The jam boy

My latest discovery is a very happy one: Fraser Doherty, the 19 years old from Edimburgh.

At the age of 14 the boy received a jam recipe from his grand mother and then pushed by his passion started making jam for selling to his neighbors and shortly after to the local markets.

His popularity grew quickly, but then he realized that there was an emerging demand for healthier spreads and so he switched the production to so called super fruits like cranberries and blueberries and decided to replace sugar with grape juice.

Then one day he met a buyer from Waitrose and the rocket left the launch pad: a serious production site was found, designers made a beautiful label and the contract to supply hundreds of shops was signed.

Finally, thanks to the internet and blogging a new community is raising around the jam jar, recently with old lady knitters making covers for the children of the third world.

:-) What an inspiring example of YOUNG SOCIAL BUSINESS...

www.superjam.co.uk

Some simple thoughts about photography

Somewhere in Austria near Innsbruck with Sara and Gioia, January 3rd 2009


Photography consists in reproducing the instant of a live and tridimensional scene in a permanent manner on a physical support or temporary on some sort of screen.

Taking a picture is only one of the many possibilities to tell a place, an event, a person, and I think that while doing so one should also remember the alternatives: using voice, writing, drawing, filming.

There are a number of techniques that can be used to photograph, but the question that interests me the most is: why do we do it?
I think that the answer is not a unique one, but that it depends on people and moments.

Once upon a time photography was complex and costly, and its most frequent usage was for portraiture. It is also said that many bad painters of the time converted themselves to photography. Then, as cameras evolved, exterior and faster shooting grew easier, and so photography started to be used to record events of public interest.
Shortly after a further simplification and economization of the processes left room for the real demochratization of the photographic tool, and so the importance of the events to record shifted from collective to individual again.

Today, thanks to the gratuitousness and immediacy of the digital shot, we probably got to the point where we don't ask ourselves anymore why to photograph. Every tremor, every minimal sign is sufficient to make us press the button, and so our lives get clogged up with always more useless images, as if the higher number of photographs would testify our greater amusement.

I don't want to pass any judgments but rather think that everyone is free to do what he wants, and also think that by stopping for a while everyone would be able to look into his heart and understand the reason for each single photo of his.

It took me a loot of time to understand these reasons, and I will not tell you the whole truth. I will limit myself to say that the reasons behind the vast majority of the photographs I take when I'm alone are:
- showing the situation to someone who isn't there
- creating an intriguig image that I'd like to put on a wall as an ornament
- illuding myself to be able to bring home a little piece of the place I visited
- help myself to remember

Also, it's a little while that I became convinced that photography must be only one of the possible tools, and not a toy to kill time or give oneself a task.

But I say it once again: this is not the whole truth, also because part of it is still elusive to myself.

And I leave you with a promise: I'm working on my new internet site where more than a single media will be used and categories will be replaced by stories.

Happy new year,

Nic