Sunday, October 5

Photoholics

I went out of my house today. I went downtown to the Post Office and before heading back home I went to a museum. The exhibition was really good and I enjoyed it quite a lot. However, the thing that attracted my attention was not the stuff on he walls but the people's reactions to it.

Everyone was taking pictures!!

I sometimes do that too, but I had never really thought about it until today. I think it is a nice gesture, to try and have a keepsake of the things you are enjoying. The goal is to get an image to be able to see it at your pleasure and to share it with others. That's the whole point of sites like flickr...

The visual culture we live in demands images. We see it a lot in the blogosphere...
Everything is easier now with even cell phones that take better pictures than a digital camera. This easiness of taking pictures, I think, enriches the art of photography. Although, some would say that simple picture taking is not art, but I think it might be.

My whole concern over this is that while photography is the bestest invention in the last 200 years, its combination with mass media and technology has made it so mainstream and such a routine that we don't even appreciate it anymore.

We don't appreciate the fact that we can capture an image and have it with us forever. And neither do we appreciate the moment we are living because we are too concerned on having a memory of it.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hummmm, interesting take Pudding.

I love photography, and am usually attached to my camera when I leave the house. I love having a memory captured and sometimes shared.

I am called the capturer of the family memories in our family. Sometimes it bothers me that no one brings their camera's and I will purposely leave mine behind.

Recently was at our neice's bday party and neither parent or grandparent had a camera.

Thus, being the one w/the camera, I am rarely in any of them.

TiLT said...

Nicely said.
In case of fire (after getting the kids of course) - I must take my pics. I love looking back and reliving so many memories. And I get to share those memories through them with my kids. Capturing the images sure is amzing.
And bonus: with computers, even if taken with film, they can be backed up in case of anything like a fire...but we will always have the memory :)

Clare said...

I've thought a lot about this, too. I found that the more I was behind a camera, the less I was really appreciating the moment I was trying to capture. I always felt disappointed in the photographs once they were developed (back in the film days!)

I stopped taking a camera with me altogether for a while, but then I realized that I missed having some documentation, so many memories that I don't have a record of. I'm getting back in the habit of bringing my little pocket camera with me wherever I go now.

Related Posts with Thumbnails