When the instrument is the photographer, not just the camera

Ashok Silwal / Ruby Valley, Dhading

Today, when we are all, more or less, equipped with mobile phones with camera functions, we have also, more or less, all become photo addicts!

In home, in the street, on the occasions of celebrations or family meetings, in some special situations , with friends… but also in very normal moments of our daily lives…. with the mobile phone in the hand, we easily take pictures of everything around.. tens, hundreds of shoots that become many fixed instants.

Of these, we will throw away, by deleting, almost all of them just as easily, because we realize looking at them that people are back to back, or with closed eyes, or with “ugly” faces, or in the shade or instead too exposed to the sun!!!

The camera of our mobile phone has become like an appendix to our hand … click! click! click! … to share with relatives and friends, with colleagues or just for ourselves … to share little pieces of the puzzle of our life.. in happiness or nostalgia.

Digital has made us photo addicted! We take and send pictures every where, every when, every how…and we cannot wait to see the pictures from our relatives, our friends, the persons we love.

Camera is one of our communication instrument and images increasingly replace words; they are more immediate.

But…. that does not mean that we are all photographers…

‘PHOTOGRAPHY IS A WAY OF FEELING, OF TOUCHING, OF LOVING.’  Then photography becomes a STORY.

Look at the picture above! 

The setting is great, majestic with it’s austere slopes without vegetation. The distant snow-capped peaks stand out against the blue of the sky. Awesome… but the young woman with her baby is  not  a tourist: she lives here , often in the cold,  in a harsh environment. And here begins the story ( in a photography ) of a young mom. You can tell the youth seeing just a little piece of her smooth forehead. In this roughness of the landscape, she shows her sweetness and femininity, wearing earrings and bracelets and with varnished nails.  The arm wraps her baby tenderly. The gesture , lifting the belt of her basket, is soft and elegant but suggests that it is heavy… You do not see her face, hidden by the baby in her arm, with her fuchsia pink and joyful colored  little sweater, in contrast to the arid brown of the mountain.. and her wool cap on her head because it is cold. The baby has something -to eat?- in her hand and you wonder if they can grow anything at this height.

You don’t see her home, her husband but photography makes you feel and imagine a whole story, just sketched here.

So, lets’s take hundreds, thousands of pictures with the  “instrumental camera”of our mobile phone, making us happy sharing unrepeatable moments of our lives.

And, let’s admire also the pictures in which the instrument is not the camera but the photographer. 

And, let’s imagine true stories because PHOTOGRAPHING is WRITING (graph) with the LIGHT ( photo.)

Let’s be a TRAVELER with the photography, not just a TOURIST !