Don't you remember the good old times when photos could not be digitally stored? After an enthralling vacation the most exciting activity left to do was to go to a studio and get the photographs developed. Countless photo albums adorn the-out of reach shelves and dusty drawers in most pre-millennial homes. Homes where aging grandmothers would often turn to these to indulge their overwhelming nostalgia, where these would be proudly showcased to all who visit the house, where these would remind all the family members of the older and simpler times. The photo studio always gave you an extra reel copy that you might want to develop in future, and they were often packed in a brown paper bag and stacked away carefully. Each photograph was taken with the utmost care and precision and there was a thrill in waiting for the final result for there was absolutely no way of knowing how it turned out. All momentous occasions, trivial or profound as they may seem to the third person, were dutifully captured. The entire exercise was given due respect, and all things necessary had to be arranged ahead of time. It gave us all something to look forward to even after the vacation was over, and a chance to reminisce the time long after it was gone. Today, almost everybody has a phone which is equipped with a camera, a camera where we can click multiple pictures with the flick of a finger and review them just as easily. We have all but forgotten the times when we had to count each click, where mistakes might cause us a missed opportunity or one less picture to add to our very real collection of memories. There are photographers among us with fancy cameras who still care for a good shot, but the purpose has changed. From collecting memories to collecting likes and hearts on the social media, photography has changed in essence. A well clicked picture just doesn't please the eye and delight the heart, it goes on to showcase your skill and perspective and nowadays contributes to your popularity and assists your friends to readily glimpse your dazzling life. Beauty is meant to be appreciated, memories meant to be shared but the pictures we click are so much more for our own selves than for others. For they might appreciate the lush green landscape, that towering monument might charm them and they might laugh at the antics of the little boy Tom next to the lake but they'll never see what we saw, the significance of our pictures remains with us to be fully understood and cherished.
Today we pose for a thousand empty pictures just for the sake of getting them clicked. We readily upload them online and wait for our friends, acquaintances and family to look at them. Social media has indeed assisted us in sharing our happy times with all those who care about us, it has help us connect with our peers far away. But do we ourselves ever look back at these pictures we clicked so painstakingly? Or are they merely meant to show to the outside world? We save them on our hard drives and shove them in some folder, never to be opened again, as we get busy in our increasingly busier lives. We want to photograph each special moment, the wonderful alignment of the moon on the distant hill, the chance meeting of a highschool friend, the wonderful expression on our pet's face. We have this intrinsic need to capture this all, but sadly it's now meant more for other's eyes than for our souls.
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