Photographs

Who doesn’t love photographs? Some like clicking it, some like posing for it, some just like to post them, and some waste hours just watching what others have posted. They are all around us, created to hold on to memories a little bit longer, to live in some old moment again and again, to give a visual form to old thoughts, to honor our closed ones by adding their pictures around the house or in an album, to keep the picture of someone special hidden away in the corner of the wallet, to feel something more than mere thoughts could have allowed.

But photographs were just meant to let us hold on to the memories a bit longer. When did photographs become the memories itself?

Cameras and reels used to be costly and hence we only spent them on the choicest of events. Now that phones make every click free, everyone goes clicking away 100 times every hour in a day. They are not memories anymore because we fail to create any memories as we are so often busy in capturing the said memory. I’ve been part of numerous occasions when the outing was only centred around taking pictures, and there is no conversation, no event from that day that I remember, other than the fact that we clicked pictures.

We visit great picturesque locations but instead of marveling at its beauty, everyone is busy in taking the perfect picture of that place. We attend concerts and instead of enjoying the music with closed eyes, our heart entwined with someone we love, swaying at the beats, we are just looking at the concert through the screens, and the entire focus is on keeping the hand still to get the best shot. We meet a friend after years and all we want to do is click a picture and add a story with the hashtag #feelsLikeYesterday, but are we really feeling anything?

Is it just me or have we taken this picture taking business a tad bit too far? I get it why professional photographers spend time on it or someone who has a hobby. But why is every other person so obsessed with taking pictures of every moment, every day, and not even going back to look at them because the gallery is so cluttered.

We keep this love in a photograph
We made these memories for ourselves
These were some great words said by Ed Sheeran, let’s please not change the meaning of them please !

Next time you meet a friend, you go somewhere, please think for a while about that very moment first, stay in that moment & enjoy it, and then maybe later consider documenting it and showing off (or maybe just skip the latter).

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