Photographers shadowed by smartphones at tourist spots
“I travel 25 kilometres every day and spend 12 hours at the Buddha statue in Tank Bund to earn whatever I can and feed a family of four,” said Krishna (name changed), even as he was busy taking pictures of people, who wished to have their photographs taken. “I have been doing this for more than a decade now and we have to travel so far carrying our heavy equipment and wait for an opportunity to earn as little as `40 per photograph,” he pointed out.
Several photographers, who camp outside tourist places in the city holding on to their DSLRs on stand-by, share their plight about how the digital era of smartphones is running them out of business. “I think there is a depth to a print you do not get with digital. We know it’s easier to have a memory saved in the cloud forever, but it cannot beat a framed photograph in your house,” explains Aravind, with a Polaroid and DSLR camera, stations at Lumbini Park coming all the way from LB Nagar.
Krishna, who prefers the Buddha statue in Hussain Sagar Lake, carries his DSLR with two lenses along with an instant photo printing machine. The ‘luggage’ weighs around 5-6 kgs.
“I come here at 9 am and leave by 9 pm. With every ferry landing, we go around asking the families and couples if they want to ‘preserve a memory’ and other such words to convince them. It exhausts us and we have to be on our toes to make `1,500 per day. One cannot be lazy in this profession. If you want business, then you have to chase it,” he said.
“I survive in this profession because I have skills and I am optimistic,” said Ahmed Abid, a photographer at Golconda fort.
“I consider myself a storyteller through photographs. I don’t feel threatened as I believe that people would always want a photographed memory rather than a ‘digital selfie’, which gets dumped along with the rest of the images stored in the instrument. My father used to click many random photographs on his old reel camera. We cherish the memories associated with those places. The photo album acts as a time machine for us,” said Abid.