Friday, June 1, 2012

PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE AIR !!


                                       'Nature photography by me’
                                                                   ‘My photo-blogs', 
                                                                                 'Random Clicks’..... 

In my opinion, these types of phrases are very much in the lime light in recent times. 5-6 years back, there was not much interest for photography among the youth. But now people are keeping it on the 1st position on their passion/hobby list. It is getting enough attention in the CVs of almost all the modern guys. I would love to admit the fact that at one point of time I was also attracted by photography but later I realized that I don't have the potential & I didn't dare to overestimate my abilities. Now, I feel like suffering from delirium whenever I try to explore the reason of these phrases. Finally I have some free time under my belt to put lights on those reasons.

When I looked back, I found three factors. 'Evolution of digital cameras', 'Inspiration from 3 Idiots' & of course the most prominent factor is availability of different social networking sites. Now I can hypothesize that, the passion for photography originates from 'Mr Farhan Qureshi', inserted into social networks & functions by the sophisticated DSLR cameras.

‘3 Idiots’ was one of those Hindi movies which have taught us to follow our passion & I guess it is one of the rare movies in which an actor wishes to be a photographer. It has shown us that, photographers are not paid that badly & everything is possible if passion is consolidated by sincerity & dedication. Had there been no '3 Idiots', the number of people claiming to have passion for photography would have been less. I hope most of them would admit this fact. In our society, almost all of us have been under pressure to become either engineer or doctors. But this movie has partially ignited the desire of few guys to mark photography at least as their hobby.

Another significant factor for the sky-rocketing popularity of photography is evolution of sophisticated cameras. I am 500% sure that nobody would have shown a little interest if there were no digital cameras. It doesn't matter whether you are from the families of Mallyas/Ambanis or from a middle class family; the truth is 'money matters'. Nobody would have spent money to get snaps with those old generation cameras with rolled films. Who the hell would have spent approximately Rs 6-8 (camera role+ development charge per picture) for each photo?? But with the birth of digital cameras & smart phones, photography is much more convenient now a days. Now we don't mind if one of the captured images is blurred because we have the option to delete & recapture. The only investment is the camera cost & the final result is limitless pictures. Anybody who owns a costly DSLR camera gives the impression that he/she is a passionate photographer because most of the time, our attention is snatched by the quality of the camera, not by the quality of the picture. But hats off to the real photographers as it requires a lot of innovations & photography always starts from own eye lens. The camera is just a mediator !!

I have a feeling that, we do things in our life either to impress someone or suppress someone/something. Please remember that this rule is applicable only for psychologically stable people.  'REWARD' is a well established human instinct & as you know, social networking sites are the biggest 'REWARD' factories available on the galaxy. Nobody captures a picture just to save it in his/her hard drive. During 99% of the time, when we get an extraordinary picture (after getting hundreds of bad picture), we tend to upload it in Facebook/Indiblogger/Google plus with the blink of an eye. Then we look for the shower of 'LIKE's & comments (Nice click/Great snap/Kudos etc) on those pictures. How many of us would have loved photography in the absence of this facebook mediated reward generation??? We would have lost the motivation to have good snaps in the absence of social networking sites (appreciations). If someone says that he/she has never strived for appreciation & admiration, he/she is either the biggest liar or the biggest hypocrite in the God’s creation. In that sense we should be grateful to these sites as they give a nice momentum to our passion. It is hard to ignore the contribution of social networks in resurrecting the confidence in photography.


[PS- I have no conflict of interest for typing this blog. I have a tremendous amount of respect for those who follow their interests. It is just an analysis to know what really has created so many photographers. I apologize from the bottom of my heart, if any passionate photographer finds this blog to be cardiotoxic].

1 comment:

  1. Hard to admit for some.. but very true reason behind photography being such a craze .. :)

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