With a pen and camera
Pour ceux qui sont fatigués de l’hiver, laissez-moi partager avec vous un aperçu du printemps.
Chaque printemps, Smith College ouvre la porte de leurs maisons vertes. Pour un petit don, vous pouvez vous perdre dans la chaleur, la couleur et la promesse de la météo à venir.
La patience est nécessaire car les week-ends sont toujours occupés avec les visiteurs, proches et lointains.
In less than a week, the northeast USA got hit with another storm. While many are so tired of winter, many more are really done with snow and the cold and wanting spring to arrive. Now.
With close to 10 inches [25 cm] of wet, heavy, snow falling overnight, the next morning did not disappoint for people like me.
With nothing but stillness and silence all around me this morning, I thought of Dan Gurney, an incredible achiever by any standard, who said something to the effect of, “If you see something and can make it beautiful, but choose not to, what does that say about you?”
I suppose someone helped a vine or tree limb grow like a corkscrew. On the other hand, maybe this is a message from Mother Nature and she’s telling us of the stress we’re subjecting her to.
This image shows part of a very large oak limb horizontally spanning about 30-feet [9-meters]. Growing straight up from this limb is a host of small branches that look a lot like saplings. Usually I see such saplings on the forest floor, but this is the first time I’ve seen them emerging from a limb.
I’m not an arborist, so just maybe this is all part of a seasonal norm…
Vertical dimensions and shapes provide seminal perspectives. The Bay of Fundy is such a place to feel them. It claims to have the highest tidal range on the planet, on average rising and falling 56 feet [17 meters], twice a day.
While the tides run relatively constant, the power of moving water creates an impermanence to the landscape. The land changes albeit slowly. And of course, we physically change too, though on a timeline far shorter than these “monuments.” These amazing structures will outlast me, which is to say they’ll still deliver an enduring perspective to others who might be standing on the very spots when I took these photos.
It’s not difficult to dislike the brutal cold [7F with -10 windchill]. In spite of that, I find a quality that transcends visual beauty.
The cold makes things hold fast. It’s a natural form of “stop-motion” for inanimate objects. And a few animated ones as well vis-a-vis, birds stoically perched in a tangle of shrubs enduring both the cold and the wind.
For a brief instance—and I mean brief—I’m part of the landscape with camera in hand. The cold forces me to hunker down, to pull tighter the collar of my jacket, the hat on my head, the gloves that now feel powerless to the temperature as my fingers start to numb.
Winter is a beautiful time of year for me.
“Unable to perceive the shape of You,
I find You all around me.
It humbles my heart,
For You are everywhere.”
Excerpt from Guillermo del Toro’s film, The Shape of Water.
*City of Superlatives. Anything that projects grandeur or largesse beyond one’s imagination sounds better in french. Hudson Yards is a good example. And this project is more than just another set of very tall buildings.
My sole photo doesn’t begin to tout the scale of the real estate involved. Heading west from 10th Avenue to 12th and south from West 34th to West 30th lies the acreage that holds the largest private, real-estate construction project in the USA.
The Big Apple is about to get much bigger on so many levels, but don’t take my word on it.
I recently attended the Digital Marketing Summit for Financial Services & Advisors in NYC. The sea-change in marketing as a science is nothing short of overwhelming. It’s not a stretch to feel data sets [Big Data] testing your senses of feasibility in order to select specific data that can help shape your marketing messages and strategies.
My fascination for everything that is Formula 1 is insatiable, including the way F1 teams develop new technologies to gain a competitive edge under the rules. In recent years, digital data procurement has become de rigueur , just as it has in marketing. There’s no escaping it, there’s no going back. The Summit was well attended, moderated with timely panels and break-out discussions; collectively the 2.5 days allowed me to get in over my head on various “How To….” and “Why Social Media is….” findings, benchmarks and strategies. Professionals from across the USA, Canada, Trinidad Tobago, Germany, England, and other countries were on hand.
The digital marketing and social media cognoscenti may know this already, but these are my Summit take-aways:
The diagram noted above is the [estimated] output of a Formula 1 car during practice at this year’s Malaysian GP. The data set is a representative overview of what the driver must know based on speed, gear selection, braking points, acceleration points, track sections and the use of the car’s DRS [Drag Reduction System] to optimize aerodynamics. That’s just a partial list. All told, an actual race sends 1.5 billion data samples to race engineers who monitor the action from their paddocks.
Having access to data sets is far different from the utilization of specific data sets that you believe can optimize your marketing strategy. Ultimately, two goals need to be accomplished: 1) is to consistently, authentically provide to the client the experience that your brand promises, and 2) to deliver on that promise profitably.
The original title for this was “paint spill,” but my subconscious was still hobnobbing with marketing minimalism as mentioned in the prior post.
Carlo Centeno 