Wednesday, February 23, 2011

A New Definition for an Old Phrase

In my latest blog, I am proposing the coining of a new term. Or, I suppose, more appropriately, I’m proposing the coinage of a new definition of an old term – a definition that, sadly, our semi-pro photog community has helped spawn. The word I propose a new definition for – the word I propose we define in a new way that is uniquely our own in the photography world – is “snapper.” Gentlemen, keep your snickers to yourself and hear me out.

If you haven’t checked it out before, the Urban Dictionary (abbreviated “UD”) is a peculiar on-line phenomenon. Much like Wikipedia (the on-line encyclopedia for the people, by the people), the definitions contained in the UD are generally written by the users of the words themselves. The site has become the on-line repository for every word wrested from civil society and turned against itself by today’s pop- and sub-cultures. There’s not enough soap on the planet to cleanse the mouths (and the pens, keyboards, etc.) of the authors of most utterances enumerated therein; yet, contained in its raw imagery and gutter terminology, there are some nuggets of wisdom in many (certainly not all, but many) of the site’s definitions.
Despite UD’s crude definition of the word I’m commandeering, my definition has nothing to do with the female anatomy (well, now that I say that, there may be some appropriate anatomical references that might fit in later in my essay…but stay on track with me for now).

The word “snapper” is properly defined in Webster’s dictionary as any one of numerous, widely distributed marine fishes of the family Lutjanidae (or Lutianidae), many of which are prized as food fishes. A secondary definition of the word should be familiar to American sports fans – a snapper is the center player on an offensive football line responsible for delivering the football to the quarterback or kicker. According to the dictionary, the word can also refer to a snapping turtle, an exploding party favor, or simply, one who snaps. This last use of the word is the focus of my proposal.

As photographers, we’ve all heard the term “snapshot.” For me, it generally brings to mind old Polaroids of my brothers and me with my parents on our family vacations. I take snapshots of my dogs. My wife takes snapshots of the two of us wherever we travel together. Snapshots have a place in our lives…generally within scrapbooks, Facebook profiles, albums or old shoeboxes. Snapshots, however, do not belong in the portfolios of the professional or semi-professional photographer. Our art and craft demands more than the simple point and click required of a snapshot.

If a snapshot is a simple photograph taken by someone snapping a camera’s shutter, my undergraduate training in logic tells me that the person snapping the snapshot is, by extrapolation, a “snapper” – hence my new definition for the old phrase. The snapshot is the simplest of photos to take. It requires no skill, no training, no planning, no artistic ability and certainly no imagination. The snapshot simply records what is reflected onto photographic film or sensors through the lens. Nothing more.

Continuing the thought, if a snapper merely snaps the shutter, the snapper is not truly a photographer. The snapper is merely an automated finger joint which decides indiscriminately when to press a camera’s shutter button. A snapper could be a robot, a child, Aunt Millie, or the family pet (probably not a goldfish, but a semi-skilled cat, dog or chimp). A snapper can also be the dreaded “guy with a camera” or GWC, to use the parlance of our modeling community.

As I’ve discussed in my blog before, the GWC gives legitimate photographers a bad name. He generally doesn’t know an f/stop from a bus stop (to quote a former nameless colleague), and he’s just as likely to shoot his mouth off as he is to shoot his intended subject. The proliferation of excellent, relatively easy-to-use camera equipment at relatively affordable prices has contributed to the rise of the GWC. An amateur who pretends to be a professional is a GWC, and models (and other photographers) find them particularly objectionable. In my new lexicon, “GWC” and “snapper” are synonyms.

The dictionary entry would look something like:

Snap-per (sna'pr) n.
1. pl. snapper or snap•pers. Any of numerous widely distributed marine fishes of the family Lutjanidae (or Lutianidae), many of which are prized as food fishes, that are found chiefly in warm coastal waters of the Pacific and Atlantic.
2. In American football, the center player on an offensive line who delivers the football to the quarterback or kicker.
3. A snapping turtle.
4. An exploding party favor.
5. One that snaps.
6. One who snaps the shutter of a camera to record an image, in much the same way a robot or chimpanzee might snap a shutter button. syn. guy-with-camera.

To help define the term, I’ve prepared some examples. With apologies to Jeff Foxworthy:

If you have ever shot an entire roll of 35mm film with the lens cap still on, you might be a snapper.

If you have ever taken better pictures of your thumb in front of the lens than of your intended subject, you might be a snapper.

If you spend more time looking at your DSLR’s LCD screen than through your viewfinder or at your intended subject, you might be a snapper.

If you have ever done an entire model shoot in automatic mode, you might be a snapper.

If you’ve ever hired a model because that’s the closest you’ve been to a woman in years, you might be a snapper.

If you have ever used the phrase “make love to the camera” with a straight face, you might be a snapper.

The GWC might look like a photographer, but he soon reveals himself through his actions and his products to be only a snapper.

See how that use of the word just rolls off the tongue? “Ah, he’s not a real photographer…he’s just a snapper.” It’s got a ring to it, and I, for one, intend to submit it to the Urban Dictionary and use it the next time I encounter a GWC. Now, if I can just get the new definition approved by Webster.

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