| Issue #2- April 6, 2007 |
Twentysomething…By David Lion Rattiner
Getting Your Photo Taken
I make it point to not look at a picture of myself immediately after it is taken with a digital camera. After all, real men don’t check to see if they look good. It’s just the card that we have been dealt. How lame would it be to admit that I didn’t like a photo of myself? On top of that, how terrible of a person would I be to actually be the one that says, “Delete that one, I don’t like it,” when the person that is in the picture with me is happy with the photo?
It’s a tough dilemma
In this digital world, there are a lot more pictures of me getting taken by friends and family. It is no big deal to go from camera, to your computer to the Internet. Now, cameras are so advanced, and people are so tech savvy, that a person with a digital camera will take a picture of you, and you can demand to see it INSTANTANEOUSLY. Wahoo!
This is a great feature for two reasons. The first is that it adds security to people who absolutely have to see themselves after the picture is taken to see if it is a bad one. And if it is, they can ask that it be immediately deleted, which is an extremely satisfying request to make, and then they can have another photo taken. We are all so vain.
It also allows people to identify, as sort of an unexpected added bonus, the person in the room that is completely secure. You can tell this by simply noticing who doesn’t check to see how the picture turned out. This is a rarity. I try to be one of these people.
A bad picture is a bad picture, but if you are bad looking and always photograph well, in the digital world, you are hot stuff because of social networking sites such as myspace.com and online dating sites such as, (cough) www.datehampton.com.
I’m always fascinated with the people that are actually taking a picture of a group. If somebody passes off to a friend a digital camera and asks them to take a picture for them, they look at you like they have just been handed a tremendous amount of responsibility. On top of this, they also look at you like they have never seen a camera before and don’t know that you are supposed to push the button in the upper right of the camera in order to take the picture, “So you just push it right here?”
“Yep, you just push it right there.”
“And then what do I do?”
“Then the picture gets taken.”
“Okay, I understand.”
It’s as if they have never operated a camera before. They stand in front of you, push the button and nothing happens. “Nothing’s happening.”
“You have to hold down the button, not just press it.”
“You never said that before,” the camera flashes unexpectedly, “Oh I see now.”
From here, the person successfully takes a picture, only to hear somebody ask to take another, which they try to do again immediately. “It’s not working again.”
“Just wait a second and then take it.”
“No, I think I broke it. I don’t know what’s happening now.” They have panic in their eyes as the camera flashes. “Oh, I see now. Okay.”
They then successfully take another picture and then look quickly at the screen to see if it was a good one and go semi cross-eyed. However, they are never fast enough, as the camera goes from showing the picture for about a second, to going back to camera mode. They struggle and have a mini panic attack for about fifteen seconds as they try to figure out how to go from camera mode to play mode, but for some reason, this is beyond the limits of comprehension for even the smartest of people when they are under pressure.
“I saw the picture but it went away,” they say. And then in a panic, they pass it off to you and you give them a look of concern, which is really just a courtesy look of concern. You know the camera is fine, you know exactly how to go from play mode to camera mode, but you don’t want this person’s confusion to seem unjustified. And, if you can quickly display the picture on the back of your camera, suddenly you appear smart to them. Maybe they’ll offer you a dream job.
So much is involved, it’s ridiculous, and there is nothing we can do about it, because digital cameras are here to stay. There are many psychological battles happening during a digital camera picture taking process and there is a lot at stake. After all, nobody has an excuse to have a bad picture taken of them anymore. Not when there is a delete button.
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