Envelope / Develope

  When pictures are more than a frozen moment in time and you can construct your story from just it You build the story from one frame, from many small details captured in the picture. It is rare, because we, as humans, probably more in these days than before, crave for simplicity, for design, for simple forms/shapes/compositions. Maybe that is the reason that we buy industrial canvases that are just simple decorative objects. The pictures I will refer to are not decorative, they convey a story that is your to build it if you have the sensibility to be moved by the elements present there. In general, as humans, we are moved by humans captured in pictures rather than landscapes or still compositions or abstract representations.   I will start with a picture of Cristina Mittermeier , “Last hunters of the North". It shows an Inuit hunter looking at the sky with a resigned face. It tells you the eternal problem of his people , for generations, to survive in the North lands...

Photo by MChe Lee on Unsplash   I was interested by the subject because healthy cooking and meal preparation is a subject important for me, day-in day-out. I read even a few studies and browsed "Scientific American" on the subject.  I had arguments with people around me on the subject. I stumbled on an article which is more than revealing, it also marks the unknown of the facts - It is safe to microwave food? . The summary: It is safe to microwave food, just be aware the containers to not be plastic.

  Photo by Mr Cup / Fabien Barral on Unsplash   I don't remember how I stumbled upon Azopan website but I do know being lost in memories of my childhood and of photographs taken on B&W films and only in late 80s on color films. It is a very interesting project and although I did not browsed the options of posting there, it seems to me that local history and family photos are amalgamated to transport you in pieces of life of a different time and place - Romanian mountains, seaside, Danube river, 1989 events, etc... The subjects and photos have the "family" feeling and rarely you  see an artistic photo. Most of them are about public events, families captured in candor moments, kids staring to the camera in a "I-know-you-take-a-picture" smile and many staged pictures. The surprise factor for me was the humanity and the raw emotions captured in people's look, events you forgot you participated just because their significance escaped you, the freedom to be ...

  Photography by Gabi, August 2020, Niagara on the lake, Ontario   If you are interested in photography probably you have been browsing some of the storing/managing/commercializing photo platforms - 500pix, Unsplash, Photo.net, Dpreview, etc.. From time to time, they ask you if you want to send photos encompassing an idea or a concept, like - B&W in the city, Smiles, Dancing, Blazing light, Winter dreams, etc... The concept is not new and even for film-makers they have those spread over time periods when an idea is coming to fruition based on an urge to express something which is dear and close to you. From an idea, to concept, to gathering chapters for the movie, it is a long time and often it might be buried along the way. With photography is like a bookmark in a book, you come back and refresh it or have a new revelation and express it. I was thinking in the same vein when perusing my own photos. I really enjoy photos combining images, reflections and shadows. Very heav...

  Photo by Jessica Rockowitz on Unsplash Coming from a communist country I was always circumspect of people who were smiling all the time.  Life is hard and how can you be so radiant, how come events and people and years of living have been giving you that wide smile you brandish like in advertisements? Smiling was a proclamation of happiness in a regime known for oppressing and regimenting people in an universal mold. Laughing was questionable and at a certain point viewed as an act of opposition, underground fight. Then you read on many studies about the benefice of just "faking-till-you-making" - physiology winning over your mind and creating an overall well-being state. I was told by my mother that I was a curious kid, whenever it happened to be among people, looking intensely and scanning their gestures, talks and faces. I was probably absorbing life in its manifestation, interested to see how we interact, how we react, looking for fragments of life in people's fac...

Photo by davide ragusa on Unsplash The social distancing forced families to stay together and live confined for many hours in a row. Habits exposed at work were transferred in  the family setting and did not fit or led to conflict. The simple way of spending time revealed that suddenly when the time is lapsing slower than usually, people don't know how to stare or leave in contemplation. For unknown reasons: 1. what became obvious to everyone during the corona virus: people have time to think and question and fall on the same old theories - the gods are cheating on us, there is a large conspiracy of big pharma, the government is sold to big corporations, etc.. 2. when there is no skin in the game, there is no incentive to innovate - education, health, management of limited resources, cooperating among nations at safeguarding resources  3. there is no planning for all elected officials and there is no pay-back for the ones who really played the system - I ...

Photo by Trust "Tru" Katsande on Unsplash I was reading about the developing efforts for a vaccine reflected through the stock market. It happened to have a few shares of the VIR Biotechnology ( VIR ) company when the chase of finding a vaccine started. It was an incredible ride, even for a guy accustomed with the up-and-downs of the shares in a company and the political game played when companies are bought or acquired. Just for illustration, please see the chart of this stock for a three month period. There is excitement, at the beginning  of March about the possibility of developing a vaccine for Corona virus, and the stock surpasses 70$/share when before is was lingering under the 17$/share threshold. There are many companies in the race - Moderna ( MRNA ), Gilead ( GILD ), Inovio Pharmaceuticals ( INO ) and probably a few of them will find a virus. What I don't understand is the effort spent in parallel of fighting the same cause. It is a lot of ...

Photo by Kyle Head on Unsplash You probably heard that swimming in rough waters in life will reveal your own character and of all the people with you, caught in that moment. It is always unexpected and, exactly as in movies, it begins with a peaceful background and a monotone sound. Everything is unfolding slowly and without any clues that deep gaps will be revealed in any way. It is like a crack in someone's emotional fabric which becomes a wrecking ball for the characters caught in the event, for a short time span, sufficient to project them on a different life orbit, for good. Some people are calling those events "interventions", others fear them as "dark spots" where secrets are emerging as an iceberg unbalanced by some life event. The repercussions are deep and memorable and entail subsequent turmoils, like a burning lava which will flow down for many days to find a peaceful landscape to cool off. The characters are the same like in normal life ...

Photo by CDC on Unsplash   Detect immunity One of the numbers broadcasted every day is the number of COVID-19 patients who recovered. Instead of being fixed on detecting people with corona virus, we should be fixed on detecting the ones who had a mild version of corona virus or even were asymptomatic. Once we know they can freely move, socially mark them in a certain way (with a special certificate).  They could be the soldiers of opening closed businesses or helping important economic sectors. They are on the other side of the fear, all the COVID-19 restrictions should not apply to them. It is not known for how long is the immunity lasting, but at least, these people should come back and revive the industries and get the jobs and make the economy re-start. It is a small number, but they can propel some ideas for the ones in the isolation (see below). That should be the second most important decision of our governments - detect immunity, instead of just...

Photo by Krists Luhaers on Unsplash I just discovered Omeleto , a website gathering under one umbrella short movies from Sundance movie festival, independent producers or aspiring directors. The subjects are diverse, the genres are wide enough to catch your interest, but for me the reality blended with witty plots won me over. I really liked some of the movies - Reception, I got this , Custom love , Father figurine , At ease , Red curtains . If you like normal movies (without the Hollywood glitter, effects and having lots of human interaction) with interesting turns, funny plots, or even documentaries give it a try! P.S Why the long tail? Is the concept discussed in Chris Anderson's book - The Long Tail, where the content provider of obscure products can get enough revenue from a slew of distributors which will allow them to grown and be successful, even if they don't have a hit movie.

Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash It probably happened to you, when getting in a place where you have this uncomfortable feeling you don't belong to, all things are not common to your life and people have the easiness which seemed cultivated to you. Joining a group or conversation and, poof (as my daughter says) someone is bludgeoning you with a question which splits the audience in two: - Have you read ... (and put here the title of a book in the top of the lists from a prestigious newspaper)? The polite answer would be to tell the truth, listen to a glorious summary of the book, or to bend the truth and play noob. Many times, although, when I have the feeling that people are just flashing their "cultivated" image, I want to pull them in a "social bloody" embarrassment by luring them in the waters they might not comfortable with. My strategy is to pick on the display of the ideas in the book and then pull together references from  other books and ...

Photo by Braden Jarvis on Unsplash If you read the biography of Freeman Patterson you will be puzzled his first call of what to do with his life was not photography. The man has a Master in Divinity degree and a bachelor in philosophy. He worked as a photographer for some newspapers as a temporary job and then decided to pursue photography full time. It is an interesting life trajectory to veer from seriously thinking in God to dream in banal images! You will find many photographers who will show an interesting image but will not have the inner structure to explain the thought process or whether it represents more than a fantasy. The scaffolding process on reaching a certain image, which reflects an emotion, a thought or just life, is appealing when you read Patterson's books about photography. If you juxtapose the education with his images, some of them have an eerie feeling, something that gives you pause and wonder what is a photo for human psyche. Yes, he is fro...

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash I don't know what is worse: the whole pandemic provoked by the corona virus or the consequence of shutting down businesses due to the risk of contaminating their customers? There are industries where people are clustered together, where you have to be close to your client: airlines hospitality (Disney, cruises) entertaining industry restaurants, fast food establishments, wineries, breweries anything related to well being and not health care As I outlined in a different post, year 2020 is essential for US presidential elections. Mr. Trump understands the whole economic factor is so important to get elected a second term. With the forced close down of the major economic sectors (car manufacturing, industrial manufacturing, airlines, entertaining), the crisis in the health sector being overwhelmed by the peak of people admitted in ICU, banks hit by a slowed down economy, there is a perfect storm to bring his chances very down. There...

"That is the reason you should read a book, from time to time. Whenever you are left with nothing, to have something to think about the book in order to not feel alone" This is the conclusion from a post in " From the people who are boasting about their studies but are not reading any books " (Romanian only). Photo by David Iskander on Unsplash The quote stroke a chord with me because resonated with an old idea "there are many educated people but only some are cultivated". Or about people who are in a highly visible social roles but are embarrassing themselves when talking or expressing an idea. You know who you are, social clowns! Their life is more than enough and they preach from their position, lacking the understanding that many more others have been in their shoes and somehow conversed in a more polished or elegant way. Another title of this post could be "you lost a parallel/inner life when you haven't read books". I am...

Photo by Austin Chan on Unsplash   The Covid-19 virus is here to stay. The isolation will only buy time, the WFH will not get back the industries, the jobs and the permanent fear that another virus can hide somewhere. The only major reverse back to normalcy would be to find a treatment/vaccine which could be easily accessible. In order to get validation for it the only action which will convince population and recover the whole lock-up is to put off the spread in Italy. What is it done to get to that ideal scenario? Maybe we should have a website updating this pursuit and calling for volunteers (big pharma, I am quite sure there are many volunteers waiting in the wings !).

" De aia nu strică să mai citești, din când în când, o carte. Măcar atunci când rămâi fără nimic, să ai la ce te gândi, ca să nu te simți singur." Este un citat din " Despre cei care bravează cu studiile dar nu citesc ". Photo by David Iskander on Unsplash M-a frapat textul pentru ca am avut acceasi impresie despre o multime de oameni care sunt "educati" dar nu sunt "cultivati". Sau despre oamenii care ajung intr-o pozitie vizibila social dar care sunt penibili sa exprime sau sa transmita o idee. Un alt titlu pentru post ar putea fi - "ai pierdut o viata interioara/paralela cind nu ai citit carti". Nu cred ca am vreun motiv sa justific de ce citesc carti, dar se pare ca exista o lipsa de intelegere de ce cartile sunt total diferite de ce citesti pe internet. Si spun asta dupa ce am incercat sa inteleg de ce o multime din oamenii din jurul meu imi spune ca nu are timp sa citeasca. Eu sunt total socat cind aud asta. Nu...

Photo by Rob Schreckhise on Unsplash In times like this I wonder if the people with their hand on the power lever have second thoughts - about handling the major problems instead of wasting our money and their life time in petty quarrels or egocentric show offs. They can be in a hospital fighting for their life or looking at someone close to them separated by a thick glass. If you are a doctor, sick on a hospital bed, will you relinquish a ventilator for a younger bum? Is any doctor going to apply the same rule, the younger have priority over a ventilator? Or, if you are a famous basketball player, are you going to make that gesture? Yes, I know that at this moment nobody wants to think about it, but how about doing more that just staying put within your four walls? Is this crisis going to move a few marbles and change your view on life and what you will do from now on? You probably may understand there are more barriers the wealthy and the powerful are putting betwe...

Photo by HH E on Unsplash Today, 16th of March 2020, I saw again a stock market in free fall - almost 12% down. Friday, 13th of March, the whole market was up because of the fiscal stimulus released by US government. The funny thing is that I just finished a discussion with a friend who is telling me she is waiting for the signal to get back in the market. I almost laughed, because there is no signal, the market is on uncharted territory and inevitably that is not a strategy for investments, maybe for daily traders, but I would not do that in the current market. Yes, we are in the COVID-19 craziness, self isolated and looking to Italy with increased anxiety. It is not their fault (Italians, Koreans), dear readers. It is the laissez-faire of an entire political class, an entire generation in power which cannot comprehend simple mathematical models and technical prognosis about the possible quick exits for mankind. We can blame the bat-eaters in China, or the travelers ...

Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash I reached this conclusion, influenced by one of my dates. She was an attractive grand-mother I met through some friends and in one of our dates she mentioned that, through life, she always wanted to celebrate small events in her life: kids managing to ride a bike first place in a school competition for kids learning something new and applying it (first time) successfully in life  getting the first client in a business moving to a new place working hard and failing successfully and learning the hard way something I was not that type of person, but having a daughter and "suffering" with her through failures and small victories, I understood in the monotone rhythm of life there are not many "grand" celebrations and we should punctuate our existence, enjoying small victories. Sometimes, life is not giving you many big victories and you have to have the next prize on the horizon to keep you going. And here I am, ...