meticulous dating, classification and categorization and must find place in various forms of storage. However, what cannot be done must be deleted !
As for me, I follow the classical style of 5×7 glossy prints which are preserved in albums of all sizes. All this is cumbersome, but holding an old picture in my hand, brings back many memories, stories and faces, just the way they were, many, many summers ago !
Working on Living 