Style/engineering

Citroën has always been a very different kind of automaker. Their styling has been like nothing else - its is a very love it or hate it thing. Even the best of those impeccably engineered autobahn cruisers has always looked businesslike. Serious. Prolly with no sense of humour. Have you ever tried telling an Audi a joke? No response, none at all. Even a lowly Civic-si whinnies in delight if you show it something slightly risque.

A Citroën though - something different. You have the sense, even when all you know of it is a medium res press photo, that this is something truly special. A Citroën is prolly female. The kind you wouldn't mind waiting hours for. The type who will let the wine breathe a bit. Who knows which live cheeses to look for - by smell. The one with the poster of Alain Delon on her wall. Which brings us to the new Citroën No.9. Shooting brakes are not a very practical design, but then if you wanted practicality, you would be looking at a Swedish wagon. While they didn't make the Metropolis - the No.9 is something to lust after. It reminds me of the art-deco lines of the Hispano Suiza Dubonnet Xenia. Will they ever bring this across the pond?

Every monkey with an SLR

The muddied streams of the interwebs brought this demotivational up to the surface. And I was inclined to agree - yes, today every monkey with a few hundred bucks thinks he is a photographer. And surely, it isn't limited to just SLRs - these days, apps like Instagram can make wonderfully filtered and bokehed snaps out out whatever duckface you and your drunk mates posed with after the seventh round of tequila shots. All of which is utterly despicable.

Oh, wait, it isn't and I am being a colossally silly prat. Similarly uncomplimentary thoughts were undoubtedly aired by serious photographers who looked askance at the AsahiPentax's silly mirror-flippitty thingy way back in the fifties. I mean, serious photogs use 120 film and wonderfully machined Rolleiflex TLRs, or at the least your less exalted Mamiyas - built to take punishment like the battleship Yamato.

But the mirror- flipping shenanigans continued, and gasp - outsold every other respectable camera type almost into oblivion. Yeah, yeah, there continued to be a small group of enthusiasts (read middle aged rich white dudes with OCD) who clung to their Elmarits and Summicrons - but every photo that made it to the cover of Time came from a 35 mm SLR. And then digital happened.

The same noses were raised high in the air and angry proclamations were made that it would never, ever be the same. True enough, for a while semiconductors lagged behind film emulsions and serious magazines like Arizona Highways would accept only film (and prolly 120 film at that). Yet, times have a-changed, Kodak has gone belly up and Arizona Highways now has a Flickr photostream. Hah.

The latest wave of development is being driven by instant capture, instant processing and instant sharing. In the time it would take me to unlimber the pack and swap lenses, someone with a fancy Nokia 800 series has taken the picture and applied a Holga-ish filter on it and sent it winging off to Facebook where his three hundred pals have liked it. Yes, of course, much of what is being shot - prolly most of it will be crap. But crap to you and me - not to the person who snapped it - and her mates pulling duckfaces in it. And by that account - the click-n-share crowd has already got what it came here for - their memories. But in the midst of this giant digital trash heap - there are undoubtedly gems. You merely have to sift through it - and there are plenty of people and their fancy apps doing just that. So stop whining about how a beautiful medium has been plebianized.

Also remember the unending horror that came from sitting through your aunt's friend's family album? Yes - now picture that, magnified a millionfold. With duckfaces. Yes, the future does look somewhat rosier now. Perhaps even instagrammed.