My camera is now my hand.
By Eric Schuman
5 May 2007
My camera is now my hand. It started when I was twelve, and had just gotten my first camera; it was a 35mm crappy little thing, but I loved it just the same. I took pictures of everything, of everybody. My family and friends hated it, but they got used to it, and so did my hand. At first it hurt from the constant grasp of the black plastic thing, but eventually, as time wore on, as I got older, my hand got used to continually being half closed grasping the camera.
I kept on taking pictures and eventually got a digital camera. I was now released of the twenty to thirty photo limit that film cameras held. Freedom, my mind said. Ouch, my hand said. But once again my hand got used to the now constant grasp that the camera made it have. My ears though were mad; they loved the click sound the camera made; the digital camera had an artificial sound that mimicked the click, but it wasn't the same. But my ears and I got used to silence when an image was captured.
I soon stopped taking pictures of only friends and family. The streets and the people and my town and the world were now all being taken in by my lens and the tiny drive in my camera. I loved it.
I got older and kept on snapping. My hand, previously angry, was now content. It liked the camera, the companionship it gave the fingers. The texture of the little button one holds down to hold a moment gave my fingers pleasure. But this soon changed.
I got a new camera, a better one and my hand was angry; it had to get used to the bigger size and new texture of the buttons. Also, the length of time the camera was in hand became longer and longer as I got bigger and bigger memory disks to hold photos on. Instead of holding the camera in my hand, the camera now became my hand. And it still is. And I hope it will always be part of me, limb or just a hobby.
