It reminded me of a piece from over a year ago. She'll forgive me.
Ready For Your Close Up?
March 3, 2007
I was out in Punta Arenas, Chile the other day. It is one of the southern-most big cities in the world. This sounds like they're reaching for something to brag about. They are, but they shouldn't. It's a lovely town. I should know, because I've seen people take a thousand pictures of it, then turn and show me the LCD screen even though I'm standing right beside them.
I spent the afternoon checking out the penguin sanctuary, about an hour out of Punta Arenas. As always, the way to go was by taxi. If you're not hip to the tourist scene, my advice is never to take an official tour. If the vehicle has more than four wheels, forget it. Official tours require you riding in a bus full of old people that are in competition to see who should have dibs for the front seat. By the time the poor driver has loaded on all the walkers, the tour is half over.
The penguins were small, not like the Emperors that march to Morgan Freeman's voice. They walked funny, people took pictures, and the place smelled like penguin crap. Girls cooed and giggled whenever a penguin shook his head. It was interesting to see that penguins spend a lot of time looking straight up at the sky, as if eyeing the other birds and wondering, "Why can't I do that?"
I snapped a lot of pictures for other people. It hit me again that the worst thing to happen to modern humans is the digital camera. Sure, it saves a lot on development costs, but digital photography does nothing to protect someone like me from the old, "Hey, can you take a picture of us?"
Like a proper, polite fool, I always say yes. And the dance begins:
"I want the mountain in the background...yes...okay, hold it vertical, like, tall-wise....okay, just hit the silver button on the right....oh, sorry, it had red-eye on, I wasn't ready for the five flashes in a row, can you do it again?...Let me see it....oh, I wasn't smiling ha-ha-ha, here, let's do it again, okay?...Hold it flat-wise this time, like, horizontal...okay, let me see....oh, Jen, you dummy, you blinked! Let's do it again...."
And after all of that, you know what happens next. The girl's friend pulls out her camera. And then the other friend pulls out another camera. And on and on, until all eight girls have the exact same shot of the exact same group in front of the exact same background. Three times each.
A note to the ladies. Digital cameras are fun, but they do not come with an LCD screen just so you can examine each picture as if you are the photo editor of National Geographic. You do not need to subject strangers to taking your picture eighteen times. It's the digital age. Take one photo and then, amazing as it may sound, you can email it to everyone in the group. You're all grown-ups. You don't need your own original photo of the same hungover ladies in front of the same seal aquarium.
Cameras have gone crazy, and they have completely destroyed my oldest prank. I used to love it when strangers asked me to take a picture. This was back in the day when film was the norm. These people were always so serious, acting like Alfred Hitchcock, telling me what angle to shoot at, how big they wanted the background, how long to hold the button down to get a good focus. I would just nod solemnly and pretend like I gave a damn. After taking the shot, they'd thank me and go on their way, not knowing that I had just cut off their heads. I used to take great delight in knowing that some wanna-be Mapplethorpe was sitting back home in Ohio with his freshly developed prints saying, "That jerk."
The LCD screen killed all of that. But that wasn't enough for the camera companies. In order to make every guy with a spare $300 in his pocket feel like an artist, they added all kinds of bells and whistles to these contraptions. Orange laser beams so you can bother your friends in a dark pub, five to ten flashes for the red-eye which shows up anyway, ring-tones that tell the world and the timid bird you're shooting that you just turned on your camera.
A whole new language has developed, and it is in danger of making stupid people sound smart. Megapixels, memory cards, exposure settings, environment settings (sand/snow, beach, nightvision). Doesn't anybody just point and shoot anymore?
Women latched onto digital cameras like tigers onto a fresh kill. This was only natural. Before, women with film cameras were a minor irritant. They would take pictures when you didn't want them to, but you knew they couldn't take that many. The little number in the window told them that they had to be careful, or they'd run out of film before the picnic was over. Not anymore. Now they can shoot upwards of 500 pictures in one afternoon. What's worse, they don't feel guilty about it, because it doesn't cost any money.
I once watched a girl shoot fifty pictures in one hour. When the memory card filled up, she went back and started deleting the pictures she had just taken. One at a time. We'd be walking, she'd see something she liked, go back through the photos, delete one she now realized was useless (probably a picture of me), and then snap a new photo. She did this all day. I wanted to kill myself. Back in the good old days, it would have been tough luck: "Gee, honey, it's too bad that you took 36 pictures of the same sun-dappled pond." Now, she can do it indefinitely.
Can we eat now?
Women are in love with the digital camera (so are men, but women own purses, so they take their cameras everywhere). This next example is a spreading disease, and it worries me greatly. Has anybody else out there noticed that you are not allowed to eat food in a restaurant until a woman takes a picture of it?There you are, in a restaurant. As with all restaurants today, the service is lousy, so by the time the meal arrives, you're starving. The waitress puts the plates down. Whoops. She forgot one. So she disappears, and you're looking at your steak, slobber dripping down your chin. Back comes the waitress, and she drops the last order in front of somebody. You say, "Bon appetit," and make a move to dig in.
Not so fast. One of the ladies breaks out a camera and she tells everyone to hold on. She wants a picture. Apparently the people at the table weren't good enough subjects, otherwise she would have taken the picture back when the waitress handed out menus. Everyone drops their forks. The men deflate. They look to their women-folk for confirmation of how stupid this all is, and then their heads hit the table as they realize that every woman seated around them is reaching for her purse. Out come five cameras, the waitress is called back, ten pictures get clicked, the cameras get passed around so everyone can have a look at something that just happened, and your steak tastes like a cold tire. What a wonderful evening.
I know one woman who takes a picture of every plate of food that's put in front of her. No lie. I have broken bread with her a number of times. When we all get our food, she takes out her camera and snaps a picture of the plate. Every time she does it, she tells us that her boyfriend is a chef and that she wants to show him all of these exotic dishes.
I don't have the heart to tell her, but somebody should: he doesn't give a shit. The poor guy works his tail off in a fancy restaurant all night. Little does he know that his girlfriend is going to return from her tour of South America and show him three hundred plates of food. Welcome home, honey.
There is no chance that we are going to return to the days of the film camera. Ah, those halcyon days, when cameras ran out of film and one-hour photo finishing seemed an eternity.
I need to come up with a new prank. Something that will irritate the hell out of the people that irritate me every time I step into a restaurant, a zoo, a night club, a car wash. With digital cameras, it's difficult to come up with a new one, but there's got to be something. Wait. I've got it. Delete All.
Not that I'd ever try it.
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