Photography Today: The Art is Missing

In the era of DSLRs, Photoshop, camera filters, effects, and what not? photography has definitely reached another level. But what I really feel is that ‘the art’ of capturing something worth looking at is surely missing. Seriously guys, what’s the point of clicking anything and everything that doesn’t even make any sense and even the one, who clicked it wouldn’t find it interesting to look at!

Whenever I took a glance at some album or photograph from the 90s or 80s, in spite of less or no intelligent photography devices those pictures have some magic to attract anyone’s eyes. And trust me, you can indulge in an affair with them! What attracts me in those pictures is apart from capturing the special moment (unlike today) those pictures have captured the innocent smile, natural pose(no duck faces), no filter face; the natural ‘you’. Earlier it didn’t even matter how you’re looking, you gonna cherish each & every picture because you had few pictures of yours, maybe five or ten. But, hey! the trend has changed nowadays. You can have thousands of pictures stored in phones, laptops, pen drives, and God knows where! still, it is so hard to find a suitable picture to upload on social media because in one picture your nose is looking slightly out of shape and in other your double chin is highlighting.

I think social media played a huge role in trending the not so trendy trend of clicking and posting any & every picture! Earlier people used to click pictures when they visit for instance some monument. Nowadays, visit washroom of a mall or theatre is an occasion to click a picture. There has to be a washroom selfie! I’m not saying that people nowadays don’t click pictures of a worthy visit, of course, they do. Like capturing each & every profile of themselves in front of Taj Mahal! This overindulgence with themselves is what makes the moment a little less to be cherished. Seems like some people prefer quantity over quality. Isn’t it funny that some pictures are so random that they even have a caption called ‘Random Pics’.

Photography two-three decades back carried some powerful lessons to learn from them, for me at least. Prefer quality. Satisfaction. Embrace the glorious mess you are!

There is surely another side of the coin, some good deeds of modern-day photography. But, in this particular article, I was in no mood to talk about them. Maybe some other day.