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I Bought My Girlfriend A Nice Camera And Now She’s A Professional Photographer

by Jul 05, 2017
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I Bought My Girlfriend A Nice Camera And Now She’s A Professional Photographer

“Babe, picture,” are the words that have been haunting me for the past 72 hours.

Some quick backstory. The Capital R Roommate and I just spent the Fourth of July weekend in wine country with her family as part of a birthday celebration and we spent the majority of it at wineries. Now I’m not anti wine, but I’m also not a 22-year-old white girl whose “Super power is making wine disappear LOL.” When it comes to wine country and wine in general I’m middle of the road.

Except when a Super Nintendo is involved. Then all bets are off.

Earlier this year, knowing we had this weekend planned as well as plenty of other travel (just got back from Thailand, ever heard of it?), I made the very generous gesture of purchasing her a nice camera. I’m no camera expert, so I talked to a few friends who are and settled on a Sony Alpha a6000 Mirrorless Digital Camera. It takes high quality photographs without having the same bulk and weight as most common DSLR’s. It’s compact enough to pack and light enough to hang around her neck. Plus it still makes that loud shutter sound that stupid people think is so professional.

I thought we could take some nice photos in Thailand to hang around the apartment. I thought we could have the people giving the wine tours take a few group shots of her family and us. I thought the camera would be a welcome improvement to the shitty iPhone pictures we’d been taking for years.

I thought wrong.

Now every moment is a moment that NEEDS capturing. Now every run down wall and broken door is her “backdrop” for “staging” the perfect photograph. By purchasing this camera for her out of what little kindness remains in my cold black heart, I basically added 45 extra minutes to every outing we go on with it for the rest of time.

The best/worst part is I’m not entirely sure she knows how to use the camera. It comes with all these different bells and whistles and the most she’ll do is turn the flash on or off. Because the memory is so big and it can upload photos through wifi, she just snaps away, everywhere we go.

JR’s sipping his drink (sans straw of course)? “Babe hold your glass just like that. No lift the glass higher. Now turn the logo outward. Wait the lighting is bad here let’s get in the car and drive 45 minutes to where it’s better. Keep holding your drink.”

I guess I should consider myself lucky because she’s not insisting on me using the cameras to take pictures of her. Instead she’s taking photos of everything else: trees, bugs, cars, old wagons, dead homeless people. When I ask what all the photos are for, she insists that she has a plan for them.

Maybe I’m going to be roped into holding an art installation with all her photography displayed for sale sometime in the near future? Visitors will have to ponder, “Hmm do I buy the one with the sunlight streaming through the wine glass in front of the bushes or the one of the rusty shovel with a used condom stuck to the handle?” Either way, they’ll be paying out the ass, that’s for sure.

She even tried to turn it around on me when I questioned her further “But we could use this for your headshots! I’ll take them for you instead of you wasting more money every few years!”

Excuse me, are you telling me that I need to update my headshots?

The above photograph captures everything about me perfectly.

I’ll let her keep snapping. Eventually she’ll either grow tired of the camera or me badgering her about it. If it’s the former, then one day I’m sure we’ll break open the photo album and gaze longingly at all 5000 pages of pictures and reminisce on our youth. If it’s the latter, then I guess I’m out on my ass and will have to focus on comedy full time.

I’ll prolly need new headshots then.

———-

This week we had TSM writer and former Grandex intern Ali Hinman on Don’t Take It From Us to answer DMs and talk about how she got her start at Grandex. Jenna Crowley and I finally got the answer to what DVD box set that girl from Episode 15 was borrowing from the guy she was friend-zoning and the girls take the opportunity to grade JR’s Hypothetical Bumble profile from an earlier PGP column! (with shocking results) Do you have a dating or relationship question you want answered on the pod? Make sure you send our way! New eps will be released every Wednesday, so check it out on Soundcloud below or on iTunes!

We have an Instagram now! Follow us here for a first look at the dating profiles we’re grading and all sorts of content throughout the week!

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JR Hickey

Stand up comedian and writer from Chicago who now resides on the West Coast. JR can be seen performing at Cobbs Comedy Club in San Francisco and Zanies Comedy Clubs in Chicago. His work has been published in the Chicago Tribune and recently he was a part of SF Sketchfest 2015. JR's also the host of the PGP dating podcast Don't Take It From Us. He loves you very, very much.

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