Photography has always been a big deal in my
family. Grandad took photos at every conceivable opportunity, often at
great inconvenience to everyone else, or so it seemed to me at the
time. I'm not talking about your average holiday snaps. I mean
proper, posed shots, when we all had to sit motionless during those endless
seconds between him pressing the plunger and the shutter clicking. {Cameras
didn't have a 'delay' function in those days; if you wanted to be in the
picture yourself (and he did) you had to buy a mechanical device to trigger the
shutter release - imagine a miniature dynamite plunger attached to a long wire,
which you screwed into the camera.} Then there were the landscapes which,
by definition, couldn't have people in them. My grandmother would attend
patiently, feet slowly turning to ice, as grandad waited for the perfect
combination of light, weather conditions and emptiness.
I must confess, I do the same as him with
landscapes. I fuss around for ages, changing my lens and taking the same
scene from several angles. That's after I've waited for all the
passers-by to pass by. But I also like taking quick shots of funny or
interesting things and, since my camera is too big to carry around all the
time, I chose a mobile phone that was capable of taking good quality
pictures. And it was great... until it decided to evolve into a sulky
little filing clerk.
It started a few months ago, when pictures began
disappearing from my 'gallery'. I eventually found that 'she' (the phone)
had buried them on 'My Files' on the memory card. I assumed that there
wasn't enough room on the phone itself to store them so I deleted a load of
updates and a couple of applications, turned it off and on a few times, and one
or two pictures came back. But not for long. Ok, I thought, maybe I just
have to select the one I want to look at in 'My Files'. Tried that, but
she wasn't having it. Sometimes she doesn't let me select a picture at
all,{"Nah, we don't do that here"} or keeps me hanging around
for ages before producing a tiny, generic picture of a chess pawn with
its head split open. {"You asked for a picture, an' that's wot you've
got."} Occasionally she lets me email a picture to myself, but not
often, and only one at a time.
Today, I found the USB cable and connected the
phone to my computer, in an attempt to download my pictures that way. She
really didn't like that. I think I must have provoked the phone
equivalent of constructive dismissal as, not only did it not work, but she now
tells me I haven't got a memory card at all. Mind you, she's flounced off
in a huff like that before, so I expect it'll turn up again sooner or
later. In the meantime I'll just have to use a proper camera again, as
grandad would no doubt have advised in the first place.
