Let’s Save Our Kids - together

A picture is worth a thousand words and hence I let them do the talking. I trust these two visuals will  highlight the human face of a global crisis created by today's Social (read evil) Medias.

"Instagram extended its sympathies to the teenager’s family, and said the company had a responsibility to make its users feel safe and supported."

Remind yourself that you were not “self-born”! You have been brought into this world with lots of love. You do not have to seek others’ approval to boost your self-esteem, seek inner peace instead. 

Go surround yourself with the best people you can find live life to the fullest. A few points to ponder..........

• Will the Social Media corporations do anything?
• Are our children & youth safe?
• Who shall coach the vulnerable?

Daymare? Nay! It’s a Dream

Your great grandchild will be surprised to know that you had physically transported yourself to tourist destinations. It will be shocking for them to accept the fact that people took such extraordinary efforts for mundane experience of a jungle safari or a walk on the Great Wall of China. An experience which could easily be enjoyed during a lunch break. If it is not yours, his grandchild will most certainly be looking at us as though we were the hunters’ gatherers of the twenty-first century.  

It’s not a daymare, it’s just a dream!

Virtual Reality is making inroads into the life of the proverbial common man at a speed much faster than what we would be comfortable to accept. Any major, important or popular tourist destination has already been digitized in their minutest of details. We can easily experience a fly over the highest peak of the largest mountain or inspect the intricate details of St Paul’s Cathedral leaning back on our desk chair. Today, it may analogous to gazing at the computer screen but I have a dream....  

Very soon VR technology to will evolve to a full-fledged Dolby digital like experience. As I write this post, google is busy documenting the street views of the major cities around the world. I wouldn’t be surprised if the forests and deserts are also being digitized by someone else.

The journey that one would embark in the near future would be as real as they comes, effectively encompassing all our senses but remaining within one's own comfort zone. Standing in front of the favorite monument one would be able to feel, smell and talk to the fellow virtual traveler admiring the same view in real-time, albeit virtually.

When that day dawns, the able, unable, disable and differently-able person alike shall experience the joy of visiting exotic locales. This is going to impact the life of all; the lazy, the crazy and everyone in between. The “selfie experience” will still remain quite intense while the “selfie camera” moves into the computer which will be shouldering all the hard-work. 
With that reality still lurking at a distance, my best selfie is yet to clicked. I do leave a virtual selfie. 

But till that time comes we have to drag our feet and physically send ourselves to places  armed with a good selfie camera. After all human beings' primitive instinct of showing off has to be addressed in style. The camera need to support different formats of all the social media options. Whether it is Facebook, Pinterest or the Instagram, the photos once posted need not get cropped. Mobiistar phone with its front, dual selfie camera to capture a 120° wide-angle shot would definitely give you an edge over the commoners. And moreover need not to worry about the battery dying in the middle of the trip and its worth checking it out virtually in the Flipkart store.

This post remembers Morton L. Heilig, referred by many authors as the father of Virtual Reality. 

Finding the Right Photographer - Part 1

During the early days of the 21^st century, I completed construction of a country headquarters for a major multinational bank. We wanted some photographs taken of the competed works once we handed over the project for our reference. I informed the person in command that my colleague, who is also a photographer, will come down and take some pictures. While giving consent he commented, “Anyone holding a digital camera considers him to be a photographer these days”. That was partially was true as not everyone had access to a “digicam” as it was known then and the prized possession came with the privilege of being considered to be a photographer.

This was then and today almost everyone has got a smart phone and is a photographer. Anywhere we go, we see people taking each other’s pictures, or selfies or things of interest around them. While this has given a whole new dimension to the definition of “citizen journalism”, the doubt remains if it has done a great deal of good to the profession of photography. The question revolves around the thought, how smart are the photographers with the smart phones.

Would you trust one of them with the responsibility for serious photography of once in a life time event or those which are close to our heart? It could be a graduation ceremony, a wedding, final sports event you are participating and most importantly to capture some memories of child’s early days. This is based on the premises that art and photography is a big deal for us and we want our pictures to be perfectly framed with the right amount of color, brightness and exposure. And we love to browse pictures when we are sentimental and also love to flaunt a few gorgeous moments aptly framed on the living room wall.

It is therefore important to select a photographer with care, and we can only do that if we set our criteria correctly. After going through the list it might appear that it’s quite difficult to find a good photographer and guess what?  – It is. Or else, all of us with a mobile phone would have been ace photographers.

 To be continued …