Danger! Men With Cameras!!!

The digital age has spurned yet another annoyance. Beyond cell phone conversations that are too loud, texting that is too constant, hackers, spam and all that we have more or less become accustomed to, there is a new annoyance in town, or out of town maybe – men with cameras.

I first noticed them in Europe, but didn’t appreciate the full significance of them since I was too busy trying to get away from the large tour groups they populated. At that time I just noticed that there were people with very big cameras, which I thought was strange, since the digital revolution, I thought, made it possible to carry small, inconspicuous cameras and still get great quality pictures. But there they were, in their three-quarter length shorts with Teva sandals (or some similar type), their shorts usually tan, beige or khaki, easy wash, no iron, looking already like they had stepped out of a travel catalogue, with these big cameras hanging off their necks. I had read all of the travel advisories before going to places like Rome and the main advice was to be inconspicuous, don’t stick out, don’t dress like a tourist. It seemed a lot of people hadn’t read or maybe just hadn’t taken this advice, and the cameras only made it seem even more like they had a giant neon sign flashing above their head saying “I’M A TOURIST – ROB ME!!!”

When I first became aware of the men with cameras phenomenon was in Bangkok in my cooking class. I thought it was an anomaly, just a geeky Chinese guy from Malaysia with a four inch sprout of hairs growing out of a mole on his face (it was really hard to look at his eyes – the hairs were begging to be braided, curled or maybe given a few highlights they were so long and prominent). He had a gigantic camera. I guess it’s what is called an SLR, kind of like the old 35 mm cameras people used to lug around. I had several 35 mm cameras in my lifetime, but also I went to school to study photography, and in a way, I had a license to carry one. These men are unlicensed, and that is what I think makes them so dangerous.

Anyway this Malaysian guy with the very prolific growth of hair sprouting out of the mole on his face really got to annoy me after a few days, well actually, just one day, of cooking class. Unfortunately for me, he was taking 7 days of classes and I was taking 6. We both started on the same day.

I noticed him at first when I was waiting in the waiting area outside of the Blue Bar drinking my cool, complimentary herbal drink (lemongrass). The Blue Elephant is in a beautiful old Sino-Portuguese building and it is very photogenic. When I got there I snapped a few photos, as did most people who passed through, but this guy, I will call him Lee, because I think that might have been his name, came in and immediately it was like he was on a photo shoot for Architectural Digest. He took several shots each of the same thing and must have shot about 100 photos in the few minutes that we had to wait until we were escorted upstairs to the cooking demonstration room.

As I said, his camera was huge and it had a very fat, long lens. I didn’t understand any of it – the size of his camera, the length or width of his lens or why he was taking so many photos of the same thing. Perhaps he was a photo-journalist and was doing a story on the Blue Elephant?

And then there were the photos he took after the cooking demonstration. The routine was they chef would demonstrate the recipe, we’d taste it, and then we’d go off to make it ourselves in the practice room. I took photos of my own creations, as did Lee, but for some reason, he also had to take several photos, at different angles, of the demonstration food. This unfortunately started a tradition among the other students, especially the men, who I thought maybe felt that they had to compete or just copy? I’m not sure, but it usually meant we had to stand there for several minutes while everyone took their photos before we could taste this delicious looking meal that was set out in front of us. Only one day, there was a gloriously chubby British girl who didn’t care who was taking photos, she just dug in right away, and I immediately followed (by that time, I'd had it up to my ears with Lee’s photography habit).

Here in Ubud, I began to think that maybe the big camera phenomenon was an Asian male thing. I guess it is stereotypical, but since I had forgotten about the Germans and French and Russians and whoever else were in those tour groups that I avoided as best I could, the only men I was seeing with these large cameras were Asian. In Ubud, I noticed for the first time that it was mainly men. They’d be walking around taking a zillion pictures while their girlfriends sat and waited for them, often snapping one or two photos on their i-phone or cute, dainty little digital camera, usually some metallic pink, purple or Hello Kitty model.

Last night I went to the Kecak fire dance again. I enjoyed it so much the first time I thought I would do it again. This one was in a different venue and with a different dance troupe, so I thought it might be different. Indeed it seemed it was. The men seemed to be joking a little more than the first group I saw, who seemed more serious. Also the story seemed somewhat different.

The part of the dance I enjoy the most is the men sitting in a circle, shirtless, with black and white checked sarongs around their waists, a flower behind one ear, and white dots painted on their temples and one in the center of their forehead. They do this kecakecakecakecakecakecak and whoo whoo whoo whoo sound that I think is supposed to be the sounds of monkeys and the jungle. One man sings in a very high kabuki like voice. Traditionally, the men are supposed to enter a trance. I would like to see just that. Just the kecakecakecakecak…. and men entering a trance. But since the 1930's, I guess that is when Western tourists “discovered” Bali and the trance dance was altered, a story from the Ramayana was overlaid using the kecak as the soundtrack. The first time I saw it I didn’t have the paper that explains the story. Last night I did, and I dutifully read it before the dance started. I still didn’t understand it. There were two maidens out in the woods, some sort of devil guy who disguised himself as a deer and lured one of the maidens away, but then someone else came, called a garuda and I think in the end all was well, but it was kind of hard to tell actually. I got very confused with the whole thing. It was like tuning into a soap opera one day and not knowing who everyone was or how they were related to each other. I think that was crucial to understanding the story.

Anyway, the performance was very sparsely attended. There was a small group of Australians, about 8 of them, who for the most part were well-behaved. There was a very overdressed couple of unknown origin, but I am guessing they were Americans, since I heard them speaking unaccented English, one single woman, and a couple – an American guy with a woman who looked Indonesian, but not local – she was dressed like she had either grown up in the west or had spent a lot of time there.

First I noticed the Australian guy's camera. He was fidgeting around the empty performance hall taking pictures of this or that. I could see that his camera was big, but even more so, I felt he was using it in inappropriate ways. Pointing it at people who were just standing around minding their own business. Dancers waiting outside in the little alley next to the hall, a woman working in a little shack selling drinks and snacks, who was obviously very shy about having her photo taken (she ran behind a display of snacks to try to hide from him, but like a National Geographic photographer waiting to get photos of big game, he patiently waited until she emerged, snapped a photo, with flash, and caught her off guard). I thought he was being a little obnoxious about his photo taking.

And that is when the American and Indonesian couple entered. They sat down in an empty corner and within a few minutes the guy was up. He went over to the little shack and bought a very large bottle of beer, and then went over to the dancers and I guess tried speaking to them (they of course, were probably nervous about doing this performance they’ve probably done thousands of times). He came back with the beer and began chugging. I wished he had been Australian.

The lights went out and the hall was illuminated only by the fire in the center of the dance floor. The dancers came out all wild-eyed and scary looking with their hands raised above their heads, fingers splayed and they began chanting and grunting. And the flashes began to go off.

Even though there were only a handful of people at the performances, the flashes made it seem like the hall was filled with a hundred paparazzi catching a glimpse of Britney Spears falling out of a car drunk with no underwear on. It was ridiculous. My new digital camera has a setting called “ISO” which is for shooting in low light situations. It’s amazing how well it does that. Even in a situation like this with only one big candelabra type thing lighting the scene, I was able to shoot without any flash.

After the initial bursts of flashes, things calmed down and most people put their cameras away, or put them down, except for the two men, well, actually the overdressed man also had a camera, but his was small – which was odd, because in every other way he and his date screamed “WE HAVE MONEY!” so you’d think his camera would have been the biggest of all. But maybe camera size is not saying anything about wealth.

The Australian and the American drinking from a large bottle of beer were acting like fashion photographers at the latest Paris fashion show. First they shot from their seats. The dark hall punctuated by obnoxious bursts of flash which blinded me, and I am sure did a number on the dancers who were staring out into the darkness. It seemed that when one took a shot, the other did so in response. It was like a competition.

With the old 35mm cameras where you had to buy film and pay for it to get developed, the only people who shot endlessly were professional photographers who were on some sort of subsidized budget. They were the only ones who could afford to get all of that film developed (no less buy it in the first place), but digital photography has revolutionized photography, brought it to the masses, made it so much more democratic. Any schmoe can take endless photos, weed through those thousands to find that one perfect shot and print it at home with a basic photo printer. Unfortunately, the rest of the world has to suffer as they work to get that perfect shot.

I didn't get the impression that either of these guys was in any way professional, or even an amateur photographer, just that they had bought these huge cameras that probably were not that expensive (as things go) and they didn’t really care about their impact on the rest of the world. I suppose they could not see that the flash completely destroyed the mood of the dance, which was done in total darkness with only the flames coming from the fire in the center, or that their flashes were so constant that it became the darkness that was the exception rather than the rule.
Eventually, they both got up and started moving around, now really acting like they were on some special assignment. The plastic chairs farted against the tile floor as they bumped them and moved around the mostly empty hall.

At one point, I was ready to get up and leave because they were so ruining the experience for me. I felt so sorry especially for the little girls who came out towards the end of the dance. They were bombarded by flashes, I guess because they were so cute, and also they were right up in front very close to the audience. The flash must have blinded them and I bet even in their sleep they were seeing those flashes of light.

So here I was, with my dinky little digital camera which is thinner than a deck of playing cards, able to take decent photos with my low light setting, and these guys with these big fancy cameras, acting like they were professionals, were unable to figure out how to shoot without flash? There was something obscenely wrong with this picture (no pun intended).

I think cameras should be sold with some sort of mandatory training which includes a course in ethics and proper camera behavior. Things like taking photos of locals when traveling, taking photos of food while others are waiting to eat, and using flash in very dark settings need to be covered. Maybe to drive the point home, those buying the camera need to be forced to stand in a very dark room with their eyes wide open and not blinking (the dancers don’t ever seem to blink) while someone fires hundreds of shots with flash at them. Maybe they will be able to understand that sometimes getting that “perfect” shot comes at a cost, mostly to those on the other side of their lens, and that when it all comes down to it (whatever "it" is), it is not really worth it.