I’m a big fan of taking photos and shooting videos with my friend’s professional cameras for filmmakers, notably on nights I’m out with them having fun. Admittedly, I am never that guy who brings a camera with him but am always appreciative towards the person who can actually be bothered to bring one and snap away.  But I’ve noticed recently, especially amongst girls, that taking a photo in this day and age has become so much of a drama.

I was out the other week at a bar with a friend, we were having a few drinks and I couldn’t help but notice a group of women behind us who were taking photos of each other. After each photo was taken, the girl(s) in the frame would shout “Noooo, I’m not being tagged in that picture, take it again”. This turned into…”nooo again, again, and again”. After a while it felt like I was sitting behind Kim Kardashian being hounded by a group of photo hungry paparazzi. This didn’t happen just once, but after pretty much every other photo being taken. With flashing lights that even an epileptic would not be able to handle, it occurred to me who was to blame for this mini rave taking place behind me , yep, none other than Facebook.  What ever happened to the embarrassing photos  that get taken of you when you look like you’ve just walked through a car wash which happens to have some wrestlers present who proceed to punch your face in whilst a tidal wave of water collides against you making you look like a slapped arse? I miss those. It seems these days, every picture that gets taken of you has to be “profile pic worthy”. I found it amazing how this group of girls were so concious of how they looked in the photos just incase they were uploaded to Facebook. I estimated that they wasted at least 30 minutes in an hour by faffing around with taking photos trying to get their sultry smile 100% right.

Another example is women taking pictures at Indian weddings. By the way, I am Indian before anyone reports me for false accusations. So, everyone saw the Royal Wedding last year, right? Multiply that by 10, add a WEEK long celebration, spicy food, dodgy Indian uncles drinking Fosters in the car park, and to top it all off; a lot of glamorous looking women wearing saris with so many glittery bits and mirrors that Gary Glitter would be put to shame – that’s an Indian wedding. What does this all mean? A serious amount of photo taking. If you are a guy at an Indian wedding you have two duties for the day, firstly to drive the family to the wedding, and secondly, to take pictures, and plenty of them. These pictures, every single one of them, have to be perfect. If there is one smile showing too much teeth, one sari exposing too much tummy, one turn of a head, you have to take another one. Add 12 woman who have spent about 3 hours getting ready into the mix, trust me, half your day is spent behind the lens.

I can’t seem to remember this problem before Facebook was around. To add to the problem, the development of digital cameras where you can delete a photo within a click of a button doesn’t help also. It seems now that you will pretty much remember every single photo that gets taken because you spent about 5 minutes trying to look perfect in each one, and if one does get taken and you think you look like a tit, you run over and delete it.

The days of polaroid cameras seem to be much more of an exciting process in the whole aspect of taking a picture. You click, you forget, when you eventually get your photos developed (which don’t forget added to the excitement), you laugh, at times regret, and memories are created. Now, it’s more like you click, click again a few times, download the pictures on your PC, scroll to the one you want to make your profile pic on Facebook because you already know which one it is, and job done. The spontaneous nature of taking pictures seems to be a dying concept. Don’t get me wrong, of course there are going to be some pictures that get taken where you look like a Walrus on speed, and with Facebook being browsed by potential employers becoming more of a common occurrence, I get that some of these unexpected pictures probably shouldn’t be uploaded – but you can easily untag yourself and adjust privacy settings if they are. The last thing you want is your mum who happens to be your Facebook friend, coming across a picture of you passed out on the floor with a dildo stuck on your forehead after one too many WKDs. Not that this has happened to me or anything.

Maybe I am sounding a bit old fashioned and not getting with the times of digital technology, but I just miss the days where photos were taken more naturally in the first take rather than having to turn into Mr Trigger Finger with the camera until you get the perfect profile picture. More importantly, I just miss the days of having a Fosters with a dodgy Indian uncle in a car park.