How to draw your own selfie — using your personal data

Designer Giorgia Lupi wants to change the way we think about data -- far from being cold facts and numbers, it can be warm and often flawed. Follow her step-by-step instructions to generate a data-driven perspective on the person you know best: you.

We humans constantly generate data, and it’s constantly being tracked for us. Every step we take, every item we purchase, every website we visit snowballs into a mountain of information -- it’s no coincidence that it’s called Big Data. Data drives many of our decisions today: for example, Amazon suggests what we should put into our shopping carts based on its analysis of our buying history and the history of people with similar tastes; Netflix deploys proprietary formulas to steer us to movie and TV choices so we keep bingeing. Data can also be a great source of anxiety -- we worry about our personal information being stolen or used against us. But what if we could take ownership of our day-to-day data and use it to tell our own story instead?

That’s what Giorgia Lupi, co-founder and design director at Accurat, a New York City- and Milan-based firm, is trying to do (TED Talk: How we can find ourselves in data). She looks at data from a perspective she calls “data humanism” that emphasizes its vitality and color. It’s time, she says, “to begin designing ways to connect numbers to what they really stand for: knowledge, behaviors, people.” She urges to think beyond the hackneyed forms of data visualization -- the bar graphs, the linear timelines -- and dream up other ways to turn statistics into a story. A data portrait can be a great way to begin reclaiming and recycling your personal information. And there’s no right or wrong way to do it; it’s like a selfie, but made out of data points rather than pixels.

Here’s a template you can use to start taking your data in your own hands. The process is straightforward: just answer these questions, then draw. And don’t worry, it's meant for artists andnon-artists.

Remember that data, like us, is imperfect. “It’s time to leave behind any presumption of absolute control and universal truth,” says Lupi. Since we get our data from humans; it’s riddled with human error and tainted by biases. We should embrace these imperfections, just as we embrace imperfections in ourselves and others. These portraits are only the start of forming a new relationship with your data. Once you feel more connected to it, you’ll see it differently. We must treat data “as the beginning of the conversation,” Lupi says, “and not the end.”

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And you thought all that could be done with scissors and a sheet of paper is making snowflakes? Take a look at the spellbindingly intricate tapestries that artist Karen “Bit” Vejle conjures with just her scissors and imagination.

At Easter in Denmark, children commonly make greetings called gækkebrev. Taking a piece of paper, they fold it and cut out a design (often, there’s a poem on the sheet). The sender leaves the letter unsigned, and their recipient has three chances to guess their identity. If they can’t, they owe the sender an egg or a kiss. This was a favorite tradition of Karen “Bit” Vejle , when she was growing up in the town of Brovst, even though her senders were always able to guess her handiwork because her cuts were so intricate.

Historians believe psaligraphy, or the art of papercutting, was practiced as early as the fourth century AD in China. It became popular in Europe in the 16th century, and 19th-century Danish author Hans Christian Andersen was known for making playful paper cuts while he regaled people with stories. Vejle’s first encounter with a contemporary psaligraphist was in Copenhagen’s Tivoli Gardens when she was 16. “I saw a man sitting by a lake, and he was cutting a piece of art from paper. I felt almost like I was hit by lightning,” she recalls. “I watched him for at least half an hour, and then I went home and grabbed my mother’s embroidery scissors. I’ve cut every day ever since.”

Calming body and mind with craft

This depiction of a woman sitting on a box full of “tears and prayers” is a self-portrait. Vejle worked as a TV producer until the early 2000s when she was diagnosed with myalgic encephalopathy (ME), a neurological disorder characterized by chronic pain and exhaustion. “I made this when I was very ill,” says Vejle. “In the middle there is a trapped bird, and it wants to get out and live again. The square below symbolizes how having ME is almost like fighting a battle every day. You need to make a lot of small efforts to get through your day.”

Vejle’s art has been driven in part by her illness. While she’d been cutting since her teens, she turned to it to keep her mind busy when a particularly intense period of fatigue forced her to take a leave of absence from work for several months. When a coworker visited her at home -- she was then living in Trondheim, Norway -- he was stunned by what he found. “I was sitting and cutting, and he saw my bits and papers spread all over the floor. He grabbed his phone and called the Museum of Decorative Arts and Design in Trondheim, and said, ‘You have to come see what Bit has.’” After encouragement from the curators, Vejle eventually quit her TV job and began exhibiting her work. She believes the focus required to cut her pieces helps her cope with ME.

Paper premonitions

Vejle says designs often pop up in her head as she’s falling asleep: “Images come to me; this has been my process since I was a kid.” After she wakes up, she rips off a swatch from a specially sourced 10,000-meter paper roll. She doesn’t fold the paper or sketch out her designs first, although she does draw some lines to indicate the general shape of the cut. Then, she just starts. “This is where the magic comes in. If you understand that, you will have a bigger spectrum of ways to manipulate your paper,” she says.

Vejle maintains that papercutting is not a rare gift she’s been endowed with. She believes anyone can do it; it’s all about training yourself, and she attributes her exceptionally steady hands to patience and decades of practice. “It’s a very honest artwork. You cannot cheat because what you have cut out is cut out,” she says. “I have made a lot of mistakes through the years, but it’s like if you give a kid a violin and they practice a lot, there will come a point when they no longer make mistakes.”

The significance of the ballerina bulldog

The “ballerina bulldog” -- a dancer accompanied by a dog -- is a recurring motif in Vejle’s work. It’s a character she’s made since childhood and one she sees as a symbol of artistic dedication. “A ballet dancer has to work incredibly hard and stay focused for many years to be able to perform,” says Vejle. “It says so much about what we as human beings can achieve.” Like the ballerina, she is methodical -- even obsessive -- when it comes to her craft. For instance, although she has tried hundreds of pairs of shears, she cuts only with her mother’s embroidery scissors (but worries she’ll eventually break or misplace them). Vejle had the honor of being the first person to wield Hans Christian Andersen’s snippers after his death. “They were enormous,” she says. After she completes a piece, she frequently tucks it under her carpet at home to keep it flat and safe from harm -- something she’s done since her teens.

A paper representation of present-day Norway

For Paper Dialogues -- a 2014 exhibit created in collaboration with Chinese art professor and psaligrapher Xiaoguang Qiao --Vejle did seven large-scale cuttings of dragon eggs. Dragons are an important symbol of power and strength in both Asian and Scandinavian cultures, and Paper Dialogues celebrated that joint heritage. The two-meter-high eggs took her more than two years to create, and she filled each delicate orb with icons from Norway’s past, present and future. Pictured above is one of Vejle’s eggs depicting the country’s present. “The frame is made of snowflakes. There are patterns of the high mountains, the deep valleys, the Northern lights and the sunsets, which are very intense in Norway,” she says. She snipped silhouettes of flowers to signify a trio of famous Norwegians: artist Edvard Munch, writer Henrik Ibsen and composer Edvard Grieg. Scaling a staircase are 12 Norwegians, each sharing their own story through symbols. “There is a person with a salmon and a mourning mother with a rose on her back, representing the tragic 2011 shooting here,” she says. And, she adds, “there is a troll, because Norway is full of trolls.”

A celebration of religion and folklore

Representing Norway’s past, this egg is framed with a braid of flying dragons. The images are inspired by 12th-century stave churches, distinctive wooden structures that contained Christian and Nordic iconography. Carvings of dragons buttressed their roofs and guarded the entrances to protect parishioners. “This dragon egg tells the story of the christening of the Norwegians. The figure in the middle is from early churches, and she is sitting on a dragon throne,” Vejle says. “She has a key with her and that’s a symbol of power.” The psaligrapher enjoys creating designs that reference her country’s history, fairy tales and natural wonders. “My tradition of using papercuts to tell stories is related to the very first religious images in Scandinavia,” she says. “Before people could read and write, they went to churches to hear God’s word but didn’t understand it because it was in Latin. Stories were painted on the walls, just like cartoons. That’s exactly what I’m doing.”

Showing sound through paper

Research for one of Vejle’s papercuts can take several months. To make this piece that was inspired by Dmitri Shoshtakovich’s Opus 8, Vejle listened to the piano piece every day for two months and also read everything she could find about the composer. Only after she’d memorized every note did she feel ready to begin cutting. “It is really easy-peasy, just mathematics,” she says about her process. “You have to form how you’ll cut notes and how a crescendo should look. I built this papercut like a musical work.” She used the cut’s top border to represent sound -- how the composition swells, builds and develops -- while the bottom border -- trimmed with birds and pipers -- is figurative. “This particular music piece is rather difficult for people to understand if they’re not into music, so I thought they should have something else to be able to look at,” says Vejle. The five-meter-long papercut took her more than nine months to complete.

Making multiple versions

All-knowing sibyls dot the ceiling of Rome’s Sistine Chapel. She took one of the women and surrounded her with jumping deer -- happy objects -- as well as shadowy skulls and birds­ -- upsetting ones. For the artist, this piece is about the difficulty of making choices when you’re pulled in many directions. “Everything in life we do requires our choosing things,” says Vejle. “We are responsible for what we choose, but if we’re aware of it, that’s good because then we won’t do very foolish things.” When it comes to choice in her own life, she supports it -- she likes having more than one version of a papercut. Since her teens, Vejle has always cut two layers of paper at a time. After she’s finished, she leaves one sheet white and sprays the other black. Vejle likes mounting her work between two panes of glass in order to emphasize its silhouettes.

Inspiring a new generation of paper artists

For “Twittering in the Royal Copenhagen Tree,” a three-meter-tall whopper of a papercut, Vejle filled it with 100 characters, each of which has a different story to tell. Snobbish crows, wise men driving cars, dieting ladybirds, and, natch, a ballerina are anchored by a central tree trunk. “I always tell stories; you’ll find several in each paper cut,” says Vejle. “If you are a child you will see one thing, if you are an adult you will see something else.”

Besides making her own art, teaching and inspiring new psaligraphers are equally important to Vejle, who now lives in the North Sea beach town of Blokhus, Denmark. In March 2018, she and her daughter plan to open a papercut museum in Blokhus. Besides displaying artists’ work, it will host workshops and classes for amateurs and experts alike. A visit to the museum will be a totally unplugged experience, Vejle says. “It lays very deep in our DNA to use our hands. With all the technology that’s around us, we don’t use them anymore. My museum will be a place where there is no technology. You have to meet the paper in person and you will be in direct contact with the material.” And, “it does something good for your soul,” she adds.

All images from Karen “Bit” Vejle.

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Three-step process to help you identify -- and get -- what you most want to get out of your marriage.

What is marriage for? In modern societies, we can have financial security, cohabitation, sex, love, children and more without being married. This makes the institution less essential -- and much more flexible.

We have the freedom to determine what we will and won’t seek from our marriage, which affords us the chance to build a relationship that plays to our strengths and circumvents our weaknesses.

• Will we seek financial security? 
• Emotional warmth? 
• Hot sex? 
• Exciting adventures? 
• Intellectual inspiration? 
• Co-parenthood? 
• Cultural similarity?

Most of us haven’t thought seriously about what we’re seeking from our marriage. Sure, we probably want love, sex and companionship. Chances are, we prefer a partner who brings out the best in us. But these thoughts tend to be vague, and we rarely think about the elements in the marital buffet that we’re notchoosing, which is required if we want to focus our resources on the elements that we are choosing.

1. First, do an inventory of what you want from your marriage.

In a sense, this task is impossible. Why? We’re not always conscious of what we’re asking of our marriage, we might be in denial about how important certain things are to us, or our memory during the process could be imperfect. But there’s no need for perfection. The goal is to think in a more sophisticated way about whether the requests we’re making of our marriage are reasonable -- and how we might fulfill some elements outside of it instead.

We can divide our marriage requests into three categories: 

(1) needs that we can meet only through our partner

(2) needs that we can meet either through our partner or some other significant other (OSO), such as a friend or family member

(3) needs that we can meet through our partner, through an OSO, or on our own.

Let me offer an example. Jasmine is 40 years old and married to James, with whom she has two daughters. She and James both work full-time and are extremely involved parents; they rarely see their friends. They live together, and their marriage is monogamous. First, what are the needs or goals that Jasmine can meet only through her marriage? These could include to develop and sustain a warm emotional climate in the home, serve as the physical and sentimental center of a happy, extended family, have a partner who is graceful at social events, have a competent co-parent, and have a healthy sex life. Second, what are the needs or goals that Jasmine is looking to meet through her marriage, but that she could also meet through an OSO? Some of these might be to receive emotional support when something bad happens at work, celebrate when something good occurs there, debate politics, attend cultural events, and be appreciated for her sense of humor. Third, what are the needs or goals that Jasmine is looking to meet through her marriage, but that she could also meet through an OSO or on her own? Some of these could be to learn to meditate, generate a long-term career strategy, become a kinder person, deepen her religious practice, and sharpen her logic skills.

This list, though far from comprehensive, helps illustrate the different kinds of goals that many of us look to our marriages to fulfill. To identify your goals, try thinking about them in terms of different life domains: interpersonal relationships, work, health and fitness, money management, pleasure, leisure, spirituality, social activism, parenting, and so forth.

2. Assess the resources and skills that you have.

After taking an inventory, we can search for places where our marriage is not doing a particularly good job of fulfilling our needs or where one partner must invest exorbitant effort to help the other meet these needs. Then we can consider if we could better meet that need through another person or solo. For example, if we notice that our spouse becomes frustrated whenever we talk about office politics, we might choose to invest in a relationship with a sympathetic coworker. Or, if our nurturing tendencies are stifled by our spouse’s independence, we might choose to reach out to friends who could use our support.

Although using our social network to fulfill our needs is less efficient than relying on marriage, it has its advantages. First, it’s unlikely that any one person has the optimal skill set for all of our needs, so it’s wise to leverage your network. Second, our spouse will not always be available. He or she may have to travel for business, get sick, or be consumed by a project. Third, our interdependence with our spouse means that stressful periods for us are likely to be stressful for him or her, too.

3. Come up with a plan to fulfill your goals and needs.

After we’ve taken an inventory and assessed our available skills and resources, we can generate a new plan for meeting our needs. For the first set of needs and goals -- those we can meet only through our spouse -- outsourcing fulfillment is not an option. In that case, we need to evaluate whether applying effort (from our self, or spouse, or both) can fulfill this need or goal; if so, how much effort it would take; and whether that level of effort is worth it.

If we decide the effort required is too high, we may need to recalibrate. If an insufficiently warm emotional climate results not from a lack of love but from different styles of handling conflict -- perhaps our partner yells and we withdraw -- we might consider letting go of that particular need or goal. Maybe we can work on ourselves instead, trying to be less conflict-averse and recognizing that expressing anger and frustration can be constructive if handled skillfully. The same process could apply to the second and third sets of needs (those we can also meet through OSOs, and on our own).

Consider the goal of learning to meditate. In an ideal world, we’d do it with our spouse, but perhaps he or she simply isn’t interested. However, we could easily meditate with an interested OSO or on our own. By assessing each of the major needs that we want our marriage to help us fulfill, we’re playing to the strengths of our spouse, our OSOs, and ourselves, as well as setting ourselves up to achieve higher levels of need fulfillment. And if we and our spouse focus on developing our social networks and our personal skills, our marriage will consist of two better-adjusted people as a result.

                                                                                                      

                                                                                                         Relationship researcher Eli J. Finkel 

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Grieving the people we’ve loved and lost

We can stay connected to them by creating our own special rituals, says psychologist and grief expert Kim Bateman.

In 1990, one of my younger brothers died in an avalanche while extreme skiing. He was only 21, and the horrific memory I have from that time is of his body lying at the bottom of a 750-foot cliff, all his bones broken. When he was little, he used to break his bones a lot because he was a risk taker, and the doctors always commented on how quickly he healed. But this time I knew there would be no healing, for him or for our family. It seemed like our identities shattered alongside his body on the rocks.

My son, who was four, asked me, “What happens when you die? Where did Chad go?” Being an academic, I said, “Well, Christians believe he's in heaven with God, and Buddhists believe he's going to come back as something or someone else. And there are scientists who believe we’re all made of energy and we just rejoin the natural cycle when we die.” And my son looked at me with wide eyes and said, “Yes, Mommy, but what do we believe?”

When we're forced to say goodbye to someone in the physical form, we're also being offered an opportunity to say hello to them in our imaginations.

It was a good question and I started looking to my own discipline, psychology, for answers. Some grief theorists say we humans invest our love or energy in a person and when she or he dies, we withdraw that energy and reinvest it in other people or projects. While that perspective may help some, it missed the mark for me. Because when we lose a loved one, we still love them. And I wasn't ready to stop loving.

Then I came across this Japanese proverb, which said, “My barn having burned to the ground, I can now see the moon.” I loved this quote, because it introduced me to the idea that when we're forced to say goodbye to someone in the physical form, we're also being offered an opportunity to say hello to them in our imaginations. Although gone in the material world, our loved ones can become more psychologically present to us.

And we can use this presence to create rituals that will bring them back and provide us with a means through which we can still love them. One example comes from a folktale I've heard about a woman named Nyctea, which means "of the night" and evokes the spirit of the owl. Nyctea’s job is to protect that which is in danger of being lost in this world, so her cave is filled with bones. She has mouse bones and rattlesnake bones and hawk bones and coyote bones, but the most precious bones are those of her namesake, the owl. She combs the mountains and riverbeds and gathers them one by one, bringing them back to her cave. There, she patiently reconstructs the owl’s skeleton. When the skeleton is complete, she sits by her fire and thinks of what song she will sing. In this quiet moment of love, the great drum of her heart becomes audible. The rhythm gives rise to a song and she sings into being the owl’s smooth feathers, its broad wings and its round eyes. On her last note, she breathes life into the owl, and when it feels that life in its lungs, its yellow-green eyes open wide and it flies up out of the cave and into the world.


We must gather our loved ones’ bones and piece them together -- they will be the lifeline that carries us through our grief.

When we grieve, aren't we all a little like Nyctea? Aren't we collecting bones and protecting that which is in danger of being lost? When my brother died, I remember that every word he had written suddenly seemed important. We wanted to dance to his music and to smell his clothes. The small pin he owned that said “Just visiting this planet” seemed like a premonition. We must gather our loved ones’ bones and piece them together -- they will be the lifeline that carries us through our grief.

As a clinical psychologist, I've taught about death and dying and facilitated grief workshops for more than 20 years. I’ve seen many people sing over bones, each in their own way. One woman in my town lost her 18-month-old son in a horrific car accident. Two months after it occurred, when she was living in the most jagged places of mourning, she re-read the sheriff's report. It said an unsecured car seat may have contributed to the fatality. So she set up car seat checkpoints and people lined up for blocks. She was a tiny person, and she’d get into each car, put her knee in there, and pry and pull and tug until the seat was secure. She said every time she pulled on a seat belt, she felt like she was loving her son.

I worked with a six-year-old girl whose mother died of breast cancer. She also felt responsible for her little brother who was only four, and her father was beside himself with grief. I said, “Tell me about your mother,” and she told me, “Mama loved tea.” She came up with the idea of holding a tea party for her. On Sundays, she’d set places for her brother, herself and her mother, and she and her brother would tell their mother about what happened to them that week. After a couple of months, even their father joined in. That girl is now in college, and she says it's still a meaningful ritual. Whenever she wants to talk to her mother, she just puts an empty teacup across the table from herself.

Another woman lost her husband after 45 years of marriage. Since he was the one who drove, she decided she’d walk or take the bus instead. Through an interminable, gray, windy winter, she kept noticing one thing. It seemed like everywhere she went, there were single gloves laying on the ground. Something about these gloves spoke to her because they were useless without their mate, so she bent down and picked them up. She started bringing them home and put them in a dresser drawer until it overflowed. Then, she took out her husband's ladder and carried it to the tree in the backyard that they’d planted together on their wedding day. She climbed the ladder and hung all the gloves -- fastened to fishing lines -- on the tree’s bare branches. She said when the wind blows, it’s like they are waving goodbye and waving hello.

When my children were little, on the anniversary of my brother's death I used to take them to the river with a purple rose (my brother loved the Grateful Dead). The children took turns pulling off its petals. With every petal they removed, I’d tell them something about their uncle and then they’d throw it in the water. Together, we would watch those memories and stories float away.

To create your own ritual, ask yourself what brought joy to your loved one. The more specific you can be with your answers, the better.

How can you do this in your own life? As the story of Nyctea suggests, start by listening to the great drum of your heart. Let it be your guide. Then, there are a number of questions that can direct you in creating a ritual. Ask yourself what brought joy to your loved one; the more specific you can be with your answers, the better. Maybe Nana loved putting up ham pies for Easter, your uncle sang Frank Sinatra in his underwear on the balcony, your cousin wore a shirt under his graduation gown that said “My parents just think I went to college,” or your sister loved the tingly feeling of catching snowflakes on her tongue. Think about your loved one and what they enjoyed.

Also, think about the physicality of the person you lost. Were they small like a bird, tall like a giraffe, or substantial like an ox? What did it feel like to hug them, and who was the first to let go? What smell do you associate with them? Maybe it's fresh-cut grass, Trident gum, sesame oil, lilac, peaches or clove cigarettes. When you were with your loved one, how did they make you feel? Was it like climbing into a comfortable easy chair and you always felt better about yourself? Or was it more like a roller coaster ride and they tested you? What values did she or he feel strongly about? Maybe it was a good work ethic, social justice, freedom or fairness -- you can try to incorporate that ideal into your own ritual.

When we sing over the bones of the people we care for, we are sitting in the place of the greatest love imaginable. And we’re not only singing up new life for our loved one, but we’re also singing up new life for ourselves. Poet W.S. Merwin wrote, “Your absence has gone through me/Like thread through a needle./Everything I do is stitched with its color.” May your song be colorful, and may you keep loving.

This piece was adapted from Dr. Bateman’s TEDxYouth@GrassValley Talk: Singing over the bones.

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Want to take pictures that will make people gasp? Photographer David Yarrow shares his advice on how to avoid the played-out and zoom in on the unexpected.

Over his 30-plus years in photography, David Yarrow : Wild Encounters--the story of what I do differently) has waded through the crocodile-infested Nile, taken a selfie reflected in the eyes of a polar bear and watched countless cameras get gnawed on by lions -- all in the quest for a wildlife image like you’ve never seen before. “My goal is to take four good pictures a year,” the London-based Yarrow says. “I want to take pictures that stop people in their tracks.” Below, he discusses how he captured some of his favorite images, with suggestions that all photographers can use.



Battle boring.
Yarrow jokes, “If you ever get a sunburn on the back of your neck, you’re not a very good photographer.” That’s because he defies what so many of us have been told -- and frequently photographs into the light. He took this shot with a remote-controlled camera and a wide-angle lens at Kenya’s Amboseli National Park, one of his favorite places to work for its dusty expanses and cinematic skies. “The big bull had to block the late afternoon sun -- otherwise there would be no picture -- and he kindly did that, which allowed the lighting to be energetic and dramatic,” he says. While Yarrow plays fast and loose with his techniques, there is one rule that he always stands by, regardless of the subject or the setting: “Be tough on what is boring. Most things in life are boring.”


Focus on the essence of your subject.

When Yarrow is planning to photograph a particular animal, he and his team will often sit down and list all the words they associate with that creature. This exercise “prompts me into thinking about how to take its portrait in a way that does it justice,” he says. For the bison, he wanted to capture its “fortitude and resilience” -- which also meant the portrait needed to be taken during winter at America’s Yellowstone National Park, when life is most challenging for bison. While many photographs of bison showcase their massive, powerful bodies, Yarrow feels their shaggy, stoic faces are the more striking feature. “I sensed that any picture that didn’t recognize this would miss my goals.”



Leave it to viewers to fill in the blanks. 

Yarrow typically photographs wildlife in black and white. “We live our lives in color, so a departure from reality is refreshing,” he says. He likes creating pictures that demand more from his audience, like this untraditional polar bear image. “It’s made complete by its lack of completeness -- the storytelling is started by the camera and finished by the viewer.”



Think about what you’ve already seen, and veer away.

Before Yarrow shoots a subject -- animal or human -- he always does research to see the work of other photographers and to figure out a new angle. With swans -- an animal that is, he says, “an inadvertent accomplice to lazy postcard photography” -- he knew he wanted to see as much white as possible, inspired both by the bird’s pristine ivory feathers and by visions of the 1965 film Dr. Zhivago. He eventually decided the snowy landscape of Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost island, would offer the perfect backdrop. “My approach was to create a dream, not necessarily report on reality,” he says. “The greater the cocktail of whites, the greater the possibility of an image that could be ethereal as well as evocative.”

Find a way to establish scale.

There’s no shortage of dramatic photos of the American bald eagle. For Yarrow, the trick to photographing overexposed subjects is to find “fresh detail.” However, he had difficulty taking a picture that met his standards. For example, because we've all seen many photos of eagles in flight with their wings lifted horizontally, he didn't want anything that looked like that. He also wanted to emphasize the impressive length -- up to seven feet -- of their wings. “In flight, there is a disconnect to anything that gives real scale,” he says. Having only the sky as backdrop “doesn’t help; it excludes much of what could help define and give it context.” After getting soaking wet from the surf on the beach of Homer, Alaska, he finally achieved a unique take -- not only are the wings in an unusual vertical position, but the wings’ opposition to the bird’s body and legs provide the contrast he desired.



Lose the telephoto.

Many wildlife photographers rely on telephoto lenses to avoid disturbing their subjects and to protect their safety. Not Yarrow. “The relationship between photographer and subject diminishes, the longer the telephoto,” he says. With dangerous animals, he prefers to either photograph them from inside a sturdy cage or use a remote-controlled camera, and he’s become known for the latter technique. Knowing where to place a remote camera and when to press the trigger requires “a considerable amount of behavioral research and predictive analysis,” he says. To capture this grizzly bear in Alaska, he placed a wide-angle lens along its fishing path and snapped the image when the bear was two feet away. “I’ve spent many days working close to grizzlies, and this is surely my most visually arresting photograph,” Yarrow says. “You can see every detail in that bear, and that’s why it’s a strong picture.”



Know when to break the rules. To achieve this shot in Kenya’s Amboseli National Park, Yarrow followed two of his go-to approaches: he chose a wide-angle lens over a telephoto, and he shot as low to the ground as possible (he dangled out of a moving jeep) -- as well as shooting into the light. However, he knows when to improvise. Although he usually tries to position himself in front of or parallel to the animal, he decided this rule could get a pass so he could capture the drama of the dust being kicked up. “We are in the wild, not a studio, and it’s often better to just go with the flow and think spontaneously,” he says.




Create images that invite second -- and third and fourth -- looks.
Yarrow aims for images that compel viewers to keep coming back and notice something new. This image, which he titled “Mankind,” was taken at a Dinka cattle camp in South Sudan. After studying the photographs that had already been taken in the area, Yarrow decided he wanted his image to capture the depth and scope of a camp scene. To do that, he decided to take his photo from above (he brought a ladder to stand on). As a result, he could silhouette the crowd of livestock and people against the smoke used by the tribe to fend off mosquitoes. The resulting photo is equal parts vibrant and otherworldly, exactly the effect that Yarrow was hoping to achieve. “Mankind is heavenly on one glance and Dante’s Hell on the other,” he says.

The self-taught Scottish lensman -- who has a degree in economics -- began his photography career covering sports, and even now, Yarrow doesn’t restrict his photography to wildlife. He is fascinated in how people live around the world, and he’s traveled to Nigeria, Namibia, Bangladesh and more to photograph indigenous communities. (Many of his images of animals and people have been collected in the 2016 book Wild Encounters: Iconic Photographs of the World’s Vanishing Animals and Cultures.) Most recently, he went to North Korea to capture the residents of that secretive nation. Yarrow also works closely with wildlife conservation organizations WildArk and The Tusk Trust as a photographer, ambassador and philanthropist.

All images courtesy of David Yarrow.

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Talents you've Got which you don't know about.

When most Africans living in Africa hear or read the word talent the first thing that goes into their mind is music. Music has become one talent that so many people have been rushing into, and even those who are not talented musically have found themselves trying to break into the music industry because of its profitability. But apart from music, comedy, dance etcetera, there are some other talents that are even more profitable that God has deposited in so many people that are lying idle. One difficult hurdle that I have always encountered when coaching people in my talent maximization coaching program has been trying to convince most of my clients to leave music or comedy for the moment and focus on some other idle talents that needs attention.

These four talents can be taken as a full blown career, used to grow your business as an entrepreneur and can also be used to increase your productivity as an employee. You probably may have heard about them, or know about them, but I strongly believe that there are so many people who need to read it. So, please, show love by helping to take this to the four corners of the earth.

• Eyes For Errors 

There are people who are very talented with this but don't know that it can be made Profitable. This set of people can spot an error from afar. They can also be called perfectionist. No matter how good you claim to be, a perfectionist can spot an error in your work unless it has already gone through the table of a perfectionist.
Being a perfectionist is not as a result of your experience or skills, it's a talent. While discussing with a friend sometime ago, I jokingly told her that the easiest way to know a scam email is to check the spellings and grammars, because most Internet scammers are high school dropouts. Big organisations have Perfectionists who go through their works before taking them public. Perfectionists are of different types and works in different areas. Haven't you wondered why some foreign products looks perfect?
So, when next you see a product that looks excellent, please know that it has gone through the table of a Perfectionist.

•  Manager 

When I hear people say that women are naturally managers, I laugh because not every woman has this talent. Some people are talented managers while some are talented wasters. People who are talented managers can use what Is available to sustain for a period of time. When others are complaining that what they have won't be enough, managers don't. Few managers are maximizers but not all. Companies, especially startups with limited funds are always in search for employees with this talent or skill (if you learnt it). Even most men and women desire this talent in their spouses.
Managers naturally knows how to manage their resources, time, team etc. A manager is not a waster. Management isn't just about finance, but also people. Most people with this talent are always seen as stingy, but they are not. A man who's a waster needs a manager as a wife otherwise, he may end up working for thirty-five years with nothing to show for his labours. With this talent, you can become a lender to people who earn more than you.

• Strategist 

Has anyone ever approached you for a way to get out of a problem they found themselves? and you just find yourself helping them out without knowing how you came about the solutions? That's a sign that you are a natural Strategist. If well maximized, this talent can give you financial freedom, influence, connection and can ultimately make you a highly sought after Consultant. I used to have a friend back then in the University who was referred to as a go-to for relationship issues while another friend was the one you go to when you need a lie to tell your parents in order to collect money from them. These aforementioned people were Strategists and were always needed. The truth is, not every knowledge was learnt, some came naturally.

• Critics

Critics and perfectionist are somehow interrelated but, a critic criticisms without having a concrete solution to the problem. People with this talent naturally criticizes even if they don't want to. It is a natural something. Every product needs critics. Critics may not spot errors, they can even criticize a perfect plan. Sometimes, as humans, we are bound to see things from one particular angle, but what criticism does is to show us life from a different perspective. Some critics criticizes out of hatred but talented critics criticizes because they can't live without criticism.

Succeed You Must!

(c) Johnspeak Uwangue 

Motivational Speaker

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So many of us long to be part of something real. But we’ll need to risk discomfort and criticism and show the world our real selves first

Our True belonging.

I don’t know exactly what it is about the combination of those two words, but I do know that when I say it aloud, it just feels right. It feels like something that we all crave and need in our lives. We want to be a part of something, but we need it to be real -- not conditional or fake or constantly up for negotiation. We need true belonging, but what exactly is it?

“Belonging is the innate human desire to be part of something larger than us. Because this yearning is so primal, we often try to acquire it by fitting in and by seeking approval, which are not only hollow substitutes for belonging, but often barriers to it. Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.”

This definition has withstood the test of time as well as the emergence of new data, but it is incomplete. There’s much more to true belonging. Being ourselves means sometimes having to find the courage to stand alone, totally alone. It’s not something we achieve or accomplish with others; it’s something we carry in our heart. Once we belong thoroughly to ourselves and believe thoroughly in ourselves, true belonging is ours.

No matter how separated we are by what we think and believe, 

we are part of the same spiritual story.

Belonging to ourselves means being called to stand alone -- to brave the wilderness of uncertainty, vulnerability and criticism. And with the world feeling like a political and ideological combat zone, this is remarkably tough. We seem to have forgotten that even when we’re utterly alone, we’re connected to one another by something greater than group membership, politics and ideology -- we’re connected by love and the human spirit. No matter how separated we are by what we think and believe, we are part of the same spiritual story.

The special courage it takes to experience true belonging is not just about braving the wilderness, it’s about becoming the wilderness. It’s about breaking down the walls, abandoning our ideological bunkers and living from our wild heart rather than our weary hurt. We’re going to need to intentionally be with people who are different from us. We’re going to have to sign up, join and take a seat at the table. We’re going to have to learn how to listen, have hard conversations, look for joy, share pain and be more curious than defensive, all while seeking moments of togetherness.

True belonging is not passive. It’s not the belonging that comes with just joining a group. It’s not fitting in or pretending or selling out because it’s safer. It’s a practice that requires us to be vulnerable, get uncomfortable and learn how to be present with people -- without sacrificing who we are. We want true belonging, but it takes tremendous courage to knowingly walk into hard moments.

True belonging is not something you negotiate externally, it’s what you carry in your heart. It’s finding the sacredness in being a part of something.

You don’t wander into the wilderness unprepared. Standing alone in a hypercritical environment or standing together in the midst of difference requires one tool above all others: trust. To brave the wilderness and become the wilderness, we must learn how to trust ourselves and trust others.

As I often say, I’m an experienced mapmaker, but I can be as much of a lost and stumbling traveler as anyone else. We all must find our own way through. This means that, while we may share the same research map, your path will be different from mine. Joseph Campbell wrote, “If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it’s not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That’s why it’s your path.”

We’ll need to learn how to navigate the tension of many paradoxes along the way, including the importance of being with and being alone. In many ways, the etymology of the word “paradox” cuts right to the heart of what it means to break out of our ideological bunkers, stand on our own and brave the wilderness. In its Greek origins, paradox is the joining of two words, para (contrary to) and dokein (opinion). The Latin paradoxum means “seemingly absurd but really true.”

True belonging is not something you negotiate externally, it’s what you carry in your heart. It’s finding the sacredness in being a part of something. When we reach this place, even momentarily, we belong everywhere and nowhere. That seems absurd, but it’s true. Carl Jung argued that a paradox is one of our most valued spiritual possessions and a great witness to the truth. It makes sense to me that we’re called to combat this spiritual crisis of disconnection with one of our most valued spiritual possessions. Bearing witness to the truth is rarely easy, especially when we’re alone in the wilderness.

But as Maya Angelou tells us, “The price is high. The reward is great.”

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Researchers recently reported that they were able to edit human embryos to fix a dangerous mutation

The technology is inching closer to reality, so we need to take a stand, says biochemists

If CRISPR can help parents conceive a disease-free child when no other options exist and it can do so safely, ought we to use it? It’s a question I’ve asked myself again and again -- and one that is particularly timely due to the Nature study published this month that described how scientists at Oregon Health and Science University, working with collaborators in California, China and South Korea, were able to correct human embryos of a common and harmful genetic mutation.

Unsurprisingly, Americans are having a hard time agreeing on an answer: a 2016 Pew Research poll found that 50 percent of adults in the US oppose the idea of reducing the risk of disease using germline editing, compared to 48 percent in favor. (When it comes to making nonessential enhancements to a baby’s genome, we seem to be considerably more unified; only 15 percent of the poll’s respondents were in favor.)

Religion is one obvious moral compass that people use to confront difficult questions like this, though perspectives can vary widely. When it comes to experimentation with human embryos, some Christian communities are opposed because they regard the embryo as a person from conception, whereas Jewish and Muslim traditions tend to be more accepting because they do not consider embryos created in vitro to be people. And while some religions see any interventions in the germline as a usurpation of God’s role in humanity, others welcome human involvement in nature as long as the goals pursued are inherently good.

Humans have been reproducing for millennia aided only by the DNA mutations that arise naturally, and for us to begin directing that process ​seems almost perverse.

Yet another moral guidepost is purely internal: the visceral, knee-jerk reaction to the idea of using CRISPR to permanently edit a future child’s genes. For many people, the very idea feels unnatural and wrong, and I was one of those people when I first started thinking about the issue. Humans have been reproducing for millennia aided only by the DNA mutations that arise naturally, and for us to begin directing the process ​-- ​similar to the way that plant biologists might genetically modify corn ​-- ​seems almost perverse at first glance. As National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins put it, “Evolution has been working toward optimizing the human genome for 3.85 billion years. Do we really think that some small group of human genome tinkerers could do better without all sorts of unintended consequences?”

While I share the general feeling of unease at the idea of humans taking control of their evolution, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that nature has fine-tuned our genetic composition. Obviously, evolution didn’t optimize the human genome for the present era, when modern foods, computers and high-speed transportation have completely transformed the way we live. And if we look over our shoulders at the course of evolution that has led to this moment, we’ll see it’s littered with organisms that didn’t benefit from the mutational chaos that underpins evolution. Nature is less an engineer than a tinkerer -- and a fairly sloppy one at that. Its carelessness can seem like outright cruelty for those people who have inherited genetic mutations that turned out to be suboptimal.

Similarly, the argument that germline editing is unnatural doesn’t carry much weight with me anymore. When it comes to human affairs and especially the world of medicine, the line between natural and unnatural blurs to the point of disappearing. We wouldn’t call a coral reef unnatural, but we might use the term for a megalopolis like Tokyo. Is this because one is crafted by humans and the other isn’t? In my mind, the distinction between natural and unnatural is a false dichotomy, and if it prevents us from alleviating human suffering, it’s also a dangerous one.

One woman told me: “If I could use germline editing to remove this mutation from the human population so that no one else suffers as my sister did, I would do it in a heartbeat!”

I’ve had numerous opportunities to meet with people who have experienced genetic disease themselves or in their families, and their stories are deeply moving. One woman pulled me aside at a conference to share her personal story after a session in which I had discussed CRISPR technology. Her sister had suffered from a rare but devastating genetic disease that affected her physical and mental health and caused tremendous hardship for the entire family. “If I could use germline editing to remove this mutation from the human population so that no one else suffers as my sister did, I would do it in a heartbeat!” she said, tears welling up in her eyes.

On another occasion, a man came to visit me and explained that his father and grandfather had died of Huntington’s disease and that three of his sisters had tested positive for the trait. He wanted to do anything he could to advance research toward a cure or, better yet, prevention of this terrible disease. I did not have the heart to ask him if he carried the mutated gene. If he did, he could expect to be robbed of his powers of movement and speech before much longer and to meet an early death ​-- ​a terrible sentence for anyone to see placed on their loved ones, let alone be subjected to themselves. Stories like these underscore the terrible human costs of genetic diseases. If we have tools that can one day help doctors safely and effectively correct mutations, whether prior to or just after conception, it seems to me that we’d be justified in using them.

It’s not a stretch to think that wealthy families would benefit from germline editing more than others, at least in the beginning.

Setting aside the inherent rightness or wrongness of editing the germline, another ethical issue continues to nag at me: how would CRISPR affect society? Just as it’s hard to know where we’d draw the line when it comes to editing embryos, it’s difficult to see how we’d do it equitably ​-- ​that is, in a way that improves human health across the board, not just in certain groups. It’s not a stretch to think that wealthy families would benefit from germline editing more than others, at least in the beginning. Recent gene therapies have hit the market with a price tag of around a million dollars, and it’s likely the first gene-editing therapies will be no different.

Of course, new technologies shouldn’t be rejected simply because they’re expensive. You need look no further than personal computers, cell phones, and direct-to-consumer DNA sequencing to see how costs of new technologies generally diminish over time as improvements are made, leading to a resulting increase in access. Furthermore, there’s also the chance that germline editing, like other medical treatments, could one day be subsidized by health insurance.

This might certainly seem like only a remote possibility in the US, since existing reproductive procedures such as IVF and PGD, which routinely cost tens of thousands of dollars, are seldom covered by insurance. But in France, Israel, Sweden and other countries whose national health plans cover assisted reproduction, it’s possible that simple economics will incentivize governments to make gene editing available to patients who need it. After all, providing lifelong treatment to a single person with a genetic disease could be much more expensive than intervention in the embryo using gene editing.

But even in countries with comprehensive health-care systems where people from all classes could benefit from germline editing, there’s a risk that it might give rise to genetic inequalities, creating a new “gene gap” that would only widen over time. Since the wealthy would be able to afford the procedure more often and since any beneficial genetic modifications made to an embryo would be transmitted to that person’s offspring, linkages between class and genetics would ineluctably grow from one generation to the next, no matter how small the disparity in access might be.

Consider the effect this could have on the socioeconomic fabric of society -- if you think our world is unequal now, just imagine it stratified along socioeconomic and genetic lines. Envision a future where people with more money live healthier and longer lives, thanks to their privileged sets of genes. It’s the stuff of science fiction, but if germline editing becomes routine, this fiction could become reality.

Using gene editing to “fix” things like deafness or obesity could create a less inclusive society, one that pressures everyone to be the same.  ​

Germline editing may also create a different kind of injustice. As disability-rights advocates have pointed out, using gene editing to “fix” things like deafness or obesity could create a less inclusive society, one that pressures everyone to be the same ​— ​and perhaps even encourages more discrimination against differently abled people ​-- ​instead of celebrating our natural differences. After all, the human genome is not mere software with bugs that we should categorically eliminate. Part of what makes our species unique and our society so strong is its diversity. While some disease-causing gene mutations produce defective or abnormal proteins on a biochemical level, the individuals who live with the disease are certainly not defective or abnormal people, and they might live happy lives and not feel any need for gene repair.

This fear ​-- ​that gene editing will exacerbate existing prejudices against people who fall outside a narrow range of genetic norms ​-- ​underlies the association that numerous writers have made between germ­line editing and eugenics. That concept is best known today for its popularity in Nazi Germany, where a quest to perfect the human race reached its terrible zenith through the forced sterilization of hundreds of thousands of people and the widespread extermination of millions of Jews, homosexuals, the mentally ill and others deemed unworthy of life.

Eugenics as practiced by the Nazis was utterly reprehensible, but I believe the odds are minuscule we’ll see anything similar happen with gene editing. Governments are simply not going to begin forcing parents to edit their children’s genes. (In fact, the procedure is still illegal in many places.) Unless we’re talking about coercive regimes controlling their citizens’ procreative liberty, germline editing would remain a private decision for individual parents to make for their own children, not a decision for bureaucrats to make for the population at large.

My views on the ethics of germline editing continue to evolve, ​but as they do, I find myself returning time and again to the issue of choice. Above all else, we must respect people’s freedom to choose their own genetic destiny and strive for healthier, happier lives. If people are given this freedom, they will do with it what they personally think is right, ​whatever that may be. As Charles Sabine, a victim of Huntington’s disease, put it, “Anyone who has to actually face the reality of one of these diseases is not going to have a remote compunction about thinking that there is any moral issue at all.” Who are we to tell him otherwise?

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Our images and Memory

People worldwide upload more than one billlion images a day, preserving their memories to enjoy them in the future

When it comes to obsessional tech habits, photo-taking probably isn’t the worst for relationships. If you’re not gazing into someone’s eyes, at least you’re pointing an iPhone at them. But how does that persistent need to capture the moment -- which so many of us feel -- change how we actually experience the moment, both in the present and when we try to recall it down the line? The answer is quite illuminating.

One of the major reasons we take photos in the first place is to remember a moment long after it has passed: the birth of a baby, a reunion, a pristine lake. In 2015, I conducted a Bored and Brilliant Project -- in which I challenged people to detach from their devices in order to jump-start their creativity -- with more than 20,000 listeners of Note to Self (the podcast about technology that I host). When I surveyed the participants, many said they used photos as a “memory aid,” taking pictures of things like parking spots or the label of the hot sauce at a restaurant to buy later. However, every time we snap a quick pic of something, we could in fact be harming our memory of it.


In one study, students were told to take photos of objects at a museum -- and they remembered fewer of the overall objects they had photographed.

Linda Henkel, a professor of psychology at Fairfield University in Connecticut, studied how taking photos impacts experience and memory by crafting an experiment using a group of undergraduates on a guided tour of the university’s Bellarmine Museum of Art. The students were asked to take photos of objects that they looked at on the tour and to simply observe others.

The next day, she brought the students into her research lab to test their memory of all the objects they had seen on the tour. Whenever they remembered a piece of work, she asked follow-up questions about specific visual details. The results were clear: overall, people remembered fewer of the objects they had photographed. They also couldn’t recall as many specific visual details of the photographed art, compared to the art they had merely observed.

“When you take a photo of something, you’re counting on the camera to remember for you,” Henkel said. “You’re basically saying, ‘Okay, I don’t need to think about this any further. The camera’s captured the experience.’ You don’t engage in any of the elaborative or emotional kinds of processing that really would help you remember those experiences, because you’ve outsourced it to your camera.”

In other words, if your camera captures the moment, then your brain doesn’t. Henkel came up with a frightening term for this phenomenon: the “photo-taking-impairment effect.” Okay, okay. Of course you’d remember things better if you were completely in the present, hyperaware of every detail, like some supreme Zen master. But isn’t that what photos are for? To refresh our fallible memories?

Who hasn’t dumped photos from a trip into Dropbox and promised to make an album -- only to never look at them again?

Henkel doesn’t disagree that the purpose of outsourcing our memory to devices can free up our brains to do other cognitive processing. The problem is, she says, “We’re constantly going from one thing to the next to the next.” So instead of outsourcing so we can focus our attention on more important tasks, “we have this constant stream of what’s next, what’s next, what’s next and never fully embrace any of the experiences we’re having.”

Nonetheless, Henkel and her student Katelyn Parisi ran another study to see what happens to memory when people have photos to remind them of a moment or object. Although, in the real world, Henkel rightly observes, “We’re so busy capturing photos that afterwards we don’t actually look at them.” Who hasn’t dumped a bunch of photos of a graduation or trip into Dropbox and promised to make an album only to never look at them again?

This time when people took a tour of the museum, they were asked to take two kinds of photos: those of the objects in the exhibit alone and those with them standing next to the objects. Afterward, Henkel had the subjects look at all the photos and interviewed them on their memories of what they saw. “It turns out that it actually changes your perspective on the experience, whether you’re in a photo of it or not,” Henkel said. If you are in the image, you become more removed from the original moment -- it is as if you are an observer watching yourself doing something outside yourself. Whereas if you are not in the image, you return to the first person, reliving the experience through your own eyes, and you remember more.


Professor Linda Henkel is sure: cameras, as amazing as they are, can’t compare to what the brain is capable of with input from the eyes and the ears.

How taking photos affects our understanding of ourselves and of the things we are photographing is still a big question mark. But as a result of her experiments, there is one thing Henkel is sure of. “Cameras, as amazing as they are, can’t compare to what the brain is capable of with input from the eyes and the ears,” she said. “Cameras are a lesser version of the human information-processing system.”

Even if you can’t bear to face a computer hard drive that’s nightmarishly filled with photos, there was one way in which taking pictures did not erode people’s memories in Henkel’s experiments. In the art museum study, “when participants zoomed in to photograph a specific part of the object, their subsequent recognition and detail memory were not impaired, and, in fact, memory for features that were not zoomed in on was just as strong as memory for features that were zoomed in on,” the professor wrote. “This suggests that the additional attention and cognitive processes engaged by this focused activity can eliminate the photo-taking-impairment effect.”

Why not challenge yourself to a photo-free day? For 24 hours, see the world through your eyes, not your screen. Take absolutely no pictures -- not of your lunch, your children, your cubicle mate, or that beautiful sunset. No photo messages. No cat pics. Instagrammers, it’s gonna get rocky. Snapchatsters? Hang in there. Everyone is going to be okay. I promise.

Those of you who take one picture a month -- like my mother -- will find this challenge a breeze. But before you get too smug, know that this might be harder than you think. Many people reported they took pictures way more, and way more mindlessly, than they had previously imagined. But you will experience rewards for your sacrifice. “Sure, the world does want to see my adorable grandchildren and gorgeous children,” Beth in Indiana wrote us. “However, it’s been a liberating twenty-four hours!”

If a participant in my Bored and Brilliant photo-free challenge were given a prize for the day, it might have to be Vanessa Jean Herald, whose green Subaru skidded off the highway and into a snowy ditch during her one-hour commute between the southern Wisconsin farm where she lives and her job in Madison. Although she had to wait more than two hours in frigid temperatures for a tow truck to arrive, Herald did not lose her resolve!

“I placed my necessary emergency calls, sent some texts to let folks know I was okay, and then just sat,” she wrote. “Sure, my gut reaction was to snap a picture of the car sitting in the ditch and covered with thrown snow for Instagram. Or, to snap a photo of the cool way the red and blue lights of the sheriff’s car blinked in my rearview mirror and lit up the roadway as the day turned to night through my two-hour mandatory break from life. But thanks to today’s challenge, instead I chilled out, took it all in, and then pulled out my writing notebook to jot down a story about how the best-laid plans sometimes end you up in a ditch on the side of the road.” [Place imaginary photo of green Subaru in a snowy ditch on the side of the road here.]

Don’t worry if your photo-free inspiration doesn’t spill out in a well-formed story like Herald’s. And it’s okay to be uncomfortable, hostile or bored without photos to fill your day. Just use your brain instead of your phone. No one is going to “heart” or “like” whatever goes on up there, except for you.

And if you want a deeper detox from digital images, avoid all photo proliferation for the day -- meaning you can check out images on social media, but don’t “like” or retweet them. Just take a good look, and maybe a (mental) picture.



more on images. Click here.

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The pen and what it does......

The pen draws ink from the reservoir through a feed to the nib and deposits it on paper via a combination of gravity and capillary action. A pen really is a great tool. It is also used for various things, it is used in analyzing, summarizing, calculating, solving, writing, signing and it can also be used for various official purpose. A pen is also used by different people in different occupations.


The artist used a pen in drawing, the scientist uses the pen in solving arithmetic problems. The pen has just three layers yet it can and takes place in all life processes. The pen produces different images depending on the type of person using it. Here are some of the images the ink pen produces.
Though the ink pen can’t work itself, it requires the user and the paper. The ink pen produces the ink used and it gives the information a smooth or a rough edge. The image drawn by an ink pen depends on the User.


· Paper used
· The platform on which it is used
· The ink
· The Nibble of the pen


Ink pens float effortlessly over the paper when everything is working as it should. That is one of the reasons why people who prefer fountain pens really like them. But they can be difficult when something is not as it should be. They can be scratchy. Ink flows poorly or not at all. And, they may put out too much ink, even in the form of a sudden blob of ink that runs over a document and onto clothing. These problems are not inherent to all fountain pens, but occur in pens needing a little tender care to keep them in sound working condition.

The pen might draw the image but the image is produced mainly by these factors, an image produced by a pen is always a message. The message is always passed directly or indirectly. The images produced by a pen in the hand of its right user are always distinct, neat, smooth and clear. Though the pen is said to be going extinct because of the invention on new age systems and computers, but however, the pen cannot be neglected, not even stopped, this is because of the disadvantages affecting technologies.


click here to get more images of Gorgeous pens.

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