KONARK: Sauntering from pillar to post under the sweltering sun, Pramod Gochhayat eagerly awaits for his first customer at the famous Sun Temple of Konark every day. Exhibiting a range of frames, Pramod coaxes his customers for a photograph but to no avail as most of the visitors are content with whatever they can capture with their smart phones.
Pramod is not the only photographer struggling to make ends meet since the visitors at Sun Temple have started arriving with well equipped cameras or lenses in their smart phones. While the customers going for photo frames are few and far between, the competition among the group of photographers for limited customers aggravates the issue.
“A lot has change in past 12-15 years. Earlier people visiting here would happily take a family photo paying nominal charges but now with their expensive mobiles and DSLRs they snap pictures on their own irrespective of lighting, composition or picture quality. The smart phones not only kill our businesses but also the very art of photography,” said Pramod.
Working under a strong 300-member group of Konark Photographers’ Association, Pramod along with other photographers share the same plight. Reminiscing the old days, Dileep Pradhan, another photographer, here believes that the ‘transition from Single-Lens Reflex (SLR) camera to Digital SLR (DSLR) has been quite rapid.’
Echoing his thoughts, renowned film director and photographer Wim Wenders said, “With smart phones, photography is more alive as well as dead than ever. The shelf life of a particular photo is very short these days. The main problem with photographs taken with a smart phone is that nobody bothers to look at them twice, including the person who takes them.”
However, the visitors are of the opinion that smart phones have done them a world of good as it has freed them from the photographers who would charge unreasonable amounts of price for an under par work. “Their price ranges from Rs. 60 to Rs. 180 and in return they would give us inferior quality photographs that wouldn’t last long. Now we can take our own photos and share it to our relatives and friends in no time.”