telling stories through photos
If you pause a movie and study that frame, you’ll find there is so much to learn and appreciate in that one frame. the subject, composition, highlights & shadows directs your eyes on what the director intended. A still frame lets you breathe, lets the information and your thoughts sink in.
On the other hand a movie, twenty four frames per second hardly allows multiple perspectives during the experience.It takes less mental energy to watch a friend’s wedding video. Flipping through photos album allows you to pause and notice so much more.
Another beautiful attribute of a photo is the creator does not have full control over how it’s perceived. A photo allows the viewer to have multiple perspectives and different narratives. This might be based on who is viewing the photo, what life stage you are in, and the state of mind. The viewer also might start to fill gaps to tell the full story of a photo.
The photo on this blog post shows my friend resting his feet on a rock. You know he is somewhere out of the city, in nature. The mirror like water and the undisturbed leave shows the calmness. The blueness of the water and the circular ripple on the water tells it’s a cloudy day and it’s about to rain.
Before my friend visited from Toronto, he said he’s been exhausted from work and he is really looking forward to get out of the city. He might have been doing three jobs at the time doing eighty plus hours a week. He was telling me in many ways he doesn’t want to do much during his vacation. He just wanted to relax.
The day after he landed in Vancouver, I took him to a nearby creek. We took two camping chairs. We were chatting about the school days reminiscing the care free days. I got up to take some photos of the leaves floating by us. That’s when I saw his feet resting on this rock. I thought this was the perfect frame to document his time off from work.
Someone looking at the picture will fill in the gaps to have a full story in their mind. To someone it might be a photo of a guy fishing. Someone who likes to think far might notice the rolled up work pants and think he wasn’t planning to be here that day, etc, etc.
Every medium of story telling has its own place. To me still photos are the most enjoyable..
think deeper or move on?
Human characteristics are complex, each possessing positives and negatives. For instance, traits like being multi perspective and being impartial has a lot of advantages. Allows you to better analyze a situation, a conversation, helps you to be kind. On the flip side, in negotiations you have a high chance of ending up with the short side of the stick, you might take longer to reach your goals as you are constantly putting yourself in others’ shoes.
While recognizing this duality of human traits is a skill, how we choose to engage with it can significantly impact our well-being.
Should you dig deeper in to the analysis and will there be an answer? Or will it open more and more questions? What if you are addicted to over analysis and learning more and more? (Could be useful.could end up being a waste of time). Can this get in your way of taking action in life? Is there a perfect balance to strive, that will allow you to take action in life and also keep learning? I think I just started to over analyze this and forgot to move to my next point here…
Too much analysis can lead to instability and self-doubt. Instead of enjoying a moment, we may find ourselves lost in a web of “what ifs” and self-criticism. The pressure to be perfect or to constantly improve can become paralyzing, making it difficult to appreciate the moments, and the positive things we contribute to the world.
If you were to live your life with a positive outlook all the time, is there an opportunity cost to that? Will you be able to move on knowing you left a lot of unknowns on the table?
Certainly living with a positive opinion on all your past decisions and having a 100% positive outlook in the present moment can enhance our mental health, leading to better relationships, getting far in whatever path you chose, and increase overall life satisfaction in life.
You can live life like a floating flower on a warm river without paying attention to the burning doubts.
efficiency hype
In today’s fast-paced world, optimization and efficiency have become the centre of evrything. In businesses, education, personal lives, and even leisure activities, there is an overwhelming pressure to squeeze every last ounce of output from every minute.
We are surrounded by a culture that values more and more things, faster, and cheaper. As we sprint toward the finish line, the fixation on efficiency often comes at the expense of quality of your work, your creativity, and ultimately the satisfaction of you doing meaningful work.
If you are a student, does the examinations truly emphasize on accessing your understanding of the course you are leaning, if you have the skills to put them in to practice in real world? Can you discuss any original ideas with your professor that’s outside of the course outline?
If you are a professional, What is your opinion? Does the company you work for, or the company you own have been changing how you do things to add more value to the final consumer?
It is hype if you’re too invested in making things efficient and lose sight of the bigger picture. I am all FOR efficiency until it reaches the point of diminishing returns.