TheFirstSixMonths: Post travel pictures

Every time I'm in a conference, I see more people carrying their iPads lifting them up for photos. While it might look strange when people do it to beautiful landscapes, it somehow fits the conference room slides. These then are tweeted immediately, and analysed in quick succession. In fact Instagram apart, the biggest reason people use mobile devices to click photos is the inherent shareability. I wonder why camera makers can't really create a good sharing/ software ecosystem on the camera itself. The Wi-Fi camera, the touch screen, the download software on the computer and edit, somehow just don't match up to the instant pleasure of Instagram (or others). Now, whether our lives become fuller because we're on these networks sharing incessantly is a divergent point.

And divergent-ly, I feel, constant sharing has brought out the voyeuristic urges in us. It doesn't necessarily mean something is missing from before. But we are able to check someone else's life out without having to call or meet which perhaps we're not even interested in. Makes it sound shallow, except that observing online images can also be inspiring. I know a thousand (and growing!) photography start-ups that came out of Facebook sharing to begin with. Over exposure can also be cured by mobile/ Internet free vacations. So well, all's not lost, yet.

Going back with or without sharing, I've always held a soft nook for the original Kodak paper-ed pictures. And at the back of my mind, the fact that one day I may print them- once I get to that project, makes me still take the Canon everywhere, and not rely singularly on the phone (I did that excessively with my Nokia N series I owned once for the mere convenience).

Convenience is still important, though I'm also increasingly finding favour with curating and savouring. Pictures that I choose to keep printed in hard-bound old fashioned books- for which by the way there are these fabulous online applications. These take pictures from anywhere- Dropbox, Facebook, Picassa, Your Computer, and put them the way you choose to in delicately designed books for keeps. Of course one does wish to get rid of preset templates and further design flexibility, but it's a start ! The best I still imagine is a black scrap book and typewriter fonts making it an art project. That life is.

The First Six Months: of finding a cup of tea

Often times, I obsess about tea. The salty pink after a long lunch, the spicy one without milk for the cold morning, the Lipton for after office. The one reserved for long afternoons with friends who plan meetings on Skype now and start wonderful mornings, like an odd Sunday of today. One right after getting off the train at a nondescript station before a bumpy monsoon road auto ride. Atop a protected corner in the middle of fashionable city markets overseeing gardens. With muffins in lonely wintery English towns. Several reserved for the Chinese lot, whose sole objective seems endless herbal cups of water boiling post Sushi rolling. Tea makes new friends. Ich denke.

Tea also makes me wonder if starting a new year dipping in muslin-esque not paper bags makes it worth more. Because its aloneliness doesn't make it lonely anymore, being noticed and consumed for a picture folder-ed aside. What happens to old pictures when you stop looking at them? Of late, I obsessively keep them. Like tea memories. I am not sure why.