Lagos, July 4, 2018 (NAN) A Professional Photographer in Lagos, Jesse Akerele-Omoghene, has described as `callous’ horrifying pictures of accidents and killings that trend on the internet.
Akerele-Omoghene, who is the Chief Executive of Jesse images, a photo outfit made the observation in Lagos on Monday in a chat with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).
The photographer called for stiff measures to stem the ugly trend and punish those who perpetrated such act.
“Accidents, horrifying killings, nudity and people exposing their private parts without considering the implications, sex tapes or rape, because everyone has a camera.
“It is bad that people are constantly on the lookout for what to post on social media without knowing the gravity of what they are doing.
“If there are accidents, instead of reaching out to help, people take photos to go and post on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook without thinking of the families of those involved and the impact it will have on them,’’ he said.
He said that professional photographers could not take awful things and post on social media.
Akerele-Omoghene said that the freedom to post should be controlled by adding that certain photographs like accidents needed not be in the socials media for a period of time.
The photographer said that if there were laws guiding all these postings, people would caution themselves on what to post.
“We only have principles, rules and techniques on how to enhance our photo and photography but not techniques on what not to post.
“We cannot stop people from photographing whatever they want to post but we need some decorum on it,” he said.
Akerele-Omoghene also said that the postings in the social media could be controlled before the images get out to the viewing public if some features were in place.
According to him, this will come about when probably a censor board could be created to monitor the kind of images posted by bloggers and online papers and they could be tutored on it.
He pointed out that a picture necessitated what the person posting it wanted to impose on people but not horrible ones and videos too.
“The problem is, even when people know what it entails, they will still photograph whatsoever they want. It is bad,” he said.
The Yaba College of technology graduate of Arts, on the other hand, said that he had met lots of people who do not consider photography imperative.
“They see it as special occasion, when the need arises; such as weddings, birthdays, child dedication, graduation and others.
“That is the only time they consider the need for photograph. Photograph is good; a person basically gets photograph for documentation of events and preserving of memories.
NAN reports that Akerele-Omoghene won an award in Nigerian photography award in 2012. (NAN)
NCI/MNA
