Cameras!!

By Stephen Fry

When I wrote my first couple of books back in the late eighties, I found one of the most enjoyable aspects of being an author was the Event. This is publisher-speak for appearances in bookshops, talks, readings, lectures, literary festival on-stage interviews, plenary sessions, symposia and other such author-related public appearances. Each event would end with a signing. The queue would shuffle along, each customer would plonk a book down in front of me, we’d shoot the breeze for a while, author and reader in merry harmony, then they’d biff off to be replaced by the next in line. All very pleasant and genial. Occasionally, just every now and then, someone in the queue would have a camera and there would follow a rather complicated and painful procedure: the one with the camera, A, would have to find someone, B, willing to take a picture. Sometimes B would be the next person in the queue, often a member of the bookshop’s staff. B would be given the camera, while A would go behind the signing table to put an arm round me or a hand on my shoulder as I signed the book with a flourish while looking up into the lens grinning soupily. Of course B wouldn’t be acquainted with A’s particular make of camera. In fact B would give the impression of never having taken a picture before in his or her life. Wrong buttons would be pressed, extra shots would be taken ‘just to be sure’. The flash would fail to go off. A would have to go round the table again to twiddle with knobs and eventually, after much delay the business would be done. It wasn’t too disastrous, at most one or two people in the whole signing queue would be armed a camera. It wasn’t too awful an imposition.

But today …

Today everyone has a camera. They have a dedicated digital machine or something built into their mobile phone. As a result of this ubiquity the signing queue has become such a living hell that I don’t do them any more. All the pleasure has been sucked out. No agreeable exchanges and chats with the readers, nothing but the unspeakable horror of having to put up with 200 versions of the awkward and excruciating performance described above. The agony is especially exquisite given that the type of people who attend literary events and are interested in my books are precisely the type least competent at operating other people’s cameras. They may be able to use their own, but that’s of no importance because the crucial prize (which has all the point, purpose and value of twitching or train-spotting) is for the camera owner to be in the picture with the poor sap of an author. Given that the one thing that actors, writers and performers most hate (and I’m an extreme example) is having their photograph taken, life has now become a kind of living hell. It’s bad enough with professional photographers in studios (and believe me, it really is bad enough, I loathe the experience), but to have to freeze the face into something akin to a smile time after time after time while the bewildered operator footles uselessly about with the tiny little tits hat pass for buttons and switches. The photo software is so diabolically crap on most phones anyway (I have to say the Apple iPhone is astoundingly good in this respect, even a literary woman could operate it, and it is better quality than cameras with twice the pixel count) that you can hardly blame people for not being able to use it. It’s hardly surprising they switch it off every time they mean to shoot, or that the screen goes black or it’s in video mode or some other problem. It’s hardly surprising because as a piece of kit it’s bollocks. In the meantime the frozen smile fades, the queue behind gets restive and all the good vibes turn to bad.

But it doesn’t end there …

The camera and all its horrors are by no means confined to the literary events which one can (as I now do) decide to leave well alone. The fact is everybody has a camera whatever the time of day or night.

So ... a conversation is a rarity these days. Today it’s the crushing embarrassment of standing in the street like a gibbon while a total stranger accosts other total strangers and asks them to take a photograph. Crowds gather, what could have been a quick anonymous chat has become a full-on photo-op. ‘Me too!’ ‘Hold still!’ ‘Oh, and can you do a General Melchett “Baaah!” so I can use it as a ring tone? Hang on, where’s the recording app?’ ‘Say hello to my girlfriend, she doesn’t believe I’m talking to you.’ ‘Could you say in a Jeeves voice, “this is Kevin’s phone, the master is out so would you please be kind enough to leave a message?” Blinder!’ etc.

Oh, bring back the days of the simple autograph.

______________________

Stephen

An excerpt from the hilarious "blessay" called "Let Fame" on Stephen's blog, and thanks to him for his permission to reprint. ©stephenfry 2007.

Comments

[Dave Polaschek]

Maybe I'm just blissfully out of touch, but as I read this I found myself wondering "Who's Stephen Fry?"

[mike b]

Thanks for that!

Maybe the solution is for authors to take fuzzy camera phone photos of their signatures, print them out on suitably fuzzy dye-ink printers, and hand those prints to people who insist on taking a picture.

[Paul De Zan]

I met Stephen at a book signing some years ago and I can assure you that, now that Douglas Adams is gone, he is, in fact, the single funniest English-speaking person on the planet.

[Bas Scheffers]

Dave: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Fry

[Nevin]

Very well said. Digital cameras, along with MS Powerpoint and emailing, are the stuff that give you love-hate feelings. The modern man and woman have probably made the largest number of crappy photos, complicated presentations and empty correspondences in the whole human history, which they waste time on and we will not likely to review or be enlightened by thereafter. I have heard that the "latest" pointless invention (in Canon's point-and-shoots?) is that the camera will focus (and take a picture?) when the subject smiles!!! Beware, authors, if that function too becomes ubiquitous and is left on, your face will be pretty tired when you autograph books next time. Digital cameras, Powerpoint and emailing are good stuff but maybe they should never be invented.

To divert a bit further--pardon me, your Eggcellency (don't chop me off; this is different. Last prank :])-- it is so very often nowadays that I see photographers, even with much experience, keep checking the photos right away and take more shots than enough as if they had lost the craft in taking good pictures. It seems to me that the focus is now more on the camera and a "good" photo than on the art and joy of recording the scene per se. Photographers are to fail when they interact too much with the "light-box" and not equally with the subjects, don't they?

Nevin

[Luc Novovitch]

"Maybe I'm just blissfully out of touch, but as I read this I found myself wondering "Who's Stephen Fry?""

Welcome to the club. He must be one of Mike's friends, the one whose website is adorned with a Giuseppe Arcimboldo inspired vegetal composition. But I must say that for a piece on "ahhh, the good old days... in my time... pfff, today's so-called photographers... etc..." it is well written.
LN

[Peter Hovmand]

Interesting to hear this from you, Stephen. But its just the price for fame! I am myself an author (in little Denmark), but we don't have this kind of craze in my country. To have your picture taken with some celebrity is a lot to ask, often too much. Instead of having a chat, the fans want a part of you to keep, a trophy ... It is quite scary when you think of it.

[Dave Polaschek]

Oh, I checked WikiPedia right away, but from the small photos on Mr. Fry's website, my first thought was that he was the guy http://imdb.com/name/nm0002253/
who played Drew Carey's cross-dressing brother on the TV show.

I meant no slight by it, I just hadn't heard of him. Thanks to Mike for posting this essay, even if for me the reprinted portion of the essay missed the mark. I'm much more likely to talk to someone and forget I even have a camera with me, and then step outside and marvel at the weird architecture of the building across the street and take a picture of that.

Ahh, well. Back to my cave.

[Andreas]

Hm, don't know where to start: this is weird.

First of all, i enjoyed reading Mr. Fry's post, and i think his experience is very typical for America. On the one hand, and on the other hand it is symptomatic for the way our "culture" goes. The problem here is not digicams but human nature or what media aided capitalism makes of it. People (are driven to) want to consume everything, really everything.

Still it is a bit different where i live (Vienna, Austria), but things are changing - and hey we have Starbucks meanwhile at every corner (just an example of ongoing uniformity). People are made to fear missing something. The whole ads are pushing things towards this direction. There is even a discussion if the future of photography lies within taking high-res-frame-grabs from videos. Imho this is exactly the counterpart of photography, but only my 2 cents.

Why are things differnt here? Because i went to Mallorca last fall and met a famous German actor (Heinz Hoenig) at the airport. Nobody bothered him, and i just asked him if he is himself, because i wasn't sure in the first place. He told me a funny story and that was the whole thing. I didn't take a picture of him, because it felt simply wrong to me in this moment. And i didn't miss anything because if i don't take (or make or whatsoever) a picture, than there is none. This is simple, but most people worry about missing a "capture" - sounds ridiculous to me.

Sorry for digressing a bit, but it made me just think, and close repeating that i liked the post.

hasta pronto
Andreas

[Ken]

@ Stephen:

"...each customer would plonk a book down in front of me, we’d shoot the breeze for a while, author and reader in merry harmony, then they’d biff off to be replaced by the next in line."
Here in the U.S. there are 46 states that still consider public "biffing" to be a felony offense.

"So ... a conversation is a rarity these days. Today it’s the crushing embarrassment of standing in the street like a gibbon while a total stranger accosts other total strangers and asks them to take a photograph. "
Now be honest. Those weren't -really- conversations that you had with readers in days of yore, were they? I'd never heard of you before this piece but my impression is that you're a person that KNOWS when you're having a conversation versus just...well...having a biff.

[Trevor Mitchell]

Just a note from an English reader -- Stephen Fry is the long-time comedy partner of Hugh Laurie, the star of HOUSE. A big name on this side of the pond.

[Clara]

I am giving you a solution, Stephen. Ask the bookshop manager to take a photo of each and everyone of the customers, right away after you sign his or her book. Let the manager tell the customers that their printed photo will be available for free the next day for them to pick it up. This will increase the cue of customers, happy owners of your book, looking forward for a free photo of them posing with you. This procedure will be faster (all photos done by the same guy with the same camera, the manager) and more profitable for you all (increased sales).

[Mike]

Ken,
Really? I've never heard of the word "biff" as slang for anything felonious, and my American is pretty good. Maybe it's just you teenagers....

Mike J.

(P.S. I know you're not a teenager.)

[Mike]

Clara,
That's actually really brilliant. You forgot to mention that it brings the customer back to the bookstore for another visit, increasing his or her chances of buying something more, which would please the bookstore owner. But why let the manager take the pictures? The bookstore should hire a photographer! That way EVERYONE is happy--including people who makes their livings with a camera.

Mike J.

[andrewkirk]

I hadn't heard of Stephen Fry either, but it reminded me of another camera-related Event. While hiking in the California Sierra, I came upon a guy who plonked his phone down on a rock, twiddled it a bit, and returned to his group of friends for a group biff. As he got back in queue, the camera fell over and took a picture of the ground. Bollocks! Without missing a step, I picked up the camera. They all smiled soupily and I took their picture...full auto mode. I handed the camera back and twitched on down the trail. Took about 5 seconds!
Now I will return to my Melville.

[Michael]

To those who have not experienced one of Stephen's performances on tv or film or theatre can I assure you he is one of the most accomplished performers of both comedy and straight acting the world has ever seen,also probably one of the most well read and cleverest people on the planet

[Sandy]

Note to Dave Polaschek:

Dear Dave, it's not blissful to be so out of touch. Do the words Jeeves and Wooster mean anything? What about P.G. Wodehouse? What about Fry and Laurie?

[Glenn Piper]

Steven Fry is one of the great polymaths of our time. A great comedian, author, gadget freak, actor etc.
I have never had the privilege of meeting him, but would love to spend an afternoon (or day) over coffee discussing anything and everything.
The solution to his problem presented earlier (manager takes photos) is IMHO the perfect solution.

[anthony who?]

Articles like this are the sole reason I occasionally visit this blog.