GUWAHATI, Feb 3 - Once, on Saraswati Puja day, queues at photo studios were as much as the crowds at puja pandals.
Today, the archaic photo studios, where memories used to be captured and preserved, are slowly but surely succumbing to the advent of technology. These studios, which once did thriving business on this special day, wear a deserted look today as youngsters prefer to pose for selfies rather than visit the studios and click snaps.
�Had there been no mobile phones, I would have clicked over a thousand snaps on Saraswati Puja day. Nowadays, I don�t get even one-fourth of the customers I used to get, say, ten years back,� Bappi Routh of the 25-year-old Maya Studio on Hengerabari Road told The Assam Tribune.
�Things have changed a lot. The young people do not have the craze to click a photo at a studio. Technology has taken over. You get high megapixel camera-inbuilt mobile phones today. One can click ten snaps at their place of choice and keep the best one. Earlier, we had to be perfect in one or two clicks�and did not have so much liberty, given the expenditure on reels and other materials required for washing the negatives,� he said.
�Today�s youths are not eager for the hard copy of the photo. They get to see the photo on the mobiles instantly. Earlier, people waited anxiously for a couple of days till the negatives were washed. They used to take a good look at the photo after getting a copy and preserve it preciously,� Routh added.
Many studios in the city have closed down over the years. There are some 300 photo studios in the city today, but many have diversified, trading in other paraphernalia, mostly gift items.
�Now it is mostly the passport photos that the studios are surviving on. No one needs the printed photos. Say, if we used to get seventy people in the 1990s, today it is difficult to get even 20 on such festival days. In those days, we could not even spare time for lunch or a cup of tea on festival days like Durga Puja and Saraswati Puja,� Dhiren Kalita of Studio Snapshot at Six Mile set up in 1986, said.
Nowadays, the people who visit studios in the city are mostly those from the outskirts of the main city, he said.
Some studios in the city like that of Routh�s prepare thematic backgrounds on special occasions like Saraswati Puja to attract young people.
�We keep changing the background to give a new feeling to the customers. It has paid off a bit,� Routh said.
Routh said today�s photography has nothing to do with light and shade, unlike on earlier days. �Today, everything is dependent on the camera. Not much labour is required. You do not need three/four people to run a studio. One person can do it with the help of a computer,� he added.