Last time I went home, I was browsing through a treasure chest of old photo albums. Among them I noticed a few pictures of my dad and his friends when they visited Agra and the Taj Mahal; some 30 years ago. They all looked so special; capturing the excitement of each moment perfectly.

My thoughts went to the thousands of photographs I had taken over the years with my camera. Did those photographs have those qualities? Off course,   some  of them do, but they are lost within the numerous ordinary ones I had taken. Cameras have come a long way since my dad’s bachelor days, the technology has improved beyond recognition – but have they lost that magic touch? During the age of the film camera; you always thought twice before clicking. You always waited for the right moment, adjusted the frame to the right position, because each click made a dent in your pocket. Digital cameras? Who cares; click, click, click. Maybe one of them will be your perfect shot. You will think, I’ll delete the others later. Usually ‘later’ comes quite late, and invariably your patience runs out while trying to weed out all those unwanted pictures and those real gems get caught in a pile of junk. Years later you will find yourself in the same situation as I am – a few hundred good pictures in a total of ten thousand; faced with that daunting task called as ‘filtering’.

So what do we do? I have a solution. Take prints of your best photos. As soon as you are about to transfer those pics from your camera earmark the best ones and take those prints. It brings back economics into photography. And now you are forced to think twice; just like the good old days. You’ll be left with a few albums of those nice clicks; that you can enjoy over and over again. I know the environmentalist in me is screaming inside; but hey; it is only a few sheets of paper; I’ll make it up some other way. Or you tell me another solution; this is the only one I have :)