Some quotes from Steve Jobs

[Ganesh H Shankar]

It is sad Steve Jobs had to leave this world so early. Hope his soul rests in peace.

Now, what is death of Steve Jobs has to do with CNP ?

Steve stood for creativity and innovation. I think his thoughts on creativity and innovation is very well applicable
to us as nature photographers. Here are some of his quotes (in bold italics) I scavenged from the web. While they have much broader applicability
here are also my humble (myopic) notes to myself as a nature photographer.

Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers,the round pegs in the square holes the ones who see things
differently they’re not fond of rules You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is
ignore them because they change things they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius,
because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.

Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.


My only chance of making unique world class images is going out and trying things which no one did. Naturally by definition it may look alien. If I fear
for all the criticism of the world I will only make images which everyone agrees - there by ensuring me adding to infinity. When my images are stupid I must
have guts to accept them and move on. It is not waste, I might have learned a lesson or two. Why fear when it is known that -


Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.


We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then
you die, you know? And we’ve all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma which is living with the results of other
people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow
your heart and intuition.


While I do care for critiques of others on my images at the end I will decide what is good and what is not. Agreeing to everyones' thoughts mean
I have not created.

Picasso had a saying: 'Good artists copy, great artists steal. We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas. I think part
of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians, poets, artists, zoologists and historians who also
happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.

Here I think Steve meant, all those musicians/poets etc applied knowledge from their respective fields ("steal") to computing products that Apple
created. I do think there is a lot to learn from the world of art (painting), poetry to shape our own photo making skills.

It’s more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy.

Processes and rules are meant to be broken in a creative paradigm.

Friends, go out, make images and share *your* images. Let those be stupid - who cares ? Don't feel scared, don't feel shy. We at CNP prefer those stupid but unique/original images
than those which every one thinks 'this how an image should be made'. Those who think that way will never make it big. Take control of your image making.
You decide what is right to you, more so when nothing is right or wrong - honestly.

Steve, your thoughts will keep inspiring us for years to come...

[Nilanjan Das]

Lovely !!! I think Steve was a true artist himself, probably he never painted or made images but he had such great imaginations. Probably there are many more out there, the other day I watched on TV about a villager in India who has over 56 inventions, small things, never will they be used by the corporate world or the tech savvy people, so what ? One of his creations helps a village boy to climb a coconut tree without fear of falling . The fear of not being able to impress others are mostly in the mind of people who copy or steal ideas, well mostly. In India or in the sub continent, it is always felt that asking questions means disrespecting someone, most from our generation even have grown up being told not to question elders or our mentors who excelled in telling us what was already written in the books. This reminds me of a day from my M.Sc class. We had a very respected teacher ( in most cases the respect was not earned due to teaching skills but more due to her suggestions worked for exams ). She invariably used to take out some yellow, semi-torn papers out of her bag ( probably her M.Sc notes ) and asked the students to take dictations. Most of my friends were happy with that as it did not tax their brain and more so they were not even scared of the fact that just all of them would be writing the same stuff in exams, not a single comma or full stop would be missed. It was a contest of how efficiently they could mug up and the teachers too did not mind reading the same answers in every darn exam book. Whatever , one day it went beyond my limits of tolerance, I made the mistake of taking out a carbon paper and handed it over to a female friend who could write very fast, neat and the hand writing was excellent ( am sure she developed such skills from copying notes years after years ). This caused a lot of insult to the teacher and she threw me out of the class and asked me never to attend any of her classes . Well, my friends tried to tell me how sorry they felt for me but I was used to being thrown out of the class from my school days and I was not at all sad. . I soon realized that spending time honing my cricket skills would be better and in fact that was the time when I learned how to bowl the stock out swinging delivery ( I was a natural in swinger ). lol. My parents were always summoned by the teachers in school and told how talented I was and if I work harder, I could secure marks which very few students in the class can think of. So I ashamed by parents, probably they still are ashamed . My cousins invite my parents for the house warming parties and take them out for a spin in their newly purchased vehicles, while I still drive my 7 year old qualis ( which makes a lot of noise now ). Once I remember decided to skip practical classes and went to a research institute for 3 months and tried my hands on learning the newly invented DNA fingerprinting technology, such a heinous crime I had committed by not attending the practicals of the syllabus which annoyed even the Vice Chancellor of the University, am so thankful that I committed this crime, it changed my life and my perspectives of learning science. The reason am writing this is because I came face to face with many consequences, I still remember the face of the teacher when he saw that for a 20 mark question, I had only made a diagram and labeled it, while most of the good students wrote 10-12 pages. Taking a supplementary sheet and filling it up non sense was more satisfying than saving paper and trying to explain everything from one diagram. Why was the teacher surprised and angry ? Because, he had to use his brains to figure out that the answer was lying in that diagram and these people only talk of those who are original but never teach how to be one . I really do not blame most people for not being able to go beyond copy or steal ideas, trying to be original is a training which needs a kick start. It comes with the awards of going through mental agony, mental trauma, sense of defeat and being looked down upon and most importantly being called either mad or crazy or even a person who has no talent. I remember that my Ph.D took about 6 years, I attempted to work on something for which no protocols were available, so I had to develop everything from scratch. Many thought my experiments failed as I can not calculate molarity while preparing solutions, could not calculate extinction co-efficients while taking absorptions spectra , but failing consistently for 4 years showed me the path, once the quota of failing ( actually I do not see them as failing ), I figured out how could I get the enzyme, even in science people talk of automated machines, state of the art technology helping in faster research, funding etc etc, well, just like my low cost equipment in photography, I also devised some customized instruments which looked horrible but gave me the right results . Like Ganesh here, I was lucky to loan a boss who agreed with my thoughts ( my own boss refused to guide me ), loaning a boss was even dangerous, he was buying chemicals for me which his original students were not agreeing to. It was fun, fun because I learned not to think of the consequences, it was a big learning for me. Probably that helped me a lot when I started photography seriously 3-4 years back, may be in another 10 years I would learn something more, awards may or may not come, who the hell cares man ? But the journey must continue, not with the intent of defying rules for the sake of defying them, but more due to the fact that they came to the mind naturally. A few tested ways of success in creative photography will surely earn more rating and comments, but it would certainly shorten our presence in CNP. Probably none of us are going to make money like Steve Jobs did, may be we will be like the Indian villager whose name will not hit the mind of a single city dweller, but think of the bloody satisfaction. Some one told me recently in Kaziranga in front of Ganesh that no matter how hard I try, I can never be be like Ganesh , he was happy thinking that he insulted me enough and demeaned me enough, but frankly speaking it made me wonder why are people thinking that I was trying to be like Ganesh ? I do not want to be like him, I wish to be me, so there's a long journey ahead, I can take lessons from all the images here in CNP and not only the one's which are highly rated or commented on and move on to become Nilanjan and not a shadow of GANESH. I am sure Ganesh would hate me if I try to be like him, I can feel his love for me for not trying to be him. Have fun guys , enjoy. Nothing to worry, no targets ahead, there are only dreams, in the mean time let me continue FAILING.......
and finally one question for all the members of the forum ? Are creative photographs in nature any different from the so called Natural History images ? I am hearing a lot these days that natural history images are a different genre, well some aspects of natural history may be different from what we do but I think I have seen the best of natural history images here in this forum, do you agree ? If we make a portrait or catch some action or show a behavior using skills not generally shown by documentary type photographers, does it not make us better natural history photographers ?