A Photographer's privilege and peril.


We live in an imperfect world and no one will debate that. The only part of a newspaper that you can open without expecting bad news anymore is the comics section and even that seems to be filled with sarcasm and negativity at times. A walk down the road of my city or any city for that matter will show off the wide chasm that exists between the haves and the have nots of our world and to the especially prone ones a burden will be placed on our heart for the latter. I live in Delhi; polluted, brown, smoggy, dusty, crowded and always under construction Delhi. Sometimes (okay, many times) I wonder why life has to be so difficult and so tiresome and hurtful. 

In the midst of all this dreariness and the cloud of the mundane that shrouds our society the moment I pick up my camera things change. The really gifted photographer’s eye you see has a remarkable ability to find beauty in almost all he sees. To him a walk down the street of a crowded marketplace might just lead to an incredible and artistic assortment of photographs of eyes, hands, smiles and yes even the odd colourful inanimate objects. A good photo walk can help clear the mind of the negativity that can so easily ensnare us and free the mind to a level where we briefly transcend the grey world to appreciate the plethora of colours that God has so wonderfully splashed together to form this planet we call home. It’s a privilege a photographer has every time he picks up that camera and looks through his view-finder and if harnessed and made a good practice can allow them to be the ones who always look for and often find the positives and beauty in every circumstance that life throws our way.

The danger with this is not too far behind though. You see while the photographer’s eye has the ability to see beauty nearly everywhere, with the help of his camera he also has the ability to zoom in on the tiniest thing and “bookeh” (blur out the back ground for those of you who don’t know the technical) effect the rest of the background. This remarkable ability can create a stunning pic sometimes at the cost of actually observing the suffering that surrounded the beauty that our lenses allowed us to focus on (like the photo of the blue eyed afghan girl). When you spend long enough blurring backgrounds and focusing in on only what you think is beautiful, your mind can run the risk of desperately looking for the positive while ignoring the ugliness of the world which most others have termed “reality”.

It’s the fine line a photographer walks, subconsciously or consciously we walk it. Whether it’s the viewfinder of a state of the art DSLR camera or the more amateur point and shoot ones, or even the little one in our phones – the privilege to see beauty in everything lies at hand. But close behind it lies the peril to blur out the realities of this world for the sake of only wanting to see beauty. Grab that camera, live your life!

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