The Wrong With Clicking Photos

 

During my college days, photography became my hobby. For that, I bought a DSLR and a smartphone boasting of best camera quality. I have never regretted investing money in the gadgets. Gadgets give you an edge, but sometimes I feel that these gadgets have stolen some of the best moments of my life, which I can't get back!

There was an annual function in our college and my friends who were performing, acting, dancing, singing, asked me to capture their performances. After the event, everyone was chattering about it, but I had this nagging feeling of having missed out on something very precious in my life. The pictures that I clicked turned out to be good and were loved as well, but I realised I failed to live the moment. And I still regret that. After that incident, I decided that I would avoid clicking photos or at the very least touch my cameras once I have soaked in whatever the moment has to offer. 

If we are in a habit of clicking photos (of everything), then we are constantly plagued by what to capture next and how to get that elusive perfect click. A picture has to be clicked at the perfect angle, with perfect lights. While doing all this, our mind forgets to live moments. People say they click photos so that they can relive moments in the future, but if you haven’t experienced the moments, how do you expect your brain to cherish that memory.

My favourite senior was leaving our hostel, my batch mates were clicking photos with him as he's a very popular and well-liked person. But, I didn't click a photo with him. I wanted to live those moments of separation! And I can assure you that I have lived and treasured those moments  more securely in my mind than my batch mates who stored those moments in their cameras. We were very close to each other but we don't have a single photo of ourselves together. Maybe we didn’t find it necessary to waste some seconds for clicking our photos. After that, we never met but I feel good when I recall moments with him, for that, I don't need photos. 

Recently, storage spaces on smartphones and computers have gone up to a great extent, so we are clicking innumerable photos and that's why we are failing to segregate them which adds to the digital dump. As it's very tedious to go through that dump we never see our clicked photos again. If we click fewer photos then we can easily sort them, there won't be a digital mess, and we can enjoy looking at those clicked pictures whenever it pleases us. Nowadays, our lives have become so busy that we so rarely open our saved photos or visit those lost moments. 

In the last few years, a trend has been observed that people are obsessed with clicking photos or recording videos so that they can share something regularly on social media. It seems people are living for social media. Oversharing sometimes reduces the zeal with which we experience the moment and dilutes the emotional value. Privacy is power. Most of the time, sharing is done to seek attention or to overcome insecurities or to show the world how great our lives are or as a result of peer pressure.

Instead of touching the walls of the Taj Mahal, instead of trying to wrap our mind around the depths of its beauty, instead of wondering how it could have been built, we click a lot of photos of it, and we click our photos with it so that we can see them in future and can share them on social media.

Instead of focusing on connecting with people, we click photos with them, so that we can share them on social media and gloat on it in future. By clicking photos we steal some part of our present for the future. All this is wrong with clicking photos, and so by proxy with life!

Instead of living in present, enjoying it to its fullest, we spoil most of our present for the future. We forget to live where we are. We forget to enjoy the moment. In our rush towards making tomorrow better we miss living today. If we can't live today then what's the guarantee that we'll live tomorrow either? 

We should keep the beauty of the Taj Mahal in our eyes, we should focus on talks with people, we should live the moment and then if we get surplus time we could devote that time for clicking photos.