Mission Camera

 

I had seen a camera for the first time when I was about 10 years old. As I can remember, one of my village-dada brought a camera to our village in 1972 form Kolkata. At that time only one bus used to ply between our district town and a nearby village. He came home by the bus night. The next morning hearing about the camera, many people gathered in front his house to see it. Some people got chance to touch it. Being a mere boy, I could only see it by sneaking close to that dada. He was a driver in Kolkata, and so was a good job holder according to the village parameter. During his short stay in the village he used to roam about hanging the camera about his neck, thus astonishing other people, and a curious boy like me in particular.

I first got the chance to handle a camera myself after about 20 years since then. Before that, I visited different places with my friends, but I never handled a camera with my hands. During those years we used to stay in a rented accommodation at Tribeni (near Chandannagar). It June 1992, I got the chance to visiting Kashmir with my mother. For this trip, my brother arranged a camera for us from a person very close to him. I purchased only one reel for the camera, as it was a costly affair for me.

It was a very ordinary camera, but I was very happy to have it with me. We performed our journeys upto Jammu by train, thereafter we availed bus. In spite of our strong desire we could not move beyond Patnitop, as the security personnel did not allow us to go further because of violent insurgencies on the way. Finally we had to come back to the plains and visit some other places upto Haridwar according to our convenience. While visiting different places I took photos at important spots with a sense of great satisfaction.

On returning home I gave the reel for washing with the expectation of getting good photographs. But to my utter dismay I found that almost all the photos were defective. When I wanted to take a full photo of my mother, I saw the actual photo to be only above knee. I took a snap to of a beautiful bird on the bush, actually I got the photo photo of a lamp post.

In 1997, after birth of my son, I purchased a better camera (Kodak Kroma) at Siliguri. But my problem with defective photos continued as before. So in my family I was not preferred for photography, rather, my brother became the right person to do the job in any occasion.

I can remember that even in 2009, while performing my first air journey with my family for visiting Shillong, I took their photo in the airport. On washing the reel we found that image of only their legs below the knees were captured. In a beautiful spot near Chrapunji I eagerly took a snap of my daughter, but to my prickly surprise I got the photo of a lady sitting nearby. Nonetheless, in the tour we got some good photos because of the clicks by one of my friends accompanying us with his family.

However, after advent of digital cameras, mobile phones, smartphones in particular, the deplorable condition of my photography gradually improved. I could ascertain the cause of my hopeless photography. Actually, in analog camera my seeing through the lenses and pushing the click button failed to synchronize every time. Owing to the small jerk in my hand, the focus of the lens might have been diverted. I could overcome this problem in mobile phones or digital cameras. Hopefully, now a days I may not be a good photographer but, I can provide some better pictures.

There is a popular adage, “Life is not a smooth sailing”. This is not meant for life as a whole, but for every elements of life. Since 2016 to 2023 I had trips to - Pench, Navegaon and other important places near Nagpur – Lakshadeep – Arunachal – Andaman – Kashmir. We kept all the photographs of these tours in separate folders in my laptop. Last summer I called a computer mechanic and asked him for routine servicing of my laptop. Instead of doing the job at my house, he wanted to take the laptop with him for proper servicing. But he did a great blunder there. Without any discussion with me he simply formatted the laptop. I use Linux OS, but on formatting he just installed windows in it and every thing kept in the laptop were lost for ever. It was beyond my apprehension and I was very much shocked knowing this. But I did not rebuke him for this folly, only advised him that without knowledge of the owner never do such works in future. Obviously there was after shocks of the incident as well. My family members including some friends were firm in their opinion, that the incident was a result of the lack of alertness on my part. Even while writing this article I feel sad for the incident, because very a few photographs of those priceless tours are available now, might be in some social media. Now I repent that those photos could have been saved in google drive.

Days have changed a lot in the sphere of photography. Digitization has improved the quality of the images and made photography bit easier. But when we had to print reels (black and white, or colour) the photographs were more valuable to the people. We used to be careful about preserving such treasures in beautiful albums and showed them to guests on their visits to our homes. With the passage of time it has become easier to click innumerable photos and selfies – deleting them every now and then to clear the memory of the device. In other sense photo clicking has also become a type of fun.

Still photography is a noble passion for many of us, who want to find this world in its right perspective, who want to embrace every moment of it with human heart. 

 

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