Inspirational

Inspiring Photographers

Steve McCurry

“The photograph is an undeniably powerful medium. Free from the constraints of language, and harnessing the unique qualities of a single moment frozen in time.”

I am confident to say that Steve is my favourite photographer overall. He loves using colour and natural lighting. And his travel photographs are breath taking. You will know him mostly for the “Afghan Girl” in National Geographic magazine.

Jay Maisel

“If you can capture the element of surprise, you’re way ahead of the game.”

Jay is arguably one of the best street photographers on the planet. I really like how disciplined he is in the “one body and one lens” mantra. Basically, he just wanders the streets of New York with a Nikon D3 and a 28-300mm. Easy, simple with stunning results.

Sebastiao Salgado

“What I want is the world to remember the problems and the people I photograph. What I want is to create a discussion about what is happening around the world and to provoke some debate with these pictures. Nothing more than this.”

Sebastiao is actually one of my new favourite photographers. Even though he is well known and a Magnum photographer, I just recently discovered his beautiful pieces at the Royal Ontario Museum downtown Toronto. He makes fantastic use of black and white imagery and has been to all 7 continents too.

Doug Menuez


Mr. Menuez is famous for being Steve Jobs’ photo photodocumenter during the few years of NeXT’s existence.

Mattias Klum

“Art is a tool that isn’t used enough to effect change.”

One of my more contemporary wild life inspirations, Mattias is a highly regarded National Geographic photographers. He is also one of the most enthusiastic presenters and conservationists.

Technology

Data Only Please

I don’t want to be forced to pay for a cellular and data plan from my carrier. I just want a data plan. When Apple introduced FaceTime in 2011 and Google unveiled Hangouts and Voice, the notion of VoIP (voice over I.P address) became popularized. In essence, you could talk to someone face-to-face without using minutes from a traditional cellular plan. Instead, you would just require a data plan. Today, we have technologies such as 4G, LTE and 3G which can accommodate high performance communication.

Apple killed the SMS text messaging business with iMessages. This works with just data and wifi. It is very similar Blackberry’s BBM. And is also very encrypted and secure.

At Apple’s WWDC event, they unleashed iOS 7. While, they showed off many new features such as control center, parallax, improved multi-tasking and a new user-interface, they curiously left out one. One that I think is a another game changer. FaceTime Audio.

It’s exactly what you think it is. Starting September 10, 2013 (or when iOS 7 is actually released to the general public), you will be able to place a voice-call to anyone with an iOS or OSX device over wifi. It’s only wifi to start (just like FaceTime was initially) as the carriers are probably worried that it too will eat away at their profits.

Apple has around $200 Billion in cash reserve. I really hope they are planning to use that to maybe buy up some carriers, satellites, cell towers. It would be awesome to see them ultimately form their own network that worked globally. Imagine a world where you can just pay something such $40 USD a month for 10GB of data. You’d get one phone number on your data-only SIM card and you could travel to any continent and still receive high quality internet connectivity. That would be just fantastic.

But this is a very optimistic omen as to what is to come in the near future.

Technology

Start Investing Young

Melissa Yeong wrote a really in-depth piece in the Financial Post

“I am investing to build a sustainable and growing stream of passive income with the goal of it covering our household expenses by the time I am 45 years old.  We won’t necessarily quit working at that point; it’s just for the goal of being financially independent of others and being free to pursue our passions.”

With the recession going on, students are in debt from the lack of jobs and high student tuition.

While I won’t go into what I invest in. I do invest. I want to make my money work for me. Yeong interviews a handful of young Canadians about their various strategies. You will see the wide-range of different possibilities these clever folks are active in. These include stocks, mutual funds, GICs, bonds and real estate.

A lot of the time, children are heavily influenced by their parents. Especially for financial matters. It is so very important for parents to teach their kids about this because schools just don’t do a good job at it. This is where we will begin to see the gap in wealth start to open up. Obviously, children whose parents have experience with investing will teach their offspring more than those who don’t.

Basically, just start young. Even, if it’s just a little. Invest in things that you are comfortable with. For example, if you are a tech-savvy nerd like me, do some research in the companies you know about.

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