The Priceless Value of a Photograph

Here is something that we have all heard before in some form or another, but I feel is important to be reminded of on a regular basis.

I was recently reminded by a good friend’s post on Facebook regarding his grandmother, about how priceless a photograph is.  He posted a series of photographs from when his grandmother was younger.  As I looked through the images I thought to myself how many memories would be completely forgotten if people had not taken pictures.

The first photograph was taken by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce titled “View from the Window at Le Gras”. Since then things have changed, technology has advanced and millions and millions of pictures have been taken.  There are many moments in history that were captured in photographs.  Families all over the world clicked away and took pictures of themselves, their children and families as they grew and experienced life.  Photojournalists took pictures of famous events, politicians, wars, celebrities, celebrations, sports, and local news events.  Without those pictures the only historical records we would have are what people wrote.  Obviously you can’t always trust what people write and the visual reference of a photograph makes a big difference… that is until the invention of Adobe Photoshop. 

Motivated to write this post, I decided to go through some of my own old photographs.  I was just going to grab one or two old shots to stick in this post and the coolest thing happened.  My two young boys (5 and 6) came in to see what I was doing.  They started looking at the old pictures with me and it was really cute.  My oldest son, Tony, saw a picture of me when I had long hair, glasses and a moustache and he said “who is that?”  I laughed and said it was daddy when I was younger.  He gave me a strange look and said “you look like a bad Elvis!”.  My wife and I laughed so hard we were crying.

I hope you all go out and take lots and lots of pictures.  They don’t necessarily have to be good pictures, but capture those moments, those places, those people.  It is so important for the future, for yourself and for your family and those that follow years and years down the road.

Technorati Tags: Artistic Expression,Blogging,Calgary,Creativity,Photography

Schools Kill Creativity

I was at work today and none of my usual friends/co-workers were available for lunch so I decided to sit in my office with the headphones on and watch one of the TED talks on my laptop. 

If you haven’t heard of TED before you are seriously missing out on some incredible conferences on Technology, Entertainment, and Design.  You can read more about TED on their website, but here is a quick quote from their site…

TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with the annual TED Conference in Long Beach, California, and the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford UK, TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Program, the new TEDx community program, this year's TEDIndia Conference and the annual TED Prize.

The main reason for this post is the fact that the particular talk that I listened to today was by Sir Ken Robinson who is a creativity expert and led the British government's 1998 advisory committee on creative and cultural education.  He was even knighted in 2003 for his achievements.  There is more about him on the TED website, but his talk titled “Schools Kill Creativity” was really amazing.  He is an excellent speaker, very intelligent and an extremely funny man with his dry British sense of humor.

This particular talk by Sir Robinson brings to light some very interesting ideas in that education throughout the years teaches people to focus on only the left side of their brain under the common misconception that you can never get a good job or make any real money unless you get a degree or even better a master’s degree or a PHD.  Think about it, the way it works out is that the “A” students end up teaching the “B” students to work for “C” students.  Your laughing right now aren’t you, because it is so true.  I hope you can spare the time to listen to the entire talk as people really need to open their eyes and change the way they look at education.  Without creativity we can’t solve the world’s most complex problems.  We have all heard the term “Thinking outside of the box”, and really what that means is to use some creativity to solve the problem.

Technorati Tags: TED,Art,Digital,Enlightenment,Positive Thinking,Technology,Creativity,Design