You view things as a third person, and taking the third person's perspective means that you get to see everything that's happening; from the way the butterfly lands on a type of fauna, to the fine details of a person's face when s/he smiles; the wrinkles that reflect the person's life experiences, the dimples that hide behind the chubby cheeks and the crooked teeth that seem to fit so well with the person's face.. it's all crystal.
You go home and you review the pictures you've taken on your Mac and decide to do a little refining with Lightroom - a touch of colour here, change the contrast there, maybe remove some of those pesky blemishes on your friends who have warned you to QC the photos before they get published somewhere. Ever so often, you'd have perfect pictures that really don't need any editing at all. That makes life so much easier now, doesn't it?
Once you're done, you take one last look at the pictures in your folder before publishing them on Facebook. Of course you'd want them to be perfect, you are the one who took the photos afterall, right? You don't want to come off as a photographer that has all the lenses and years of experience to still be able to come up with slipshod shots. No, you don't want that. You scrutinise each photo thoroughly, to make sure that it's completely flawless. You're a perfectionist, and nothing that comes from you should be of sub-standards.
Okay, the moment's here. You've managed to find the "Add photos" button after trying to navigate the new Timeline on Facebook for the past 10 minutes. You select all the photos and tick the high definition option. Hopefully that will at least salvage the quality of the shots that you have meticulously put so much effort into. Publish photos, and now wait for the number of notifications to jump.
It's 3pm, and everybody's on Facebook in between classes. Some of your friends missed class and have just woken up. Being millenials, their first task of the day is to check their social networking sites, so pretty much everyone is awake and on Facebook. Your notifications stream in like the number of times Annabel Chong has had sex at one go. You get excited and check all of them at once.
"Hey is that you licking James' nipples at last night's party, Max? What the hell? LOL"
"OMG check out the guy in the background staring at you. He's totally checking your boobies out."
"I don't remember this."
"WHAT. THE. FUCK."
"Great photo, babe. x"
"Aw this makes me look so good, thanks hon!"
So the general consensus is that you did a a pretty fine job. But that doesn't come off as surprise to you, does it? You've been in this for a long while now and you've got quite a lot of experience.
"You're the best photographer I know!"
But that's all you'll ever be. You'll just be known as the "best photographer" and that's that. It's like a zone that you can never get out of. People will remember you as "the photographer" and the go-to person when they need someone to shoot them.
And that's all there is to it. You're the silent observer behind the lens, watching everything happen before your eyes, not always being able to be part of the photo. But you know everything that goes on, you hear and see everything. There are times you don't want to, but you're just sucked into it anyway. You either give up photography altogether, or hide yourself in a hole where nobody can find you.
Oh well.
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