Friday, May 13, 2011

I Got a Nikon Camera...

Give someone a dollar and they eat for a day; give someone a grand or so and they drop it on lenses and stand around all day talking about how they're photographers.

This is a classic logic error: although all photographers are people with cameras, it does not necessarily follow that all people with cameras are photographers. Seems like everyone and their uncle fancies themselves a photographer these days. Hey, guess what? It's not that hard anymore. Point; click; repeat a zillion times because digital memory is cheap and essentially limitless. It's like those monkeys that wrote those plays: if you do anything often enough it's bound to come up Shakespeare sometimes.

The next time someone tells me they're a photographer, instead of just letting my eyes glaze over with extreme apathy I'm throwing down the ultimate photographic gauntlet: take a good picture of my toddler. After all, toddler photography is a lot like wildlife photography, except your subject is more recalcitrant than a grizzly bear in early spring, faster than a hummingbird on amphetamines, and dirtier than, like, a wombat or something rolled in dirt. And then maybe rolled a little more in more dirt, just for good measure.

Wait, what's that? You got a clear shot? Of my child? Holding still? And smiling?

Awww, too bad he has a giant boog dangling from his left nostril. You lose the challenge. Hey, maybe you should hire some monkeys to help you out for next time - I hear they're into photography.

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