The December wind joyfully whistles outside my window. It is December 13th, 2011.

The double glazing which effortlessly keeps the bass within became useless to keep out the nature’s cold laughter.

My objective today was simple, to polish and perfect the winter email campaign to kick off 2012. Since majority of the coding, sizing, wording and positioning has already been done over the past few days, I was left with a single task at hand. A concise and catchy subject line in the hope that more people will open the email.

Little did I know, mixing words is an artful skill that many do not possess, me included.

Reluctantly, I turned to one source that everyone turns to when in doubt in this modernising, increasingly-villana-becoming society, yet knowing if an answer comes too easily, it won’t be what you’re after. And I was right.

Top 5 ranked Google results said little that I don’t already know. I gathered that if my business aims at retail consumers, life wouldn’t be so difficult, then again, not so interesting either.

I then did everything one would normally do in this situation to fire up a sleepy brain. I twitted, I facebooked, I read blogs. Naturally, I was distracted by the well written words of Wayne Ford and his selection of wonderful photographic projects around the world, I was lost, very happily, for a good while. The urgency sobered me up, I tried a different approach to stimulate my mind. This time, by feeding the stomach. Cheese on toast, apple, clementine, water, tea and hobnobs, in that particular order.

While the blood gushing down my artery to help with digestion, I felt myself drifting farther away from the 50 characters.

It was then a message from an old friend 5000 miles away sat me right up in the chair. A heart felt letter describing his newly embarked life as a project manager in Hong Kong, the long working hours, total loss of fashion sense and daily discoveries of both living and dead things in the dusty hair from working on the hill side.

The bulb moment hit me all of sudden, a short and catchy subject line appeared right under my nose.

Yes, 50 characters killed a day, but it didn’t go wasted.

The change of the blog title signals a turning point in its course.

Choosing a blog title has always bugged me like nothing else in the pursuit of perfection. It didn’t take long for me to come to realisation that no such thing existed, and I settled on “faces & places” at the first instance. But deep down, I have always been reluctant to look at it for more than a few seconds before looking away.

Yes, I couldn’t stand the title of my own blog.

As the life progresses as a photographic artist, I have been opened up to more and more various forms of art, and a lot of strange stuff with “art” in the title. I suspect I will never get the meaning nor intention of such things.

Gradually, with the aid of reading basic philosophy and history, it has become apparent that art has always been an important integral part of everyday life, especially those were gifted from nature. Unfortunately, one needs to be very fortunate to appreciate the little things in life, and the percentage of those who are blessed to enjoy such pleasures are unfortunately small.

The change of the title does not reflect the change of content in the coming future, but rather, a change of attitude towards the remainder of my career and life in general.

Art doesn’t have to be installed in a vast empty space surrounded by ropes; art doesn’t have to be framed and hung on the wall; art certainly shouldn’t cause any confusion and make your brain work so hard for a question without an answer; it certainly doesn’t have to be desperately trying to outsmart the audience

Can I define what art is?

Yes and No.

Should I?

Certainly not.

Following a captivating documentary presented by Fiona Bruce on BBC 1 a few weeks’ back, the much anticipated exhibition is finally here in London.

Forget about all the hyped up names you hear on a daily basis, if you love art, don’t look further.

This is my favourite piece from the grandmaster, triumphs over The Mona Lisa by miles.

The charity-based online photography gallery collect.give announces the release of a book celebrating the project’s first 50 photographers – all of whom have pledged to donate 100% of their print proceeds to charities they’ve selected. Since 2009, collect.give has raised over $28,000 for a wide variety of charitable organizations, by selling affordable, limited edition photographs.

Description

128 pages, softcover, perfect bound, printed by MagCloud.

Design By

Heidi Romano

Photographs By

Jane Fulton Alt, Malu Alvarez, Jonathan Blaustein, Mark Brautigam, Jesse Burke, Barbara Ciurej & Lindsay Lochman, Katrina d’Autremont, Amy Eckert, Matt Eich, Jon Feinstein, Sarina Finkelstein, Elizabeth Fleming, Max. S. Gerber, Meggan Gould, Andrew Hetherington, Geoffrey Hiller, Peter Hoffman, Jon Horvath, Ben Huff, Dave Jordano, Stella Kalaw, Melissa Kaseman, Liz Kuball, Shane Lavalette, David Leventi, John Loomis, S. Billie Mandle, Kerry Mansfield, Mark Menjivar, Kevin J. Miyazaki, Annie Marie Musselman, Colleen Plumb, Susana Raab, Shawn Records, Ellen Rennard, Dalton Rooney, Jonathan Saunders, Manjari Sharma, Daniel Shea, Kelly Shimoda, Emily Shur, Allison V. Smith, Aline Smithson, Brea Souders, Sarah Sudhoff, Jake Stangel, Lacey Terrell, Sonja Thomsen, Susan Worsham and David Wright.

Essays By

Crista Dix, Darius Himes, Lisa Hostetler, Rachel Hulin, Miki Johnson, Larissa Leclair, Wally Mason, George Slade, Amy Stein and Alison Zavos.

To Benefit

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA). In keeping with the collect.give mission to donate 100% of proceeds to charity, all profits from this book will be donated to the RSPCA, a charity chosen by the designer Heidi Romano.

Price

$22.00

To Preview or Purchase

http://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/290686

Contact

For more information, visit www.collectdotgive.org or send an email to Kevin J. Miyazaki.

I have just ordered mine, with a very reasonable delivery charge of $2.49 to the UK.

Now I very much look forward to receiving the book, for the images inside and the quality of MagCloud, if it meets my expectation, some of future projects will no doubt benefit from such a versatile platform.

Stay tuned.

Apologies for the lack of posting of the late.

Life has taken me on an unexpected turn, but everything are gradually returning to the better.

I am not a great role model for obeying rules and follow instructions, but some times it comes with perks that makes it worthwhile.

Hopping from chateau to chateau in France was fun, mostly due to the amazing sceneries along the route. A random turn off brought me to this spectacular bridge, with the final ray of light gently kissing the yellow stones.

Needless to say, I failed to reach the last chateau …

Shooting on location has always been fun, creative yet challenging, especially when things that out of your control decide to play against you.

But when your subject is intelligent, strong and female who happens to serve in the navy reserve, those factors somehow push you go further to man up just to keep up.

For once, the met office forecast accurately predicted the weather right after we set it up. With the drizzle coming down, the race against wind, rain and tide highly tightened our nerve systems.

The shoot lasted no more than 15 minutes, before heavy rain sent us packing, literally.

Given the opportunity, I would love to return to the same location and do it again.

Sunset finale is coming soon.