Photography = Skill + Timing + Luck

Being there at that very moment is more important than which camera you are using, which reinstate the fact that anyone with a reasonable sense of aesthetics can be a good photographer. #theywalkamile #insearchofwater

Ladies with water vessel 

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A lesson from a drifting feather!

So, while he was walking slowly, lost in casual thoughts suddenly a floating white feather caught his attention, it was tiny but was in its full glory and was slowly drifting in light breeze towards a nearby fountain in a gravity defying act. Anyway it gracefully landed on the clear sheet of overflowing water and suddely its motion was seized but only for a moment, it was like feather finally found its ground only to realise it was a slipping, drifting ground again. It appeared that this otherwise serious flowing water sheet was happy to receive that feather friend. Though in a fraction of second that feather was mobile again with the flow of water, only to reach its next destination. Possibly "keep drifting effortlessly" was mantra by which feather was living, it was full of life in its lifelessness, and possibly it touched the conscience somewere leaving a life lesson - a lesson of effortlessness even in its full dignity, even in its constant motion!

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Digital art on the go...

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An autonomous "data system" inspired by "life system" would look something like this-

Only if you could read between the megabytes!

We are probably living in the best times of history when it comes to freedom of knowledge. In very near future a storm of data is going to overtake individual supremacy and idiosyncrasies and going to demolish hard earned monopoly of handful of experts. Knowledge in form of data was never in such an abundance and never so easily accessible. Lets make use of it in best way possible.

A DATA SYSTEM INSPIRED BY LIFE SYSTEM  
- Has to be replicable  
- Has to be a Non
- Linear System  
- Has to be a Non-coplaner System  
- With a Beginning and End  
- Should mimic external environment without any  actual physical threat  
- Pyramid as building block with vital information  at its Tip and Archive at its base  
- Archive plane further arranged in segments of  24 or 54  
- Information tissue cubes made of 6 Pyramids  joined at Tip  
- Volume of Tissue cube arranged in 3d Grid  
- Vital information distributed in space  
- An auto learning system  
- Data mining with sixth sense filtering  
- With Functionally adapted parts  - Varying activity intensity  
- Available on Demand  - Customisable to Client's need without  intervention  
- Waste generation (junk) to maintain the  envisaged size of system  
- Idle period to revive and conserve energy  
- Alerts and Filters are key to system's tangible  success
- A mirror backup data-set-" Advantage over living  system"

Future of Data mining and Data analysis is here!

Author Brief: Anoop Jha is an Urban and regional Planner with a keen interest in exploring possible role of new Data and Technology in city, social, and economic planning and having vision to take planning to whole new level through integration of Policy, innovation and ever-growing knowledge base of world.

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Creating dynamic street environment- A cure for repetitive monotony of city!

If you try recollecting past experiences, you will realize that an element of surprise can help you cope with the city stress- traffic, crowd, or simply say hectic repetitive chaos and it need not be scientifically proven.

So can we think of creating everyday surprises - pleasant of course, but can be weird sometimes - along the much traded route of our cities - a suddenly changed striking colored building, pink or florescent or yellow; a sudden surge of artificial wind in a subway, a sudden burst of soft rock music at bus shelter; a glowing bus or a decorated tree and so on, its like taking street performance to the next level which includes whole environment rather than just performer.

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There are more Photography tricks than tools

If brush doesn't work, just doodle.

Five minutes of digital #doodle is good way to catch up with passion of #art.

Life in a city, any given day!

Lets restore the lifeline of city called River! #LetsRestoreRiver

Riverfront development as a tool for ecological revival.

River-edge development is about confronting the centuries of neglect towards lifeline of city called river.

It is about restoring the natural dignity of river while making some commercial sense out of it.

That riverfront was anyway thriving ecologically before city invaded the river edge.

River edge development is just an effort to restore the past equilibrium.

[Post by- Anoop Jha]

Art on Autopilot - Since you dont have time!

Long back read that some sculptor spent his whole life making several sculptures for a large garden, sounds cool but what a waste of life, seriously! In case you paint a Monalisa or something than you might think its worthwhile, since you made a masterpiece for generations to come, but all of us ain't Vinchi. 

With whatever capabilities we possess we can have two possible choices to make, one is to make a masterpiece to be remembered or to create abundance of art for yourself and for humanity. Abundance can give you instant opportunity to channelise your creative energy rather than waiting to make that one masterpiece for which you are waiting since last 10 years. And we are not talking about just fine arts, it can be anything, any form of creative affair which you love to be engaged in, you see even pattern of numbers is art for statistician, that's art for her!

So how will you create abundance when art is not your bread n butter and you are ever occupied with inexhaustible to-do list for your lifetime. Solution is to put your art on an autopilot mode. Making art anywhere everywhere, art which consumes least amount of time but is still an art to your satisfaction.

To keep your thinking wheel rotating an example can be like; take a complex peice of sculpture or object or take simply a junk, spill a bucket or mug of  water in front of it, see the amazing reflection in water, now click or capture or paint or draw that reflection or the whole environment or simply observe and feel blessed to see your creation, additionally spill some paint in the  water or add a mirror in the backdrop if you want or just do anything you like and your are ready with your art piece.

Idea is that it might take substantial time to create that very sculpture or art piece for example, whose reflection you are trying to capture but the moment you added thin film of water or a mirror for example the whole dynamics changed, now the whole setting is complex enough to qualify for an art, your personal art. See Master Artists used to paint pomegranate and guava to create classic masterpiece called “Still Life”, you simply cut them in half and one-click-capture the intricate pattern or just cut-n-shape them in cube and you are ready with your modern piece of art.

The best thing is that it’s you who have created this art, and you own this art; at least it gives you satisfaction to see your creativity manifested, in a blink of eye almost. This shortcut of art is just an example, because you were really running short of time to be devoted to art but you really wanted to create some, now you can think of infinite possibilities to dump the excuse that you could have created something only if you had time. This is how you beat the art!  

Public spaces: transiting from interactive to addictive spaces

They talk about interactive public spaces, yeh, but its been long playing with this concept. Landscape architects, sculptors, Urban designers, everyone has done there bit fulfilling their fantasy of what an ultimate interactive public domain can be. It takes creative genius and sometimes state-of-art technology to make it happen. As for now they have succeeded in making the public spaces interactive enough through different tools like interactive sculptures, screens, kiosks, light, ambiance etc. but as a planner of urban space, as artists, as designers, as software developers and so on, we need to push is further, further to transform the difinition of public spaces from interactive to addictive, afterall addiction of public spaces and landscape and nature and parks and plaza is not a bad habit as such!

If that tiny puzzle, that mobile game, that vedio games, play station, that music can be so addictive, why can't a public space with all its hardware,  bandwidth, characters, ambiance, familiarity, nostalgia and infinite possibilities be an addiction. Afterall bringing people to interesting and safe public domain from comfort of their couch is job of those who help design city. Imaging a kid who has spent most of his childhood staring at tv or vedio game screen finally getting in touch with nature getting into public space!

City of Portrait hunters!

City, such interesting place it is with such interesting people. City, where every day is another odd day for accidental encounter with interesting people, subject of inspiration, portraits!

Every thinking face on a street and every thought engrossed expressions on a public transport here is portrait worthy character it seems. Expressions with hints of accumulated experience still hidden behind unfathomable  layers of time, and wrapped under imposed smile, only occasionally revealed by the true talkative eyes. City filled with such inexhaustible supply of interesting characters is a true shrine for portrait hunters whether artists, photographers, writers or movie directors. 

Key traits of future cities! #futurecities

[Post By- Anoop Jha]

A complete new mindset is needed to craft future cities-

Focus on judicious use of resources rather than creating abundance.

Focus on leveraging and channelising externalities rather than eliminating it.

Harnessing untapped second hand energy.

Eliminating wastage by design rather than repeated appeal and imposing penalty.

Waste to be increasingly viewed as resource rather than burden.

Focus on eliminatingneed of artificial day-lighting instead of promoting LED.

Engineered to the very core to sustain.

Decide your own workplace rather than “walk to work”.  

Carry your personalised holographic and sonic environment wherever you go. 

Unfathomable data: are you still scratching the surface?

Take for instance images!

If you have reached at the end of Google image search page, while looking for a random object or word like say "chair" and if you think this is it, here we are staring at the last image of  chair in world ever uploaded online and you start having this feeling that lets change the key word to "modern chair" and next  changing it to "modern designer chair" ; probably you are going in the wrong direction, probably you are approaching it too casually.  Online research is a  serious business whether its data or image. Its far easier to get lost or get disorientated in the   convoluted maze of online data while it needs a serious approach and focused objective to reach where you want to.

Just to get the hint of quantum of information that is floating out there freely online, if you are searching for any image for instance on Google you might get few hundred results now if you search using each of those images using this option called "search by image" you will get another few hundred distinct results for each original image now if you use a  combination of "search by image" and "text" -any text of your choice - you will get another thousand results now if you keep changing the text or combination of text you will keep getting different new results even if you don't change the image used in "search by image". Easy, we are not done yet. Now if you keep changing the "choice of  color" offered  by Google search results you will keep getting further unique results. Other option of image search is to use "random" text along with "text of your choice". 

Now another way is to search for photographs instead of images. Are they any different? Yes, and we are not even talking about twitter or instagram photograph;we are talking about photograph search through Google. Millions of photographs out there, all you have to do is to search for your  choice of text or subject with the several dozens extension names by which different brands of cameras save their files.

True, while still looking for chair, you might not get only "chair" in your search results if you search using above methods but possibility is that you might come across things in course of your search which will inspire you to the core and which might give a whole new direction and meaning to your research, which you can call accidental learning. We haven't  talked about ever flowing ever growing image database of flicker, twitter or instagram even. We haven't talked about text search yet.  

Its not just about research, its about the real fun part of it. Just take a dip in the unfathomable ocean of data its addictive. Be a smart netizen.

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Digital art is so convenient

You can paint or draw on a touch screen, on the go, deriving primitive sense of satisfaction by applying  paint with your bare hand; without need of arranging the paint brush canvas logistics and all of this without getting your hand wet. Only drawback  is that you will miss the fresh raw smell of paint and oil. Go for it!