Flitting around with a Canon digital SLR, unabashedly curious, Mark the Cobrasnake takes your photo. Or Kathy of Kathyisyourfriend.com. Or Lindsaysdiet, lastnightsparty, ad infinitum. They are doing their part at The Party, telling the story with blinding light and a fast lens.

Art wit Clement Greenburg, in 1964, rattled off this statement: "the photograph has to tell a story if it is to work as art". (That pithy phrase has helped me through countless art history exam questions). Now, when we sit around the breakfast table spouting recalled moments of clarity from the aformentioned Party, we are adding to that story. Collective stories, online photo galleries, black-out cab rides, all seem part of a new mythology, a hip young variation on a once mainly oral tradition (that is my art history pedantry surfacing again, sorry. REAL TALK).

That friend who could regail the others with that extra detail ("the girl was SO wet", "it must'a been a double but they charged me a SINGLE!", etc), has been pushed aside for a broader record of The Night. But when I see the usual shot of a flash-lit subject in a darkened club, sweat-slime mascara contrast that drips hazily over her pale skin, I don't see a thousand words.

Granted, with the output that has come to be expected of pseudo-celebrity party photographers, not every shot is going to be interesting. To see oneself in among the usual suspects the next day can be important for people. Being seen there at the hot spot can be impetus enough to get out there in the first place. That is half the fun they say.

While the advent of high-capacity memory cards and intuitive web-based display interfaces has allowed for the new party photographer's prolific output, the practice itself is not something new. Erich Saloman's interbellum candid shots, those of high ranking Weimar Republic officials and their wives at silk glove dinner parties, come to mind. He would often include himself in the framing of the shot, converse knowledgeably with the subjects involved, and then released the shutter at a moment unknown to the subject. And while his works have come to be considered fine art photography, at the moment he took the photo he was commiting his deed as documentary work, in a similar vien as today's visual story tellers.

Doing what one loves for work is what we all strive for (right?). I mean, aside from your construction co-workers, sore from a heavy life and one too many sheets of three quarter ply, people continually tell me to "live to work" or something, meaning, enjoy what you do and the days won't seems so sickening. To be able to go on a Canada-wide tour taking photographs at the serious clubs, well, it seems that the Cobrasnake has heeded the steeltoes' advice. The act becomes more important than the art; his fame lies in the capturing of the moment and a hasty display, not in the caliber of the shots. They may not be the decisive moment that Cartier-Bresson froze so eloquently with his blackened Leica, but they seem to serve, with more personal aim, to tell the story for each person in those photos. And that is a good thing when you wake up fully clothed in your hallway, prone, arms stretched feebly towards your bedroom door.

(For a few "dos & donts", check out MSN/Sympatico's handy guide, and do the opposite. Don't do what Donny Don't does.)