Ways to identify a Photographer

 

She: Hey, Vish is a photographer.
He: Oh really! Which camera do you use?
Me: I just click pictures. Do I qualify now??

It’s practically pointless to showcase your work to someone or to introduce your passion to someone whose 1^st question would be which gear you use for Photography. That itself is an insult to the photograph and the owner. There are some who may as well, uninvited, ask you the same after seeing a nice picture about the kind of camera you use, as if once you hand it over to them, they would beat the shit out of you with some of the best award-winning Nat-geo pictures clicked from their magical hands!!

So here you have them as photographers. Now that they have the basic knowledge of what I carry i.e. a Nikon/Canon and a photo-editing software, you have some of the best ignored talents now surfacing as photographers. Not even budding, but pure professional photographers, who use SLRs only to click pictures. Every soul on earth knows D is for Digital. Have you ever tried asking them the full form of SLR? If not, try right away.

Since it is a fashion these days to be an SLR Photographer but may not necessarily mean Photography, here are few ways how you could identify them:

1. Profile Pictures: Be it Facebook profile or a page, a DP with your D-SLR is a must! And your pose is the mundane “focusing through a view finder” with enormous attention that even scientists wouldn’t be sharing with electron microscopes. Poor Point-n-Shoot owners must be feeling left out.

2. Watermarks: I always believed watermarks are required to establish the identity against theft or plagiarism of your authentic work. But what I do not understand is the usage of watermarks with HUGE BOLD/ITALIC fonts (XYZ Photography) in the mid of the picture or everywhere (minimum 3 places) in your picture that at times one wonders whether the font is the SUBJECT or the picture beneath the font is the subject! Again, they are Fotugraphers, you see.

3. Borders: The look and feel of your pictures does get enhanced with borders, but what’s up with Black-Thick-White-Slim-Grey-Fat layers of border!!! I guess I need a magnifying glass now to actually see the content of your photo.

4. Facebook FanPage: Oh dear! This was the only missing link so far. An FB page is free of cost. Let’s create one, make use of ‘Invite Friends’ & FB messages and spam all our friends and friends-of-friends until they LIKE it! Now, on your FB feeds Vishy likes Sissy’s Photography. Some no-brainer who loves liking all pages will go ahead and like it for sure. Voila! You have so many fans!!! But none have seen your pictures yet. You’re confident and go to pub to boast in front of that chick how awesome you’re at clicking and that she should be ready to pose for some (on bed).

5. Facebook Albums: Your albums are named “Himalayas rock”, “Corbett National Park” etc but neither you see mountains, nor animals in them. Just humans with thick fat lenses posing with tripods, concentrating as if they are about to kill a lion. Longer the lens, better is the flaunting(acting). Okay! Where’s the content yaar?

IDENTITY CRISIS STILL?

So, these were the sure shot ways to identify the photographers around you. Yes, I own an SLR but I don’t consider myself as a photographer yet, for I do not qualify any of the above 5 criteria. I just love clicking. That’s my passion.

The truth behind Photography, however, is that the best and most creative pictures in almost all realms of life are anonymous.

P.S. The picture you see is a mock. I just couldn’t tamper more than that. In reality, the ones am talking about are worse than the above.