Say cheeeeeeeeeeese !!!

I'm not one of those people who loves posing for photographs. For starters I look terrible in most photographs. Secondly, I look drunk in all my photographs (for a teetotaller that's not a compliment). And thirdly, my eyes are open in one out of ten photographs. Hence, I normally play the guy in the group who says "Go go. You guys stand. I'll take the photograph."

However, I have friends who love to be clicked. They carry a camera to every freakin place they visit. They want to capture every restaurant, house and lawn they've been to. Even public restrooms are not spared from their passion. They take the photographing bug to a different level altogether. Every event has to be captured twice. First they'll take a photograph of the golden moment themselves. Then they'll ask someone else to take the exact same picture but this time with them in it. Then they'll come and take a look at the just taken snap and sulk for twelve seconds before saying "hmmmm! the angle is not right, errrr, hmmmm ... do you mind taking another photograph?" and pose again. Quite the ordeal I'd say.

But seriously, with the advent of digital cameras, there's this whole new specie of photographers now. What used to be an art form is now a standard. My Grandpa had a Pentax camera which he took great pride in showing off. I was raised with the notion that you have to be a genius to even come near that device. Every snap he took was preceded by careful planning and a looooooong lecture ("No no. Chhotu .You are facing the light source the wrong way. One, two, three, smile, four, five, Chhotu move to the right, six, seven ...") During family get togethers, Grandpa would get only the very special level of treatment. All the family members would try to remain in his good books so that they got clicked a few extra times. Then there was always be the hoard of annoying children who'll follow him and somehow appear in every photograph that was taken. "Will you take one photograph of just me?" i'd plead. Sometimes he would agree. Other times he'd just press the flash (yeah, we were innocent enough to assume that a flash meant a photograph) to hush up the crying me. All in all, my Grandpa occupied a different pedigree, courtesy the shutter box he carried. Aaaah! The good times.

Then in mid eighties a company called Hot Shots came and spoiled it all for him. They advertised themselves as the common man's camera, one that everyone and anyone could use.

Still there was an element of mystique surrounding cameras. Once the photographs were taken, they would get sent to the studio for development. The whole process took two-three weeks. In that time people would wait in apprehension. Aunts who had taken their daughters all dressed up as future brides would queue up the moment the photographs appeared to see how well their damsels looked. The success of a group photograph could be gauged by how many "copies" of it was ordered.

And then ... then the digital camera arrived.Things changed again. Now people could take a snap, see what it looked like and take another snap pronto. Couples who were shy of even hugging for photographs, lest the creepy film developer keeps a copy of their intimate moment, now readily shot pics that would put playful bunnies to shame. If mp3s were what filled up the hard drives in the late 90s, then digital photographs became the major space occupier of the modern computer. People would have hundreds of carefully labelled folders of photographs, with names ranging from "Trip to Japan 2003" to "My new bathroom I, II and III".

You would think that would be it, right? You would think that as a generation we would be happy with a camera that allowed us to save thousands of images in it - right? But naaay! We greedy bastards wanted more. A lot more. And thus, some bright guy came up with the idea of adding a camera to a cell phone. And that did it. At least people were posing for a digital camera. But with the cell phone camera people started taking photographs of anything and everything they could see. "Darling I saw a dog pee on the road. It reminded me of you. So I took a snap and mailed it to you." "I'm watching Munnabhai again. Here is a snap of Sanjay Dutt standing ... here is a snap of him sitting down ... look, the guy next to me is wearing a red pant!!! Sorry it was a brown pant. Here, take another look at it ..." Yessss, that's the level of subjects we choose for our photographs now. It's no longer the wallpaper worthy flowers, or the Shhhhh! saying baby or even your smiling girlfriend. The subject of modern photographs range from dog poop to fornicating love birds ... and that's not what is scary ... what's scary is the question "What next???"

Coming Next: What people do when they get their photographs taken!!