Category Archives: Photography

On Talking With Our Hands

Quick: how many people seated in the picture below are NOT interacting online?

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Nope: the lady in yellow (Brenda of Vision Arts Communications) actually was on her blackberry but had just set it down for a second to attend to an itchy ear. Even three of the six and a half people standing up at the back of the room are ticking away on their midgi-keyboards, and they’re in transit.

My “aha” moment — born in hindsight by reviewing the photos* — from yesterday’s New Marketing Experience conference? Social media has expanded, not diminished, our ability and perhaps even our desire to talk with our hands.

Fingers on keyboards = digital communication.

Maybe that’s why we’ll still show up in person, real time, and spend a day listening, interacting, questioning and sharing a ham sandwich with complete strangers at a conference. In spite of the ubiquitous keyboard, we all still need to get out once in a while and talk with our hands the old-fashioned way.

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We don’t show up for the gum and water, but maybe we’re hoping someone will slow things down for us if they can actually see us sucking our finger and tilting our head at “what everyone already knows.”

I’m mostly (sorta) hip and I don’t know what five of those icons are about, and I’m only guessing the “W” stands for Wikipedia.

I just looked it up, and no matter how far I tilt my head and chew on my thumb, I still can’t tell.

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So while chewing on them doesn’t necessarily enlighten when you’re on your own, in a crowd, digits communicate.

Seriously, when mapped to that grin, Brian Solis‘ pointing finger says it all: “Look! Rick bought my book! You should buy one too! I’m so exhausted from jet-lag, I’m afraid I’m going to start drooling and singing “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Boys!”**

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Fingers are great for verbal short cuts. “What’s this?” asks the index finger. EJ’s answer about content management is a bit more complicated, but easily enough communicated with all ten digits in play.

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At live conferences, even “we’re SO hip we say ‘poop’ from the podium” social media conferences, finger extensions (known as “pens”) are still used to point to charts where the colors aren’t showing up properly on the LCD projector.

I like that. It keeps it real and let’s us know that behind the suave “playing in the big kids sandbox” veneer that sometimes gets painted online, people are still just mortals who struggle and flub their way through life. Tom Webster of Edison Research proved the point (sorry): when you have great content, one or two of life’s real time gotchas are easily overcome with poise and good humor.

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Tim Hayden of Blue Clover had no idea how much fun I was having with his accidental shadow puppets.

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I’m not just poking fun at other people here. I have my own hand language without which I simply cannot speak, even when I type. (Joanna of Blue Sky Factory was very patient as I explained everything I didn’t know.) In that case, instead of using my hands to talk, I just transfer the signals through my eyebrows.

And no, I will not be using the webcam feature on my Mac anytime soon.

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There are some forms of talking with your hands that can only happen in person. (Hands on demo by Mike McAllen of Grass Shack Events and Media in the gold jacket.)

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And watching Natanya of Powered hold her microphone and talk told me tons about her that I’d have missed even through 10,000 blog postings or more.

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Not surprisingly, one of the most successful virtual marketing guys in the room, Mike “Tony Soprano” Damphousse of Green Leads, kept one hand on the microphone and the other in his pocket the entire time he was on stage. Apparently, it IS possible to speak and not flap about like you’re trying to wave off a swarm of killer bees. But I’m trusting it’s not a skill set that’s necessary in order to find your way in the wild and woolly world of online social media.


* That’s what “storyscaping” is, BTW: taking the raw images of a moment or event and finding the story possibilities hiding in plain sight. Then through selective cropping, good writing, and sometimes a cartoon or two, we scoop up the good bits and arrange them in pleasant lines. People and events become retroactively more interesting, and often better looking, as a result. So, I guess that makes us historians. Huh… didn’t see that one coming.

**Brian Solis’ book is really interesting. You should buy one, if for nothing else than the brilliant insight on p. 112 about “Liking: Microacts of Appreciation Yield Macro Impacts.” I’ll give you two sentences here, and then you’ll have to buy it yourself to discover the potential for impact within social networks.

Liking is the epitome of the relationship-based culture powering the authenticity, ethics, and reciprocal interactions on the Social Web. It’s a powerful form of microrecognition, which serves as an approving, motivating, and uplifting nod from someone else.


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Surf Dancer

I love the rapid fire capability in our Nikon D90.

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For one thing, it sounds really cool–chuckshoock, chuckshoock, chuckshoock–and makes me feel like a real photographer, as opposed to just playing one on the beach.

But the bigger reason is that as storyscapers, we need all the visual nuances of a tale that are available to us. And there are certain “rapid shot” subjects that we’d miss if we didn’t have that option.

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For instance, check out the child on the right and the dad.

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They were no doubt engaged in deep and meaningful dialogue, but there wasn’t much of a physical nature going on there, other than maybe serving as a static cautionary tale about mismatched pant leg hem heights.

If it had just been those two, I could have easily used the click…wait… image review… wait… refocus, and… click of my Canon G10. It would still have been a cool shot, and I wouldn’t have missed anything.

(And I apologize in advance if you are now fixated on that single skinny ankle. You may have to go back to the top and start over by specifically focusing on the girls. Sorry.)

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However, the completely airborne little bean on the left?

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With prancers and poodles and princesses, if ya snooze, ya lose, baby.

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There are some moves that are just too precious to miss…

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… and moments of exultation that flash and are gone before you can blink.

Our dancer must have the metabolism of a super-caffeinated gerbil.

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Maybe we were indirectly involved in what had unfolded. That little Nikon “chuckshoock” in the wind is sometimes all it takes to alert a budding star that someone’s watching.

See that glance over her shoulder?  It was, in fact, a question:

“Didja catch all that?”

I caught it, Sweetie.


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Cinderella’s Wedding Train

To tell you the truth, I was a little cranky and not entirely in the mood. We’d spent the day doing our taxes and moving furniture and looking at photos of when we were thinner.

But you never know what you’ll encounter on “The Path,” so when you head out for the daily constitutional, no matter your head space, you just schlep the camera and stomp along.

Plus, what are you going to do when you see an entire wedding train full of happy celebrants bearing down on you at 14 mph in golf carts?

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You hunker down on the curb and start taking pictures, that’s what you do.

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This bodes well for them, don’t you think? Honestly, they both looked like they were having a blast.

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Plus, they were surrounded by exuberant friends driving vehicles called “E-Z-Go.” That has to be a good sign.

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They were wavers. And smilers.

Also good.

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It wasn’t until they landed at the beach stairs, though, that we realized we were privileged to have accidentally shown up at Cinderalla’s ACTUAL wedding.

We saw the whole shoe thing go down.

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The exchange was swift and discreet.

And may I just say… that dress?

Dang.

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The other lesser accessories appeared according to custom…

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… and I’m betting when asked which one she wanted, the response was, “His.”

Or not. Maybe she”s a much sweeter little girl than I ever was.

Let’s go with that. She said, “Pink, please.”

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I loved the 6 minutes we were part of this wedding party.

There was an attention to details that leaned towards “We care about the event,” but…

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… there was a pragmatic and unfussy approach to the footwear involved.

You know our sentiment about fussy footwear. In the words of our friend Dushka, “I love gorgeous heels, but I love my feet more.”

So totally Cinderalla-ish….

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The party migrated happily down the stairs, and it felt unseemly to traipse down after them, so we blessed them and quietly said “Fare well.”

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But about those glass slippers left at the top of the stairs? So many stories, so little time…


We didn’t want to interrupt to exchange contact information, but Cinderella and Prince C.? If you would like high resolution versions of these photos, please contact us (rickandkathyjamison@gmail.com) and we’ll be happy to send them along, without charge. Ha! It’s our little way of disrupting the universe with random acts of kindness.


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Kindness

One mid-morning a few Saturdays ago, this was delivered to my elbow as I was banging away on a new blog post.

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it looks like some orange slices and a strawberry, but it’s actually kindness. And while I wasn’t particularly hungry, the moment it appeared, it filled me up completely. Funny, eh?


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Harvey Yaw, Bagpiper For All Occasions

We could hear the bleating of “Amazing Grace” as we stepped out our front door, so I didn’t expect he’s still be playing by the time we got down to the beach and up The Path to the Ritz Carlton.

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Good thing Harvey has such a large repertoire.

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Harvey is as much a treat to watch as he is to hear. He’s got the full deal going on. And in the luxury of sitting in the sunshine, toes tapping to Harvey’s jigs and hymns, soaking in as much of both as I could, I started to have a few questions.

For instance, we hear this man fairly often from the balcony of our little pied a terre, when the wind is blowing the right direction.  It’s delightful, and when that happens I bless him, wondering what his name is.

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The pipes themselves were spectacular. Does the Celtic-looking silver work have any clan significance?

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Is that a ceremonial dagger? Do they keep it on hand in case the bladder for the pipes gets stuck on full throttle, like a car alarm that you can’t shut off?

What’s the deal on the tabs? Does it help them avoid the embarrassment of getting caught with their socks inside out?

And where do you buy shoes like that? Is there a secret “Hobbits ‘R’ Us” store somewhere, maybe hiding in plain sight?

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Which lead (naturally) to “I wonder what he’s got in his pocketsies?”

When he stopped playing, Rick went up to give him our “rickandkathy” calling card and let him know he’d be showing up on our blog in the next day or two.  And that’s when not one but two mysteries were solved.

He unsnapped his furry pouch thingy and withdrew…

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… his business card.

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Turns out Harvey W. Yaw is a Bagpiper for all Occasions.

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I’m not sure what the exact occasion was yesterday, but for us, the event was a beautiful early evening in April on the cliffs of Pelican Point, with Harvey.


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Plein Air Is Where You Find It

For some artists, working en plein air is a choice.

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For others, studio space is tough to carve out. For yet others, the visual input that calls out to be captured or explored or interpreted by oil paints or water colors or pencil can only be found at street level.

Where there is subject matter, you will find artists.

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The ability to see beyond what is easily overlooked by the rest of us is what counts.*

The generally agreed upon worthiness of the actual scene is of less importance.

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Comfort for the body and stimulation for the mind and diversion for the soul when you hit a “stop and think” spot… these are all necessary, but fairly easily procured.

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Some plein air artists will never return to the same spot twice…

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… while others believe that even if they wanted to, it would be impossible. For them, it’s the delta in light or temperature or what they’ve learned since yesterday that is the artistic problem to solve, today.

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Maybe artists are like scuba divers that way.

They know that the very act of showing up on the scene has already shifted it to something other than what it would have been if they weren’t there. They themselves become a feature of the location.

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This means that even if you were to return to fire hydrant #8 in San Francisco every day for thirty years, there would always be something new to paint. It’s all in how you look at it.


* I was curious to know what book this man was reading.

The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten By searching old dictionaries and glossaries, [Jeffrey Kacirk] has compiled words that appeal to him based on their sound (although there is no pronunciation guide), show either endearing or humorous aspects of their times, or illustrate customs. The result is this lark of a book, sure to appeal to all who love words and the sounds they make. In this Aladdin’s cave of vocabulary are words like “bouffage” (very satisfying), “ugsumness” (terribleness), “snirp” (shrink), and “maffle” (stutter).

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The Sandbox of Pelican Point

Getting sand between the toes with friends and taking on the Pacific ocean are a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

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Sometimes people show up in multiple family units, dedicated to wearing the little kids out for an early bedtime so the big kids can reminisce about how good it used to feel when they were little kids and would play so hard they would go to bed exhausted, the fun quotient of the day thoroughly used up without anything wasted and nothing left over.

And yes, I’ll take anyone’s photo, anywhere, every time, going to great lengths to get strangers a high-res, Christmas-card worthy image, for free. It might be a sickness. I can’t help myself.

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Sometimes the gathering is more “Hey, watcha wanna do this afternoon, Becky?”

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For some it’s all about the thrill of bare, numb feet, racing towards the roaring crash of water coming at you, safe because you’re holding hands… and Mom has all the shoes…

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… and sometimes the thunder of waves provides a refuge of uninterrupted mind space, exactly the level of solitude you need to become the hero, a doer of great deeds of daring on the open seas.

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The beach is a “mistakes cost nothing” canvas one moment…

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… and a catwalk for a high-fashion dreamer the next…

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… and a chance to stomp ahead down the path in a little pink pout, if you feel like it.

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It’s a 3D light box with no self-awareness and room to spread out a little and play with light and shadows and some new moves*…

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… and it’s a time for kindred spirits to stroll along in a silence of understanding and companionship.

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It sponsors spontaneous affection one moment…

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… and coy-for-the-camera cheesiness the next.

But mostly, the beach is a clean slate, where nothing needs to compete for room to grow…

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… including friendship.


* Stay tuned… coming to a screen near you soon!

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