Spice of Life | Getting framed! Wedding clicks come back to haunt

It was a barrage of wedding photos that the photographer had delivered, followed by a polite phone call in which he urged me to share my preferred clicks. Chuffed at the honour, I jumped onto the bandwagon

My daughter’s wedding celebrations concluded recently and just when I thought of putting up my feet to enjoy the lull, came the storm.

Going through multiple shots of the same picture was a torture and it felt cruel to delete some of the good ones, too. (HT File)

It was a barrage of wedding photos that the photographer had delivered, followed by a polite phone call in which he urged me to share my preferred clicks. Chuffed at the honour, I jumped onto the bandwagon. He seemed to have overdone his part of due diligence, as the number of pictures was humongous along with several hours of uncut videos.

Nevertheless, it was time to enter the proverbial ‘ganne ka khet (sugarcane field)’ and pick out the best ones. Sifting through the pictures, I would jump with joy one moment and be down in the dumps the next. All angles had been captured. The worst was also snapped, filtered and unabashedly displayed on the monitor. I wished I could use the space around the Earth to make some of them disappear.

Going through multiple shots of the same picture was a torture and it felt cruel to delete some of the good ones, too. My respect for all editors of films, magazines and newspapers went a notch higher after the process.

Adding to my torment was the mountain of responsibility to share the chosen ones with guests and the devil himself, the photographer. In the effort to please people I ended up ruffling a few feathers. My aunt from a remote town, who had come to attend the wedding, complained that I had sent fewer pictures of hers. She insisted that the lensman had clicked more. I was left shuttling between two versions like a ping pong ball.

When it came to social media, there too, I had annoyed several friends, something which I never thought I had the capacity to do in one go. They felt they were not visible enough. It was not long before I realised that I had disturbed hundreds more for not inviting them to the do. I’m still not counting the daggers that are pointing at me.

Every time I met my daughter’s in-laws, all we would talk about was whether they had shortlisted their photos. The answer was usually naught and it was hardly any solace that we shared the same bewilderment. Till when were we going to remain lost in the jungle was hard to tell, but I could already see a few weeks of the mammoth exercise. We decided on another celebration when the albums would be complete.

With groggy eyes, a boggled mind and the memory of my laptop on the blink, I have a word of caution for all. Hold your horses before you get so many clicks. It’s all going to come back to haunt you.

Next time, I would be hiring a photographer with a duly signed contract, where he would have to do the donkey job and give us only the best shots, cover all relatives “properly”, maybe more than us, and give us easy small-sized videos to attenuate the colossal exercise.

alkagaurkashyap@gmail.com

The writer is an advocate at the Punjab and Haryana high court, Chandigarh.