Snapping at the Snappers

Photographers love to capture a moment, freeze a scene from nature and reproduce the beauty they've witnessed.  Some get paid for doing mediocre work while some produce masterpieces for free. Either way, they're a reminder of the moment you've just missed or the moment you absolutely do not want to forget (and often the moment you desperately want to forget).

A lot of them are also intrusive, annoying and distract you from the moment you're about to experience. Unless you're a star with tantrums, it's quite hard to get the lens off your face. People like me often end up scowling in photos because they would've been taken at exactly that moment when I said, "I don't like to be photographed".

Here are five circumstances involving photographers that irk me immensely.


1. The Wedding Photographer (for brides and grooms):

Unless you really like being photographed in no matter what you wear,  dealing with the wedding photographer can be quite a painstaking. "Put your right hand across his chest and tilt your head towards his"; "Look into his eyes and hold his hands"; "Feed him some kulfi" -- staging romance for a photograph is plain preposterous.
Despite the happiness in your heart, you are also tired of shaking hands of people who now resemble one big blur, being on your feet while manoeuvring through layers of cloth (read sari) and enthusiastic people. You're craving that one drink or the comfort of your bed, you can feel the corns growing on your feet and want to just dip them into some hot water; but the photographer wants you to enact your feelings.


2. The Wedding Photographer (for guests):

What could be more embarrassing than being photographed just as you bite into a pani puri?  Being photographed with 4 dahi vadas in your plate. Some weddings have phenomenal food but you don't necessarily want to be the testimony to that. I've lost track of the number of times photos of me with spinach stuck to my buck teeth or with onions wedged in my molars have made it to photo albums. And you still wonder why I treat photographers with such disdain?

3. The Press Photographer (lacking in talent):

The mundane ones can take nothing more than the best-of-four photos. All photographs will have two people in action (shaking hands, giving awards, clinking glasses) and two hangers-on.  On an average, the non-award-winning press photographers are the ones who stick to this formula, irrespective of the occasion.
Some of them copy the award-winning ones and end up sticking to that formula instead. Don't understand? Pick up three newspapers the morning after some riot breaks out in the city. There is a 90% chance that all three of them will have one picture of a lone slipper in focus and the people in the background out of focus. This is meant to be the symbolic slipper that started the riot. There will also be a photograph shot through a hole in the window of a bus/car. That hole is either caused by a bullet or the stone some hooligan threw. The lack of originality is shocking, especially since there are so many lensmen around the world working for the press, who come up with deliciously interesting pictures. So far I haven't seen a slipper being focused on through the hole in a window. Thank God.

4. Won't-leave-them-alone Photographers:

So a love-struck couple decided to spend a beautiful evening by the sea and the next thing they know, they're splashed on the front page of a newspaper. "Offbeat" pictures make for great page 1 offsetters, but can also spark a domestic argument if the couple's parents don't consent, no? Of course it's an unending debate between photographers spotting eye-catching beauty and campaigners of privacy like me.   

5. The Passport Photo:

First of all he wants you to move your head in all directions, dab some powder on your face, shove cotton balls behind your ears to make them more prominent and flash just a hint of a smile. Yet you look stupid, every single time. The consistency with which despite all his instructions you look stupid, is astonishing.