Shutterbug

How will I know people will not watch again? How will I know people will not express amusement at me? How will I know what it is that I have done incorrectly?

I am standstill outside double doors. I peer through dirty glass. My camera is approximated with my neck, and I manipulate it apprehensively. ‘The Graduate’ I read. I take photograph.

I scroll through photographs on my diminutive screen to find the one of guidebook. I zoom and read following:

It sounds very nice. So long as people do not express amusement at me.

How will I find if the guidebook is truthful?

I deduce I have to traverse the doorway to find out that truth. I turn my camera round. I try best to pull trepidation-at-entering-the-abyss face. I take photograph.

How will I know what people are expressing amusement at?

I enter and find guidebook was truthful.

How did I spend much time fretfully? How could I be made to fret by sofas and tables and gigantismal windows? How is this not just bar? How is this not just bar with glad people?

I take photographs of the people. I do not like them to pose. I consider people look dissimilar when they pose and I am partial to photographs presenting truth. They are glad together and they grin with me as I sit down with the people and take my photograph with them. My shoes stick to the sticky alcohol on the floor. I take photograph. I take a photograph of the bar. I take photographs of all the beer taps because the condensation is good-looking.

People are expressing amusement.

Realization has mismanagement with me.

I newly perceive camera like foreign limb. It is gaijin.

How has this happened? How has stereotype not been crushed by Japanese, like sumo wrestler stamping on zoom lens? How can Japanese allow Three Stooges short from 1941 (parody of Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito in brawl, and the Hirohito stops brawl at intermissions to have the three pose for photograph) to not be banned?

Photos are memories. To me they are precious. I am on holiday. I will take photographs. I do not care about their expressions of amusement.

Camera-nut? Photo-freak? Shutterbug? Is there such people? Am I really a Camera Kozou? How am I Cameko? How is there a lot of monikers for camera activists? How has the inclusion of camera in many phones not alleviated the dishonour of trigger-happy tourist? How can they know that we are taking photographs and not probing for signal? How do they think they are more intelligent than Japanese? How much would camera in my glasses cost?

I decide I do not care. I order drink. I have the ‘Real Ale’. I photograph my drink navigating towards me in the hand of barmaid.

‘Wait!’ I say. I take out tripod and arrange. I adjust focus and shutter speed.

‘Now!’

The photograph displays gesticulation of alcohol as the glass punches bar top.

How can people express amusement at true pioneer of photographics?

I smile. It is a good one!

: 24 Oct 2007 18:38 |  Tags: Icw Prose |  Comments (1) |  Report a problem