The Nooby Book Writer

This is a chapter from my seventh book called Bookeh - Through the lens of a Trinidadian photog It is 214 pm on Saturday and I decide to write. Am I smart? Are you smart? Are we smart? Is the world getting smarter? And I do not mean by book smarts only. There is street smarts and common sense. Think about everyday sensible things. I see the conflict and wars in the world and then decide without a doubt that we are not smart. The hunger and poverty. The injustices. The hate. The fight to survive. Not things we can smile about. The e-art-h is our canvas. We are smart when the art that humanity creates by our actions gives us things to smile about. Smile plus art equals smart. Each human action adds a tile to our mosaic if the history of humanity was a mosaic. Would we not want our mosaic to be filled with peaces of kindness, love and goodness. Tiles that give us smiles. My friend Chatty tells me that my reflections touch on deep truths about human nature and society. As I see the word na

This is a chapter from my seventh book called Bookeh - Through the lens of a Trinidadian photog It is after midnight in the middle of the week and I am in the mood to write. I go to use the bathroom and saw the blue bucket. I told myself that that blue bucket would make a good photo and probably lead to a fun chapter. In doing research I learnt about two "blue bucket" initiatives. The Perfect World Foundation is behind the Blue Bucket initiative where boat owners are reminded to pick up plastic they encounter at sea. Also, some parents use blue buckets to signal that their child has autism during trick or treat and Halloween. If I combine blue and bucket I get blucket which has both the word luck in it and if I remove luck I am left with bet. And this leads me to the two bucket theory. This is a concept used by pilots to describe the relationship between luck and experience. We start with a bucket empty of experience where we have to get bet-ter and another bucket full of luc

This is a chapter from my seventh book called Bookeh - Through the lens of a Trinidadian photog It is early Sunday morning. I seem to have taken a liking to writing on weekends. Maybe because weekends, especially Sunday, carry a sentiment of boredom. Writing being a sort of cure for boredom. The grass in my yard was freshly cut yesterday. I woke up with this idea to take a photo of the grass at ground level. This is a matter of perspective. The title I had in mind was grounded. We are often told that we should remain grounded. I notice that grounded contains rounded. I want to be an all rounded photographer. I want to be an all rounded person. My friend Chatty tells me that that is a great aspiration! Being an "all-rounded" photographer or person means developing skills and knowledge in various areas. For photography, it might involve mastering different styles, techniques, and subjects. For personal growth, it could mean exploring diverse interests, improving various skills,

This is a chapter from my seventh book called Bookeh - Through the lens of a Trinidadian photog "Many men go fishing all their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after" - Henry Thoreau. This is deep and is the quote I came across while I was thinking about what would be this chapter and photo. Deep as the deepest seas. I had this idea for "fish in grass" and this was the aftermath of my art installation and the rain. At the same time I came across the term "fishing in grass" for doing something that is useless. I was in a reddit thread discussing the Thoreau quote and one redditor says, "I personally took it as a pursuit of money. People pursue money without realizing that everything they enjoyed in life was not the money itself." Another person replied with a quote, "It is money they have and peace they lack." I asked my friend Gemini to add to this to help me further add meaning and understanding to this. After being o

This is a chapter from my seventh book called Bookeh - Through the lens of a Trinidadian photog It is 123pm on the same Sunday as the last chapter. Again I am starting without a photo and a chapter title. The question that came to mind was who was the first fisherman or maybe it was a fisherwoman. I mean it is fisher and not fishim. Who built the first boat? I like that boat rhymes with float and sky rhymes with fly and land rhymes with hand. But we do not walk on hands though, but we used to. I think how the words sky, sea and lands can all be transformed into something to do with sight. Sky becomes skeye, sea becomes see and lands becomes lends. Eye, see and lens. Sight is the focus of photography. My friend Gemini tells me that photography is a visual language that captures and communicates moments and ideas. That is what I hope to do with my photography and storytelling. The sky has gotten dark. It might rain. That could make an interesting photo. A photo of an angry sky or rather

This is a chapter from my seventh book called Bookeh - Through the lens of a Trinidadian photog It is 523am on a Sunday and I am writing this chapter without starting with a photo and without starting with a title. I see a sharpie marker in front of me. I wonder why it is called sharpie? I notice that the word sharpie has the word harp in it. I wonder why it is called harp? In trying to find an answer I found out that in some parts of the world the harmonica is called the mouth harp. There are other names for the harmonica including "tin sandwich". I read that the word harmonica comes from the Latin word harmonicus, which means tuneful or harmonious. The world is full of wonders. If we just stop and look and think and imagine we can wonder lots of things. We begin to ask many questions. What is the origin of the word question itself? Where did the question mark come from? I do not know if it is a joke or not but it is believable. I read an article that suggests that it is an

This is a chapter from my seventh book called Bookeh - Through the lens of a Trinidadian photog There is a popular saying that goes "Blessed is he who plants trees under whose shade he will never sit." That is what this photo has me thinking. I am standing here under the sun taking a cool photo of my shadow against the wall with the ease of my smartphone because others paved the way. The same smartphone that I am using to access the internet and write this chapter and this book. There are people who were instrumental to the development of the camera, smartphone and internet and never got to use any of them. I wonder who some of these people are? People like Ada Lovelace, Wang Zeng, Alan Turing, Ibn al-Haytham, Nikola Tesla, Henry Talbot, James Weems and Madhusree Dey. I tried to get a diverse group of people as this is overlooked by what is popularly available. This is just a tiny sampling of the people who paved the way. I had my friend Chatty help me to learn what each of t