Do you remember the traditional camera, a box-like thing
with a lens in front and something black and plastic-like called the film
inside? The film served the useful purpose of limiting the number of
photographs that could be taken and therefore ensuring that people were judicious
in using the camera, taking pictures only of stuff they needed.
Then along came the digital camera. Immediately the need for
thrift and common sense vanished. Instead of limiting themselves to perhaps 20
pictures of their child’s birthday party, people took 200. Where earlier an
animal lover might have exhausted a full reel on a visit to the zoo, returning
home with 36 photographs, they started taking 36 of each animal! I once took a
visiting friend, his family and their newly-purchased digital camera to the
zoo. The 17-year old daughter, assigned as official photographer, was
enthusiastic and unrelenting in her duties. I felt sorry for her, clicking so furiously
that she did not have the time to view a single animal through her naked eye.
“Why don’t you look at the animals, Ritu?” I asked and reached
for her camera. “Let me hold that for a while.”
She pulled the camera close to her chest and looked at me as
if a trunk had replaced my nose. “Why?! I’ve captured all the animals here and
I can see them later at leisure, on the computer.”
However, even the most prolific digital photographer didn’t
carry the camera everywhere: so they only photographed worthy occasions like
birthdays, weddings and zoo visits. And they could share these only after removing
the card from their camera and loading it into their computer.
But now, with the smart phone and its built-in camera, things
have got out of hand.
People carry the phone everywhere and therefore take photographs,
or make video recordings, of everything…
and then share these instantly. At the receiving end of this habit, I’ve had to
view, in still and moving format, trivial things in people’s lives like the
view from their front door, back door and bathroom window; the dresses they
fancy on mannequins in shopfronts they pass; their dogs in different poses;
their neighbour’s lawn; and, for variety, their dogs sitting on their
neighbour’s lawn in different poses.
Among the worst offenders are couples with a new baby. In
the old days one could avoid visiting them and therefore avoid painfully going
through albums of photographs (all of the same baby). But that strategy no
longer works because they carry the albums with them! With a flick of an eager
forefinger, they scroll through photographs of their baby in every conceivable
moment of its tiny life, with an average of six examples of each moment. These
photographs might perhaps be captivating to the infant’s grandparents but not
to anyone else. Talking of grandparents, earlier they could only talk about the exploits of their
“miraculous grandkid”; now they are also armed and dangerous, carrying a full
set of the same photographs on their phone.
People recommend restaurants they’ve visited by showing
pictures of the entrance, the manager, the waiter, the other guests, the menu
card, their food before it was served, the food being eaten and the empty plate
depicting how much they had enjoyed it. And as proof that they really visited the
restaurant (and didn’t merely copy the pictures from some else’s phone), they
show you selfies, with themselves prominent and upfront in each picture and the
restaurant entrance, for example, a blur in the background.
It appears to me that people are walking backwards through
life, taking selfies. Today my friend’s daughter’s zoo pictures would show the
animals behind her, props to her selfie.
These days, big sporting events are covered beautifully by a
professional television and press crew using hi-tech equipment. Thanks to
Google and YouTube these photographs and videos are available the next day. Yet
many spectators also capture the match on their smart phones! At a football
match we went to watch together, my friend recorded most of the proceedings on
his phone. When I glanced at his screen, everything was blurred and jerky. I
had difficulty spotting the ball and whether anyone had possession of it (and
if so, which team he belonged to). But since he was recording the match so
assiduously, he watched most of it on his screen.
Afterwards he sighed and said, “Fantastic match! I’m so glad
I came. I’ve got most of it here.” He tapped his phone proudly.
“And when will you watch it?” I asked.
“Oh, any time,” he said vaguely. “What’s important is that I
have it.”
He then told me about a tennis match that he had attended
live.
“It was a night match,” he said. “And the players kept complaining
that the flashes from cameras all over the stands were disturbing them.”
Before I could sympathise with the players, he continued.
“Isn’t it ridiculous, in today’s day and age? If someone cannot handle the
innocent flashes from a mobile phone camera, they have no business to be
playing professional tennis.”
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