What role do you serve as a photographer?

I haven't been on this site for a while, but as I was coming back, I was pondering the question about our role as photographers. I rekindled my love for photography back in 2003 when I purchased my first digital camera, and over the years, I have taken probably over 65,000 photos. I was looking through some of those from 2003 and was for the first time seeing the capture of time in my photos. People had aged, some had died, and life had moved on. This was something that was a regular occurrence when looking at old film/paper photos, but this was a new feeling for me to experience the passage of time via the digital medium.

With that said, what role do you serve as photographer in your family or in your community? In my family, I am the go-to person for photographs. I practically have photos of every living person in my family (big Indian family with hundreds of extended family members in India). Whenever someone dies in the family, I am the one people contact to get a photo for the funeral/obituary purposes. Kind of sad. Whenever I go to India, I make it a point to photograph in detail and with warm humility my eldest family members, so that if I don't see them again before I return to India, at least I will have something to remember them by. In that vein, I have now purchased many digital cameras and given them away to family members in India so that they can do some of the work of capturing their lives and our mutual family members.

So for my family, I am an archivist of family history through images. One of my aunts on my father's side is the family genealogy person, whereas, I have the images to go with her written records.

What role do you serve?

My role is much more self-serving - it's my creative and fiddling/gearhead outlet. Through this I'm often a go-to person for photographs for friends and family but not in a big way.

I had more photos of friends when I had a working point and shoot - my camera gear is too cumbersome and valuable to take to a lot of social gatherings. For this reason I'm going to get myself a point and shoot so I can go back to having some casual shots of friends.

Jim G wrote in post #3838815
My role is much more self-serving - it's my creative and fiddling/gearhead outlet. Through this I'm often a go-to person for photographs for friends and family but not in a big way.

I had more photos of friends when I had a working point and shoot - my camera gear is too cumbersome and valuable to take to a lot of social gatherings. For this reason I'm going to get myself a point and shoot so I can go back to having some casual shots of friends.

Yeah, I know your pain. In family settings where photos are not super critical, my G3 with a 420EX flash serves me fine. When the photos are very important, I break out the dSLR and the L lenses.

Consider the new Powershot G9 as a good carry camera.