Turned fourteen yet? Well then congratulations, you can blackmail/coax your parents into buying you a DSLR. After all, you’ve officially entered the age of alcohol initiation, talks of casual sex, relationships, etc.
Go out and get yourself an amateur level Nikon or Cannon –No! A D3100 is not a semi-professional camera –because this is the decade of obsessive photo blogging, actually I don’t think I want to reduce the art of photo blogging to a daily update of your fashion sense. Actually, the art of photography itself has already been pulverised beyond reason, there seems to be no hope for it with the flurry of “super cool” photography pages on Facebook by people with no semblance of creativity. It serves as the best source of inspiration to me and my fellow photography enthusiasts, no super-cool Vikrant Sethi from GK-2, gasp all you want, we do not call ourselves professionals. Oh, and neither do we waste our time on taking “bff b’day party” photos.
Oh my god, that’s another thing…!!
It is a photograph.
A photograph!
NOT a pic, snap, or any other horrifying pseudonym you and your South Delhi (cue that scoff!) friends want to come up with.
And thanks to Photoshop, we get to see teenage girls hanging over the camera lens in all their faux vintage glory.
From “photo shoots” at the ruins behind Hauz Khas Village (scoff!) to carrying DSLRs for Diwali melas (SCOFF!!), from amazing travel photography to eclectic food themed photo blogs, the internet bears witness to every form of photography.
So, the question that I can’t help but ask is this, “Where do we draw the line?” and what passes off as art?
In the truest sense of the word, art is one of those subliminally indescribable aspects of life, its definition changes every few dozen years. However, in today’s time, we find art in a state of flux. It’s amoebic in that we ourselves don’t know what is and isn’t “art”.
So, can we really be judgmental about somebody else’s photography?
As a photographer (not the serious kind, it’s just a hobby for me) I guess I should be the last person to offer my opinions on the matter, but seriously, a DSLR camera is not meant for everyone. It’s not meant for those of you who don’t have the eye for it –the first thing to learn is to start “seeing” through the camera lens.
It is definitely not for those of you who buy it for the better quality pictures and the manual focus option for you to take pics of you and your friends “having the best time everrr!” Go get a point-and-shoot, it’s exactly what you need!
Rohan Dahiya
Image Source [http://www.richardharringtonblog.com/files/5d2.jpg]
