Why should everyone become a Photographer?
When I say “everyone should become a photographer”, am definitely not talking about content creators for “selfie-mania” or part of the “tik tok” community. What I really mean is to become a part of community that documents our life through photographs and videos.
Why, you?
I love to travel and document a few festivals and cultural elements of the places I know in India. But, I miss out a lot because either because not able to travel or not aware of it until its too late. However, my idea is to document the lesser-known things than just photographing. So, it is more like a crowdfunding effort of documenting our culture.
Every day we create approximately 2.5 quintillion bytes of data. And in 2020, for every second there will be 1.7MB data gets created for every single person. - source
So let's make part of that content created are meant for future generations and to leave a part of us in the Visual form.
What to Document?
It can be anything. Anything little more than selfies and groupies for social media means something. I mean documentation can be of lifestyle, culture, people, festivals, people, etc, whatever you think needs to be preserved for the future. I try to document niche festivals of South India, which happens only in specific regions.
Why we are in dire need to Document our life?
Well, we are living in a fast-changing world. What we considered as our lifestyle 10 years ago, is no longer practiced. The games we played are just living in memories and slowly fading away. All the outdoor games we played are now available in Apps. The festivals celebrated now hidden behind WhatsApp messages. So, let's make it happen, let our lifestyles stay alive for years to come, at least in visual/digital form.
Our ancestors kept their stories in the forms of books/literature. Two, problems with that, literature leaves lot of things to the interpretations of the readers. And, cave paintings outlived all the literature. Hence, I am asking you to document in digital/visual form, so they last longer (I hope there won't be a digital apocalypse).
How to document:
You are equipped with the best tool possible already. You have a smartphone, an active internet connection and access to free blog/social channel/ online journal/youtube/Image portals, etc. If you are looking to document seriously with your mobile phones, refer to my blog on must-have accessories for mobile documentation.
If you think, you are limited in documenting a festival or cultural element, drop a line to me, I will try to document it through videos/Images.
