Have you realized that our technologies are training us on day to day basis to steer us away from appreciating the content? Yes we are getting faster and faster thanks to the arcade games when we were young, computers give you the hourglasses and your mind is far far away while you are waiting. Look at those TV commercials comparing them to those of 10 years ago, we are so fast to grab the message. Yet these things not only shorten our attention span, they deactivate our natural tendency to contemplate, to get the meaning behind the obvious. Mark my word, there will be a huge paradigm shift in 2010-2012 of which people will fight for moments of slowness because there will be a mass realization of something deeper in everything. We will still be fast, but we will treasure the space in between.
So I simply don't give people photos of our recent gathering. Coz there will be no impact of such photos to a person's life, it comes and it goes, buried into a hard drive or sitting somewhere getting dust. Photos age well, not because of the material but of substance. When you receive a photo years later, you spend more time looking at it, thinking about it. Who was that? Where is he/she now? We were so young. Oh yeah that's when we missed our flight.....
It was last year when Iona, Sharon and I had a drink in an Ebizu dart pub. I talked about having difficulty finding a good stationery buyer. Iona thought of her friend and with subsequent events that followed, I ended a one year search of a capable person for the job. This picture reminds me of that when I look back, and I appreciate a lot the connection between things.
And Iona got married finally after a few family mishaps. She was very nervous and must have been full of emotions she didn't smile at all, not when the professional photographers pointed their lens at her. I remember the stories of her recently passed away father, I remember her doubts about marriage when I gave her a tarot reading, and I could see how she couldn't smile. But when I showed up on the banquet and pointed my camera at her she smiled the most natural smile I see every day at work! I was genuinely trying to look at her even though we were never close, my camera and my presence made those smiles and I'm so happy by myself already. And I'm not giving her these photos either.
Before we played dart we had a dinner party with our Japanese colleagues in Ebisu. Our director raised glass to thank Okuyama san for her hard work and she cried unstoppable. Nobody know why to this date. My guess is that she was having difficulty coping with the pressure and that was a relieve. If this photo were given to her, it would only create embarrassment. If this photo is given to her when it will be bygones, she will probably look back with a smile, seeing people surrounding her comforting and supporting her when she cried.
Share photos with greatest impact possible, look behind the images.
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